One of the best things about email marketing is that you can tailor it; you’re sending it directly to a real person, not just out into the ether and hoping the algorithm shows it to the right people. So, as you already know the recipient, you can make sure the content appeals to them. But how do you find out what they want? It’s simple, you ask them!

The difference between personalization and relevancy

Our survey of 4,000 consumers found that only 15% of consumers feel like the emails they receive are very relevant, down from 23% the previous year.

Personalization and relevance are often lumped together, but they’re not quite the same thing.

Personalization, like addressing a customer by name, creates recognition. Relevance, speaking to their needs, interests, and context, is what makes a message worth engaging with. Most brands have nailed the first part; it’s the second that remains the challenge.

That’s where preference centers come in. By giving customers control over how, when, and why they hear from your brand, preference centers help you collect valuable zero-party data to create more relevant experiences.

From choosing their favorite channels to sharing their interests or the occasions they’d rather not hear about, customers can shape the experience around their preferences. In return, you get happier subscribers and stronger engagement because you’re creating marketing that feels less like an interruption and more like a conversation.

What is a preference center?

A preference center is an online portal where your customers can manage their communication preferences.

What should a preference center allow subscribers to do?

A preference center can (and should) be tailored based on your product and service offering. Here are some common things to include:

• Share how regularly they want to hear from you, e.g., daily, weekly, or monthly
• Identify the channel they prefer to hear from you on, e.g., email, SMS, or WhatsApp
• Tell you their areas of interest, such as:
  • Product categories: e.g., dresses and knitwear
  • Topics of interest: e.g., marketing automation
  • Relationship to your organization: donor, volunteer, service user or relative
• Let you know about occasions they find sensitive, that they don’t want to hear about, like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day

How often do most customers want to receive marketing messages?

Our survey of 4,000 consumers found that most customers prefer monthly (34%) or weekly communication (31%). An overwhelming majority (93%) report that daily messages are too much.

Which channels do consumers prefer to receive marketing messages?
Email remains the top choice for consumers to interact with brands, with 45% of consumers selecting this option, 33% prefer mobile apps, and 13% prefer SMS.

Sharing this data isn’t to say go with the most popular option, but to highlight that preferences vary wildly, which is exactly why giving customers control matters.

Why every brand needs a preference center

Preference centers give you clear data on what your customers want to receive and when, taking out the guesswork and letting you communicate much more effectively.

Better quality customer data
Using preference centers, you can collect accurate zero-party data about preferences, which will enhance your understanding of the customer. The ability to segment customers based on their preferences can lead to more success in targeting demographics with customized marketing efforts.

Improved deliverability and open rates
Customers who opt-in to receive content from you through their preferred channels are more likely to open and engage with those messages. Consequently, you can expect improved email open rates and better deliverability with fewer spam-related issues.

Reduced unsubscribe rates
Many customers unsubscribe from email lists for several reasons, including receiving too many emails or irrelevant content. A preference center allows customers to change their subscription without completely opting out, reducing overall unsubscribe rates.

Greater compliance with data protection regulations
Preference centers help you to comply with data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) more easily. They give customers control over their data and the ability to manage their opt-ins so your marketing meets all of the necessary legal requirements.

Lasting customer engagement and retention
By allowing customers to choose their preferred communication methods and tailor the content they receive, you can improve customer satisfaction levels and boost engagement with your marketing.

Preference centers make marketing more thoughtful

Opt-out campaigns for occasions like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day usually come from a good place. But asking customers the same question every year isn’t actually the most considerate experience.

A preference center lets customers set those preferences once and manage them whenever they choose. From there, you can automatically respect those choices across future campaigns.

It’s a small change that can make a big difference. Customers get more control, fewer unwanted and upsetting messages, and a stronger sense that your brand understands them.

If you’d like to explore this topic further, read our guide on why opt-out campaigns may be doing more harm than good, and how to avoid any potential upset entirely.

How to act on your customers’ preferences

Once you have this valuable insight into your customers’ preferences, use what you know to segment your campaigns and audiences. There’s no point asking people what they’re interested in, only to ignore it.

Segmentation allows you to create segments of people in your database based on the criteria you choose.

