Tactics and the Emarsys Marketing Platform
Tactics, and the Strategic Dashboard, are part of the new product package structure that is currently being rolled out. If you would like to migrate to the new structure and begin to enjoy these products, please contact your Success Manager.
Tactics are pre-built Automation Center programs designed to achieve a specific marketing goal.
Each Tactic has been created following a long analysis of the most successful Automation Center programs created by our customers. They have been created for different use cases for specific verticals and are directly linked to the business results that are displayed for your Strategies and Objectives on the Strategic Dashboard.
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.
All the elements of the program, from the entry node segment to the delays specified on the Wait nodes, are based on our experience with best practice programs created by hundreds of our customers.
All you need to do is open each channel node and select the messages you want to use, and the Tactic is ready to activate.
- You can modify many of the Tactic settings if you like, but we advise you to activate it as-is at first, and then experiement with incremenatal changes after discussing your needs with your Success Manager.
- Each Tactic comes with a set of example email campaigns which can provide inspiration if you do not already have emails of your own that you can use.
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.
As long as you have values for your data fields, and message creatives ready to use, a Tactic is designed to work straight out of the box and requires very little input from you.
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.
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:
Acquisition and conversion
- Lead re-engagement
- Leads likely to go cold
- Convert hot leads
- Welcome (new contacts)
- Abandoned browse
- Abandoned cart
- Repeat purchase gamification
Customer lifecycle
- Birthday
- Registration anniversary
- Purchase anniversary
- First-time buyer to repeat buyer
- Convert active buyers
- Post-purchase upsell
- Post-purchase cross-sell
- Post-purchase category cross-sell
- Post-purchase feedback
- Win back inactive leads
- Win back defecting customers
- Win back inactive customers
Product data
Getting started with Tactics
Once you have been migrated to the new package structure you can use Tactics straight away.
We recommend that you read our article on Which Tactic do I start with? and pick three or four simple Tactics that will immediately begin to impact your bottom line.
Tactics FAQ
Should I use my own emails for Tactics?
Yes - this is how we designed Tactics, for you to use with your own creatives. The Emarsys emails which come with a Tactic are examples of how to build an email and what personalization or product recommendations to use
However, if you do not have enough email campaigns ready to use, you can download and customize our special Tactics email template. Once you have editied that template to fit your branding, then every Tactic you create will come with your own branded emails. You will onyl need to swap out some of the images, make a few tweaks and you'll be ready to go.
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.