Tactics and the Emarsys Marketing Platform
Tactics, and the Strategic Dashboard, are part of the new product package structure that is being rolled out in Q2 2019. You will be contacted by your Success Manager when your account is ready to receive the new functionality.
Tactics are turnkey solutions that offer pre-built Automation Center programs designed to achieve a specific marketing goal.
Each set of Tactics is created for a specific vertical and these are directly linked to the business results that are displayed for your Strategies and Objectives on the Strategic Dashboard.
The programs have predefined entry points, segments and messages and require just a few configuration steps by you before they can be activated.
In this article
- What is a Tactic?
- How does it work?
- Why should I be using Tactics?
- Available Tactics
- Getting started with Tactics
- Tactics FAQ
Product documentation
Training material
What is a Tactic?
A Tactic is an Automation Center program designed by Emarsys to fulfill a specific need of marketers in a chosen vertical. It can be downloaded and installed in your account in minutes.
Tactics use different channels for messaging, but all the messages come from a single template for that channel, and you can also download and install that template if you wish.
The entry point, filters and messages are already in the Tactic - all you have to do is update a few of the settings and they are ready to you. Full instructions on what you have to do to set up and test each Tactic are available in their respective articles.
Tactics come in different categories, depending on how and where they interact with customers. For example:
- Lifestyle Tactics help you manage your customer lifecycle marketing.
- Funnel Tactics guide the customer to completing a purchase.
- Win-back Tactics help you reduce customer churn.
- and so on...
How does it work?
When a Tactic is downloaded to your account, it creates a fully-functioning program with every required asset created for it in the background. All the segments automatically reference the correct fields in your Emarsys database or in your product and sales data files. Each message used is also created and linked to the program.
Most Tactics require you to make a few adjustments, such as deleting unwanted content blocks or setting the logic for a Predict widget. Each required step is clearly explained in the tactics articles, where we also offer some suggestions for enhancements.
As long as you have values for your data fields, a Tactic is designed to work straight out of the box and requires very little input from you.
Why should I be using Tactics?
First of all, because it saves you a lot of time and effort. We have already taken all of the decision-making and done most of the hard work and prepared full programs that capture contacts at the right time in their lifecycle and progress them through their journey to the conversion goal.
Secondly, because we have already spoken to dozens of businesses in our target verticals and these Tactics are the result of that. You can be sure that we have optimized them for your objectives.
Finally, Tactics are also closely linked to the strategy reporting on the Strategic Dashboard and therefore revenue attribution has never been easier.
Available Tactics
The following Tactics are available for activation in your account:
- E-Commerce Tactic - Lead re-engagement
- E-Commerce Tactic - Welcome (New Contacts)
- E-Commerce Tactic - Abandoned Browse
- E-Commerce Tactic - Abandoned Cart
- E-Commerce Tactic - First-time buyer to Active Customer
- E-Commerce Tactic - Birthday
- E-Commerce Tactic - Win back Defecting Customers
- E-Commerce Tactic - Win back Inactive Customers
- E-Commerce Tactic - Price drop
- E-Commerce Tactic - Replenishment
- E-Commerce Tactic - Back in stock
Getting started with Tactics
Tactics are available in your account automatically. The only real pre-requisite is that you have a working Web Extend implementation, as most Tactics will require data from the web behavior fields as well as from your product data file.
Tactics FAQ
Can I use my own Emarsys template for Tactics?
Currently not. You can edit the content of any email, and you can download the Tactics template and make changes to that, which will affect all the emails in your Tactics, but you cannot apply your own template directly.
Tactics are designed to be out-of-the-box and require minimal configuration before they can be activated, and the emails in them have been built to target one strategy in particular, therefore editing them is not recommended.
How do tactics affect sub-accounts?
Tactics are created on an account level, therefore sub-accounts behave independently from their parent accounts.
If you have the campaign distribution feature enabled, you can push Tactics emails and even the Tactics template to sub-accounts, but they will be ignored when you create Tactics in the sub-accounts. If you want to use an email from the parent account in a sub-account Tactic you would have to distribute that email to the sub-account and then select it manually in the Tactic.
Sub-accounts are often used for separate branding or language, so if you download and modify the Tactics template on the parent account, it makes sense for you to do the same for each of your sub-accounts, and treat each account independently.