You can then easily create content that responds to these preferences and split your marketing sends accordingly. You can also use dynamic content to show customers who have expressed an interest in dresses and show others who have expressed an interest in knitwear different blocks in your email.

3 preference center best practices with examples

Preference centers offer a variety of opportunities for data collection, whether it’s during newsletter sign-up, in a welcome journey, or as part of account set-up. These examples show how brands are using preference centers to create more relevant customer experiences.

1. Let subscribers tell you what they’re interested in

Music giant Spotify gives customers control over both the content they receive and the channels they receive it on.

By letting listeners choose the topics they’re interested in and whether they’d prefer email or push notifications, Spotify makes it easy for customers to shape an experience that feels relevant to them.

2. Show customers what they’re signing up for

MATCHESFASHION promotes its preference center within its welcome series, encouraging new subscribers to tailor their experience from the very beginning.

Customers can choose exactly which content they’d like to receive, and the preference center even shows which days of the week each email is sent. This creates clear expectations and helps subscribers understand exactly what they’re signing up for. The brand also collects additional preferences, including whether customers are happy to receive marketing via phone or post, and whether they’re interested in joining its loyalty program.

3. Reduce blanket unsubscribes

Not every customer who clicks “unsubscribe” wants to end the relationship altogether. Sometimes they simply want fewer emails or more relevant content.

When customers choose to unsubscribe, J.Crew presents an opportunity to adjust preferences instead. Shoppers can reduce email frequency or specify the products they’d prefer to hear about, helping the brand retain subscribers who might otherwise leave completely.

Why preference centers have become essential

Customers expect relevant marketing, and they want to choose how often they hear from you, on which channels they hear from you, and the content that interests them.

At the same time, marketers need to improve engagement, protect deliverability, and build stronger zero-party data strategies. A well-designed preference center helps achieve all three.

When customers can shape their own experience, everybody benefits. Subscribers receive more relevant communications, leading to better engagement and fewer unsubscribes. Marketers gain valuable insights to create more personalized journeys and stronger customer relationships.

Preference centers also help build trust. Whether it’s managing communication preferences, content interests, or sensitive occasions, giving customers greater control shows that you’re listening and respecting their choices.

The most effective preference centers aren’t built around the data brands want to collect. They’re built around the experience customers want to have.

Claudia, the eco-conscious freelance designer, looks great on a slide deck, but she was built from assumptions and has never actually bought anything from you. Meanwhile, the customers who converted most often last quarter have something in common. They had a specific problem, at a specific moment, that made your solution the obvious answer. That’s buyability.

To find out what they have in common and connect with more potential customers facing similar problems, you need to dig deeper than a basic buyer persona. You need to build an ideal customer profile (ICP) that tells you what to look for. 

ICP vs. the buyer persona

There are a lot of people out there who use the terms ICP and buyer persona interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. 

• Ideal customer profile: Your ICP is the type of customer or company that gets the most value from what you sell, defined by real data from your existing customers
• Buyer persona: This is the individual themselves; their motivations, pain points, behaviors, and channel preferences

Both are valuable, but there’s an order to follow. Your ICP should always come first. If you’re building personas before you’ve identified the customers who are a good fit, you may be creating detailed profiles of the wrong people. 

Put your ICP to the test

If you want to know whether you have a buyer persona or an ICP, ask around. If marketing, sales, and product developers all give you different answers to “who is our ideal customer?”, chances are you don’t have a real ICP. 

Sellability vs. buyability

Most marketing starts with a product or service and asks a simple question: “Can we sell this?” There’s a product, they figure out who might want it, and then come up with ideas to convince people they should get it.

This approach focuses on the sellability of your products. It’s often based on ideas and not data — crafting messages around the person you hope will buy, not people who have bought. 

But buyability flips that. It starts with the buyer and marketers asking who already has the problem and what motivates them to buy. Understanding what makes someone ready to buy means digging deeper to identify what your ideal customers have in common. Once you understand them, finding more of them will be easier. 

This matters because customer behavior has changed a lot in the last few years. The majority of research is happening before they speak to sales or add anything to their shopping cart. By the time they’re ready to convert, they already have a brand in mind. 

Figuring out who those people are and showing up in their world means you’re reaching the right people earlier, before competitors do. But their world looks different depending on who they are, and that varies significantly by generation and market. 

