The Perfect YIR Doesn’t Exi–

Thanksgiving is next week, which either means your brand’s year-in-review is about to launch or you’re desperately scrambling for data points to make one before December 31st.

Though year-in-reviews were a major marketing innovation when Spotify Wrapped first landed in customers’ inboxes, they’ve now become a pillar in every email calendar. But just because every other brand is creating a year-in-review, that doesn’t give marketers a free pass to throw together a few tired data points and call it a day.

Year-in-reviews offer an unparalleled opportunity to reinforce loyalty going into the new year—if you do it right. Luckily for you, Marketing Tomorrow readers, we’ve got the data-minded tips you need to not just do your year-in-review right, but do it better than all of your competitors.

It's All About Style

Let’s start from the very top of the year-in-review: the hero image. This is the spot for catching customers’ attention and wowing them with your unique branding. Whether you’ve got a photo worthy of National Geographic or prefer to use graphics from your design team, this is the place for your branding to shine. Pair that with a first name call-out, and you’re off to the races.

But that’s not all. If you want customers to open your lucky email out of the sea of year-in-reviews stuffing their inboxes, you should lead with your best personalized stat. Maybe the customer has accrued points to use up before the end of the year, or has a particularly shareable stat such as an ESG contribution. Whatever it is, you need to put that data point front and center.

Precision Counts

Now let’s look at the other data points in a good year-in-review. While high-value actions and achievements will look different among brands, one rule applies to every year-in-review: be specific. It might be easier to showcase a data point that speaks to a large segment of your audience, but personalization is what engages customers. Usually, they’d rather know their most frequently purchased beverage rather than how many coffees your brand sold that year.

Start off on the right foot with these three types of data points:

Bang for their buck

Build loyalty by reminding customers of all the value they’ve already gained from hanging out with your brand all year long. Did they get a free item from their points or snag an exclusive discount? Customers are liable to forget these treasured benefits, so be sure to remind them before they get swayed by another brand.

Just out of reach

If a customer is $5 away from free shipping, they’ll be throwing a pair of socks into their basket before you know it. The same idea can apply to year-in-review stats; highlight missed loyalty opportunities—preferably ones they can still accomplish before the year is up—and include next steps they can take to reap even more benefits.

Comparison is not the thief of joy

Only if you’re a clever marketer, that is. Don’t be afraid to show customers how you rise above other brands, especially in ESG initiatives. Saved fuel this year or cut down on plastic waste? Show that off!

Buzz Beyond Email

So you’ve crafted a personalized year-in-review with winning branding. What a shame if it was destined to live and die in the inbox alone.

The last element in a perfect year-in-review is making it available beyond email. Here are three quick ways to do just that:

• Make it mobile by creating an in-app version of the campaign, similar to Audible. You can send customers push notifications with a different wrap-up stat each day, or simply deploy the same campaign to mobile with a few tweaks for seamless rendering.

• Social feeds can be added to your original email campaign to boost visibility. Existing customers get excited and spread the word to prospects, acting as genuine brand ambassadors.
• Hashtags go hand-in-hand with social feeds, but be sure not to skip this step. Hashtags play a key role in getting more eyes on customers’ year-in-review campaigns, furthering their original reach.

Cyber Week Got You Down?

Maybe it’s a little early for year-in-reviews for you. Maybe, like many marketers, the impending Cyber Week is still taking up all of your brain space.

Our webinar with Virgin Atlantic may be just the thing you need. Not only did they survive Black Friday, they truly thrived by driving over 900% in revenue using Adobe and Movable Ink. And even if you’ve got Cyber Week covered, their tips are helpful all year-round.

Year-Round Tips to be more Data-Driven

Some of the tactics used for year-in-reviews are as evergreen as a Christmas tree. Implement these tips to keep the personalization rolling 365 days of the year.

Separate From Silos

It’s time to silo yourself from, well, silos. To create a campaign like a year-in-review—or any personalized email, for that matter—your martech solutions need to be working in perfect harmony. Create one source of truth about your customers by perfecting those integrations.

Think Fast

And your tools should be working even faster. Collecting data points and manually implementing them into campaigns is a long, drawn-out process. So long, in fact, that by the time the campaign deploys that data is no longer relevant.

Rely on automation via APIs or real-time data solutions to upkeep accuracy, making personalized builds ever-relevant.

Be ProAIctive

An issue with traditional personalized emails is that marketers need to wait for customers to make the first move. For example, it’s only after a customer browses that marketers can send tailored triggers.

Mitigate that with AI, which allows marketers to predict customers’ future interests; meaning that you can send hyper-relevant content before customers even make a Google search for that item.

Marketing Moments to Watch ??

Too many Timothées. Remember the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in NYC? MCoBeauty capitalized on that perfectly by bringing their own Timothée to the marketing world.

Wally/Waldo Wants Gifts from Etsy. People may have scoured the pages for Waldo over the years, but he’s never felt truly seen—after all, Brits and Americans can’t even decide on his real name. That is, until Etsy’s holiday campaign came along.

On the first day of Christmas, Cadbury said to me. Black Friday hasn’t even happened yet, and Cadbury already has customers tearing up over their Advent calendar ad.?

Don’t scroll past Lexus. We’ve seen some pretty good landing pages in our time, but none quite like this head-spinning gallery.