Geo-Targeting in Email Marketing: Why Maps Can Be So Powerful

You’re out having lunch somewhere and you check your email. Your favorite shoe store has sent you an email with a one-day only offer. But going out and buying shoes wasn’t really on the agenda, so what do you do? If you’re like most people, you probably delete it just to keep your inbox under control.But what if the email had a personalized map that showed you that a store was right around the corner? Geo-targeting for email marketing can personalize a customer’s experience and transform an email into a useful shopping companion.We’ve discussed how Steve Madden used [geo-targeted emails](https://movableink.com/blog/emails-we-love-steve-madden) to personalize the customer experience. Using email to show the location of nearby store to customers can help increase foot traffic to retail locations.Another benefit of geo-targeting is highlighting places where products or rewards points can be redeemed. Recently, [AIMIA](https://www.aimia.com/) did just that and saw some significant results.**Rewards, Made Easy**Anyone with a credit card knows that rewards programs can be hard to figure out. Rewards points can be difficult to redeem, because, often, customers don’t know when or where they can actually use them.AIMIA decided to use geo-targeted emails to make rewards redemption as easy as possible. As a company that empowers retailers with loyalty programs that help drive sales for partners and manages rewards programs for customers, AIMIA is in a unique position to help customers make the most of loyalty programs and help them redeem their rewards.To help customers redeem their Nectar rewards, AIMIA experimented with personalized, geo-targeted emails. By using Movable Ink’s [contextual marketing technology](https://movableink.com/platform), AIMIA embedded personalized maps in every email. Every map showed up to ten nearby locations where customers could redeem their rewards.**The emails with maps increased click-through rates by 66.67% over emails without maps, with 31% of all clicks going to the map.****The Local Inbox**Contextual marketing is founded on the idea of creating marketing that is useful and personalized for customers. [With about 67% of emails being opened on mobile devices](https://movableink.com/blog/mobile-email-research), businesses have to focus on how to make emails locally relevant to customers.AIMIA didn’t just use geo-targeting in this email campaign. The campaign also created contextually relevant content based on the weather. Recipients were shown different offers based on the weather forecast – if it was sunny, they saw outdoor offers. If it was raining, they saw offers for restaurants or other indoor venues.With geo-targeting, AIMIA turned email marketing into a dynamic tool for customers to use throughout the day. This led to a significant uptick in engagement. And that kind of engagement can build loyalty and, ultimately, lead to higher conversions and a better customer experience in your emails and beyond.