Dotdigital’s Customer Trend Index can help build out a strong ICP with data on where different shoppers actually discover new brands: 

• In-store and real-world experiences are the top channel for 49% of global consumers 
• 39% of Gen Z have discovered new brands through influencer content
• 42% of Gen Z in Australia “always” or “often” use AI to discover new brands 
• In the UK, search engines are the favorite discovery channel for 41% of Baby Boomers
• 50% of American shoppers turn to family and friends for new brand recommendations

Start with customers you’ve already won

You don’t have to host a big workshop or turn to an expensive external consultant to identify your ideal customer profile. The answer is sitting in your existing customer base. 

Look at who you consider to be your best customers. Not the biggest group, but the most valuable. The customers who spend the most, shop with you frequently, engage with your marketing, attend your events, shout about you on social media, and refer you to their friends and family. 

When you figure out who they are, find out what they have in common. These may be a mixture of demographic and behavioral signals, like: 

• Age
• Location 
• Products purchased
• Ads interacted with 
• Purchase recency
• Email engagement 
• Industry 
• Preferred channel 
• Company size 
• Referral source 

But many ICPs fall short because they don’t consider behavioral data. If you’re only focused on who the customer is, not on what they experienced before becoming a customer, you’re only building half a profile. Knowing who your best customers are is just the start. 

To create an ICP that focuses your marketing strategy, you need to listen to and learn from your best customers. Your ICP should be a living document that changes as customer behavior shifts. 

Use customer data to build an even bigger picture

Bringing all your customer data together into a single source of truth helps you identify patterns in customer behavior you might otherwise miss. It’s just one of the many benefits of having a unified tech stack. 

These patterns are based on data collected throughout the customer experience, from email engagements to browsing behavior. Two sources in particular reveal the most about who your customers really are: 

Zero-party data and preference centers

There really is no better source to discover what customers want than the customers themselves. Preference centers give you direct insight into what your customers care about; that’s why they need to go beyond just collecting first names and birthday dates. Ask them to share the products or services they’re interested in, and which channels they want to hear from you on. 

Dotdigital’s Customer Trend Index reveals that email is the preferred channel for 45% of customers, while 40% of Gen Z love using apps for brand experiences. You’ll only know where on the spectrum your customers fall when you ask them. 

Web behavior and content engagement

This is where you’ll discover what people are reading, which pages they’re visiting, and what topics inspire them to click through in your emails. It also helps you see which stage of the customer journey they’re in. 

If they’re looking at pages about contract renewal, you can see what else they’re looking at, or what messages they’re engaging with to get a better understanding of motivations at that stage. Similarly, if someone repeatedly clicks through on links about your ‘Essential Oils’ collection, you’ll learn what products are hot topics for them.  

How to make sure your ICP is successful 

When you go through the effort of building a well-informed ICP, you don’t want to see its value degrade too soon. This often happens because ownership is ambiguous. Sales, product, and marketing all claim ownership, which ultimately results in no one overseeing its maintenance. 

When multiple groups don’t agree on who the ideal customer is, every handoff in the funnel introduces friction. Marketing generates leads that sales doesn’t want. Sales chase accounts that marketing never targeted. And the ICP document gets updated once and then sits untouched.

The only way around this is greater cross-team collaboration with regular check-ins with the ICP as customer behavior changes. Thankfully, a unified customer data platform makes it easy for all teams across your business to feed valuable customer insights into a single source. This makes sure all teams are adequately represented as your ICP develops. 

Know your customers, grow your marketing

For marketers, the need for an ICP has never been greater. Only 15% of customers think the marketing they get is “very relevant” to them. They need personalized experiences that speak to their needs and wants in the moment. But you can’t personalize to people you don’t know, and you can’t really know your customers based on a buyer persona that isn’t grounded in real customer behavior. 

Taking the time to build your initial ICP arms you with a better understanding of your customers. You’ll be able to target similar audiences more efficiently by knowing which discovery channels they use, how often they engage with their favorite brands, and which channels they use to convert. 

To get started, read Dotdigital’s Customer Trend Index to discover where your customers are, what they want, and how they like to be reached. 

Customer segmentation in retail has changed in recent years. Where it once meant grouping customers into broad demographic buckets like “female, 18–25,” it’s now far more dynamic, shaped by things like behavior, intent, and real-time signals.

That shift reflects a wider change in marketing. Generic, one-size-fits-all campaigns are being replaced by more personalized experiences that speak to individual needs and behaviors. Research from McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, setting a clear benchmark for how brands need to show up.

But personalization only works when you’ve got clear customer segments to work from. It helps retailers group audiences in meaningful ways so they can prioritize high-value customers, re-engage lapsed buyers, and focus spend where it actually drives growth.

Customer data platforms (CDPs) have made this easier by bringing data together in one place, making it usable in real time, and simplifying the creation of accurate, useful customer segments. So, segmentation has gone from a nice-to-have optimization to something that directly supports growth across acquisition, retention, and loyalty.

So, we know that segmenting customers is important. Let’s take a look at real-world examples of retailers who used smart segmentation strategies to deliver better results.

A real-world example of successful segmentation: Mountain Khakis

What needed solving

Heading into Black Friday, Mountain Khakis needed to strike a balance between driving strong sales and clearing excess inventory without relying on broad discounts that could dilute brand value.

The segmentation strategy behind the campaign

Mountain Khakis segmented their database by customer value, gender, and purchase recency. This allowed them to deliver personalized Black Friday marketing that matched each segment’s likelihood of converting. By tailoring both creative and offer strength to each segment’s characteristics, Mountain Khakis ensured their most valuable customers felt recognized while efficiently allocating promotional budget across the database.

Results

• 49% year-over-year increase in revenue during Black Friday
• 47% increase in total customers transacting compared to the previous year

Read more: How Mountain Khakis turned $600,000 (AUD) of excess inventory into a 150% revenue increase

Step-by-step guide to segmenting customers

Before you build your targeted marketing campaigns, you first need to segment your data. Here’s how to do it. 

Step 1: Define your objectives

Start with what you’re trying to achieve, because that will shape everything else. If retention is your focus, you’ll want to look at things like purchase recency and engagement patterns. If acquisition is the priority, focus on your best existing customers and use those traits to build lookalike audiences.

Step 2: Audit available data

Take stock of the data you already collect and where it lives. This could include:

• Point-of-sale systems
• Ecommerce platforms
• Email service providers
• Loyalty programs
• Customer service systems
• Social media

Identify gaps in your data collection and prioritize which additional data points would most support your objectives.

Step 3: Unify your customer data

This is where many retailers run into challenges. When customer data is spread across disconnected systems, it’s hard to build segments that reflect the full customer relationship. For example, someone who shops both in-store and online may appear as two separate profiles rather than a single connected view.

CDPs help solve this by bringing everything together into a single unified customer profile. They combine touchpoints across channels and keep profiles up to date as customers interact with your brand. Without that unified view, segmentation is limited to whatever sits within individual systems, rather than the full picture of the customer.

Step 4: Identify initial segments

This is where the fun starts. You can start with segments that balance business impact with how easy they are to activate, especially if time or resources are limited.

Here are some common starting points:

Value-based segments

• High lifetime value customers (top 10-20% of spending)
• High potential customers (frequent engagement, growing spend)
• At-risk high-value customers (historically valuable but declining activity)

Behavioral segments

• Recent purchasers (bought within 30-60 days)
• Lapsed customers (previously active but no purchase in 6-12 months)
• Browser non-buyers (regular site visits, no conversions)
• Category enthusiasts (repeated purchases in specific product categories)

Lifecycle segments

• New customers (first purchase within 90 days)
• Developing customers (2-3 purchases, establishing patterns)
• Loyal customers (consistent repeat purchase behavior)
• Dormant customers (no activity in 12+ months)

Don’t try to build every possible segment at once. Choose 5-8 segments that support your objectives and have sufficient size to justify targeted campaigns. You can always expand your segments later.

Step 5: Build your segments

Use your CDP to define clear criteria for each segment. The more specific you are, the more reliable your targeting will be.

For example:

• Lapsed customers: no purchase in 180 days and at least 2 previous purchases
• High value customers: top 20% of lifetime spend or average order value above $X
• Category enthusiasts: 3+ purchases in a single category, or that category makes up more than 60% of their total spend

Step 6: Develop your strategies and activate

For each segment,  decide how you’re going to speak to them. That includes your messaging, positioning, and the channels you’ll use. This should all come back to the data you’ve used to define the segment in the first place.

 Once you’ve got your strategy in place, it’s time to activate it. Most CDPs connect directly with your marketing tools, so you can push segments into campaigns without a lot of manual effort. It’s also worth setting up automated segment updates so customers move between segments as their behavior changes, without manual updates. 

Remember, your segments shouldn’t stand still. They should evolve with your business. For example: 

• Seasonal brands might add weather-based segments
• Retailers expanding into new categories may introduce product affinity segments
• Growing businesses often add geographic segments as they enter new markets

What do I need to get started with customer segmentation?

Many retailers understand why segmentation matters, but sometimes struggle to actually do it. In most cases, it comes down to data and infrastructure. If your data isn’t connected or usable, it’s hard to put segmentation into practice effectively.

The data challenge: unified customer profiles

One of the biggest challenges with segmentation is still fragmented customer data. In most retail organizations, customer information lives across multiple disconnected systems:

• Your POS system knows what customers bought in-store
• Your ecommerce platform knows their online browsing and purchase behavior
• Your email system tracks opens and clicks
• Your loyalty program holds a points balance and a tier status
• Your customer service platform logs support interactions

Each system holds valuable information, but none of them gives you the complete picture. Without unified customer profiles, segmentation ends up based on fragments rather than the whole relationship. You might identify someone as a “lapsed online customer” while missing that they’ve been actively shopping in-store. Or, a website visitor might be treated as a “new customer” even though they’ve been shopping with you across different channels for years.

Customer data platforms can help solve this. They pull data from different systems, match records using identifiers like email addresses, phone numbers, loyalty IDs, and device data, and continuously update each profile as new interactions happen.

Final thoughts

Customer segmentation has moved from a “nice to have” to a core part of retail marketing.

Across the examples in this guide, the pattern is consistent: better segmentation leads to better performance, stronger customer value, and more efficient marketing.

If you’re looking to move beyond broad demographic segments and one-size-fits-all campaigns, the focus is:

• Start by getting your data in one place
• Build a small number of high-impact segments tied to your goals
• Test what resonates, and refine as you go

 Ready to get started with customer segmentation? Talk to Lexer today

Kat is Lexer’s resident Marketing Manager, obsessed with helping retail and ecommerce brands across AUS and the US hit their biggest growth goals. She’s all about explaining how to turn messy customer data into clean, measurable strategies that actually move the needle. You’ll find her writing on everything from using AI to grow your business to boosting LTV without breaking the bank.

About Lexer

Lexer is a customer data platform built for retail and ecommerce brands. It consolidates customer data from point-of-sale, ecommerce, email, loyalty, and other systems into a single unified profile per customer, then makes that data actionable through segmentation and direct integration with marketing execution tools. Retail and ecommerce teams use Lexer to understand who their best customers are, identify who’s at risk of lapsing, and activate both groups successfully.

Marketers need data that‘s complete, current, and immediately usable. When it’s fragmented, decisions slow down for your marketing team and for your business as a whole. Opportunities pass by, results plateau, and manual data exports create more chaos than clarity.

And when you could outperform your peers by 26% using real-time data, a single, connected data stream is the difference between reacting and staying ahead. It gives marketing, tech, and operations teams a shared, live view of every customer, ready to power the right message at the right time.

Dotdigital connects with your data warehouse so you can quickly turn insight into action. By syncing with platforms like Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks, you can start building campaigns using real-time data, so every message lands at the right moment, feels genuinely relevant, and doesn’t require a heavy lift from you or your team.

Connecting your data warehouse to your marketing channels

Data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery and Databricks give businesses a secure, unified place to store and govern their data. So, when we launched integrations with these platforms, it was a chance to bring marketers the seamless data flow to turn data into unforgettable customer experiences. Combined with Dotdigital, your data stops sitting in storage and starts driving meaningful moments across channels like:

• Email
• SMS
• WhatsApp
• Web
• Push
• Social 

Our integrations leave no gap between knowing and doing. Information in your data warehouse flows straight into Dotdigital to be used in your campaigns, while engagement results from Dotdigital return to your warehouse for deeper insight. Your data keeps moving, your marketing keeps learning, and nothing goes stale.

Reducing friction between marketing and tech teams

Busy marketing teams can’t wait three days for the latest results to be downloaded, then uploaded to your email automation platform. When data feeds directly into Dotdigital, you can:

• Adjust journeys mid‑flow
• Launch segments in minutes
• Deliver hyper‑relevant content based on the latest customer behaviors

At the same time, data and tech teams need precision and control. These integrations help you:

• Meet governance standards
• Keep sensitive data securely housed
• Remove duplicate storage and risky sharing practices

When everyone works from the same single data source, friction between teams disappears. Plans move faster, creativity gets sharper, and everyone’s working toward the same goal with the same information.

The business impact of connected data

Connected data makes your marketing work better:

• Campaigns land because they’re timed and relevant
• Teams stop wasting hours on avoidable data exchanges
• Compliance becomes simpler because the governance sits inside the integration

As marketing execution speeds up, you see a direct impact with quicker campaign launches, higher conversion rates, and engagement that doesn’t plateau six weeks later. 

A customer data platform (CDP) trusted by marketers

One more thing before we share what connected data looks like in action: Dotdigital was recently named a G2 Leader for Customer Data Platforms (CDP) in the Summer 2026 rankings. Every ranking is based on verified reviews from real customers, so you know you’re in good hands.

What this looks like in action

When Dotdigital connects with data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks, it starts to change how everyday marketing gets done. With data syncing smoothly in the background, teams can:

Capitalize on sudden spikes in interest

Your data warehouse shows an unexpected surge in sales for a product. Dotdigital then pinpoints customers who’ve shown interest and sends timely promotions without waiting for a data upload.

Personalize product recommendation journeys

Your data warehouse reveals the product categories customers explore most. Dotdigital turns that insight into personalized emails, push messages, and social ads with product recommendations based on what’s trending.

Deliver back‑in‑stock and new‑arrival alerts

When product availability changes in your data warehouse, whether an out‑of‑stock favorite is replenished or a new item lands, Dotdigital instantly sends a customer a personalized alert.

Prevent customer churn in real time

When your data warehouse indicates a premium subscriber is overdue for a repeat purchase, Dotdigital enrolls them into an automated cross-channel retention sequence. Once they buy, that transaction flows back into your data warehouse, closing the loop and keeping their profile up to date. 

Ready to push, pull, and personalize?

Dotdigital’s data warehouse integrations help you avoid compromises, like finding clunky workarounds or having to duplicate data at the expense of accuracy. It’s built for marketers and data teams alike. With one source of truth, you’ll have endless opportunities to turn data into meaningful moments for your customers.

We’ve launched AI that learns your brand voice, two-way SMS, and a wave of new and improved integrations that mean less time wrestling with data and more time using it. Here’s everything that’s new.

Create content in your own brand voice

AI is an amazing tool helping marketers all over the world work smarter and faster, but AI-generated copy is all starting to sound a bit… samey. You don’t want to sound like every other brand, and we don’t either.

Dotdigital’s AI learns exactly how your brand sounds. Upload your guidelines, share some examples of your favorite content, or just answer a few questions about your writing style, and it will start writing (and checking) your campaigns in your voice, not a generic one.

You can share dos and don’ts, flag words you’d never use, and point to real examples of your brand at its best. The more you give it, the better it gets. And from there, the AI tool picks up on your industry, identity, tone, and the kind of language your audience expects. Test and refine the output as you go to make sure every word sounds like you.

For marketers using Dotdigital, this means faster campaign creation, less time tweaking, and content that sounds authentically you.

Plug in Dotdigital to your favorite AI tools

If you’re already using ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI tool, you can now connect it directly to your Dotdigital account to get faster, conversational insights. It works through something called a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.

An MCP server is a standardized way to let AI tools talk to platforms like Dotdigital. Setup depends on your AI tool of choice, but can be as easy as copying and pasting a URL, ID, and secret key from your Dotdigital account. Check out our simple setup guide here.

Once connected, you can ask your AI tool real questions about your data, and even ask it to take action, like creating marketing lists and adding contacts to lists. Put it to work with prompts like these:

• “Show me our email open rates for the past 3 months, broken down by week.”
• “Show all contacts tagged as VIP in Dotdigital.”
• “Create a new list called ‘Event Attendees – Q4’ and add all contacts who filled out our October survey.”
• “Show average Net Promoter Score from last month’s responses.”
• “How does our open rate compare to the industry average in retail?”

Plus, you’ll soon be able to use it to build new email templates and much more using insights from your account. It’s a faster, more conversational way to get more out of your data.

Have real conversations with two-way SMS

SMS is one of the best-performing channels for marketers. And it’s now two-way. You can now view and reply to SMS responses directly inside Dotdigital, in the same place you already manage your WhatsApp and chat conversations.

When a customer replies to a campaign, you can see what they’re responding to and act fast and with context. Customizable quick replies and keywords like “STOP” are filtered out, so your team only sees active, engaged conversations.

Use two-way SMS for lead qualification, appointment confirmation, feedback collection, product recommendations — basically any moment where you want a speedy response from an engaged customer. No more flipping between tools and channels to talk directly to your customers.

Easier WhatsApp subscription management

You can now manage WhatsApp opt-ins using our API, as well as within the platform, so you can track consent consistently across email, SMS, and WhatsApp. This is especially useful if you’re working with custom integrations or third-party data flows.

Pull more data out of Dotdigital with fewer API calls

The new Events API is for teams that pull large volumes of data from Dotdigital. Now you can pull more data in a single API call. Think: opens, clicks, page views, bounces and unsubscribes. You get more up-to-date data, fewer headaches, and a cleaner connection to whichever CRM, CDP, or analytics platform you’re using.

Bring your whole data stack together

If your team runs on Databricks, Snowflake, or BigQuery,  you can now sync order, contact and product data into Dotdigital. Integrating your marketing data with your data warehouse lets you build on your single source of truth, so data from other tools and platforms you’ve connected to it can flow straight into Dotdigital, with no custom pipelines needed. 

And getting data out has gotten more powerful, too. We’ve expanded our data firehose to push more insights, including contact updates, consent changes, and preference updates automatically into your tech stack. For teams using both firehose and data warehouses, a full two-way sync is possible.

Get deeper data syncs with updated HubSpot CRM integration

The Dotdigital and HubSpot integration has had a serious upgrade. You can sync lists, email and SMS opt-ins, custom properties (like deal value and industry), plus marketing events, form submissions, and custom events as usable data in Dotdigital.

In practice, these upgrades look a little like this: two contacts sign up for your webinar. One attends, one doesn’t. This data syncs from HubSpot to Dotdigital to trigger the relevant follow-up campaign — no workarounds and no need for third-party tools to connect your CRM and marketing automation platform. 

Target subscribers at exactly the right moment with Recharge

If you’re a subscription-based business, customer subscription data is some of the most powerful insight you can act on, and now it’s in Dotdigital. Our new Recharge integration syncs subscription data into your Dotidigital account, so you always know where a customer is in their subscription journey, whether they’ve hit pause, are due for renewal, or are ready to upgrade. That context turns into campaigns that land at exactly the right moment.

Surface customer reviews and UGC inside your emails 

Two new integrations with BazaarVoice and Judge.me make it easier to bring social proof and user-generated content (UGC) into your campaigns. With new app blocks now available for the popular review platforms, you can pull star ratings and reviews directly into your email campaigns. Convince any undecided shoppers to convert with your top five-star ratings. 

Website personalization that stays fresh

Personalization is only as good as the data behind it. Our latest update makes it easier to keep your data current. Now, you can drag-and-drop any Dotdigital audience and serve hyper-personalized web and email experiences based on real behavior and insight data like recent purchases, eRFM scores, and channel preferences. Personalization should move as fast as your customers, so as soon as their behavior changes, their experience refreshes, too. 

Available as a private preview for Dotdigital customers.

Launch and test popups without a developer

You can now launch, test, and disable popup campaigns on any web page instantly and without involving a developer. You control where the pop-up appears and preview it before go-live, so you can fine-tune the experience and drive more conversions.

That’s a wrap

Every update in this release is built to give you the tools to move faster, make smarter decisions, and create customer experiences that actually resonate. Whether that’s AI that learns your brand voice, data that flows freely across your stack, or channels where you can have real conversations — it all adds up to giving you more control, context, and ways to act on what you know. 

Paid channels are getting more expensive, with customer acquisition costs jumping 40–60% between 2023 and 2025. Organic reach can vanish overnight thanks to algorithm changes, and tighter privacy rules make tracking and attribution harder than ever.

All of this points to one thing: the growing importance of owning your audience.

What is an ‘owned audience’?

When we say ‘owned audience,’ we mean the people whose contact details you actually hold yourself, rather than relying on a third-party platform like Meta or Google to give you access (and charge you for it).

Owned channels like email and mobile give you direct access to people who’ve chosen to hear from your brand. These people give you their contact details, such as email and phone number. That connection brings stability, visibility, and long-term value – things rented channels can’t match.

At Dotdigital, we really believe that focusing on owned channels is where marketers can benefit the most. Our recent acquisition of Alia Software reflects that focus, responding to the challenges marketers face every day.

Milan Patel, CEO of Dotdigital, explains:
“Over the past few years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with CMOs and ecommerce leaders and a consistent challenge keeps coming up. Paid marketing channels are becoming harder to control, more expensive to scale, and are delivering less predictable returns.”

Alia helps ecommerce brands capture onsite visitors with sophisticated pop-ups. Beautifully designed pop-ups, AI-powered no-code A/B testing, and smart triggers all work together to enhance the customer experience and gather valuable contact info, often achieving a 15%+ opt-in rate.

Shaan Arora, CEO of Alia, says:
“Capturing the earliest moments of the customer journey helps brands improve conversions and build richer relationships.”

The hidden costs of relying on other channels

The drawbacks of social media marketing:

• Algorithm guesswork: social media platforms don’t publish their algorithms, or when they’ll change, so what works one day can flop the next. The mystery around these algorithms can keep you guessing and feeling obliged to watch every one of Adam Mosseri’s Instagram stories, or following a plethora of LinkedIn ‘experts’ to try and keep up.
• Account instability: platforms can suspend or ban accounts with little notice. Appeals are frustrating and not guaranteed, and getting support from Meta Business Suite is often a headache. Anyone who’s been there knows the struggle.
• Limited data ownership: social platforms collect tons of insights about your audience, but that data stays with them. If you switch tools or pivot your strategy, those valuable insights don’t follow.

The drawbacks of paid ads:

• Volatile costs: competition, bidding, seasonal trends, and market conditions all affect how much you pay.
• Unpredictable outcomes: sudden rule changes or platform updates can drastically alter campaign performance.
• Short-term focus: paid campaigns are great for immediate acquisition, but they don’t build long-term customer relationships on their own.

The drawbacks of display ads:

• Engagement can be low: audiences often scroll past ads, and conversions aren’t guaranteed.
• ROI can decline: relying solely on paid channels risks high costs and diminishing returns over time.
• Great for quick wins, not long-term growth: PPC and paid search get your brand in front of people ready to buy, while social ads help more people discover you. They’re powerful for results today, but they can’t replace the foundation you can build with owned channels.

Paid channels are an important part of a modern marketing mix, but they work best when paired with a foundation of owned channels that build lasting relationships.

How email and mobile marketing give you control of your audience

Owning your audience means having direct permission to communicate with customers through channels you control. Email and mobile marketing are two of the clearest examples of owned channels. When someone shares their email address or phone number with your brand, they are choosing to hear from you.

You can communicate with your audience directly. That can be through newsletters, promotional emails, loyalty updates, event invites, fundraising updates, and so on. These channels give you much greater control over delivery, timing, and messaging as you can personalize for each recipient.

The practical benefits of owned channels:

• Full control over delivery and timing: schedule sends or trigger campaigns based on real customer behavior.
• Personalize at scale: use real customer data about preferences and actions, rather than relying on a third-party platform’s categories.
• Predictable rules: unlike social platforms where algorithms can change overnight, updates are largely published in advance, so you can adapt and optimize.
• Compounding relationships: the more you learn about your audience, the better your campaigns get, and engagement grows over time.

Why first-party and zero-party data matter

Owning your audience isn’t just about having a subscriber list. You also get to own the customer data that comes with an email address, building up a clear picture of each contact over time as you record each individual’s interactions with your content with a mixture of zero and first party data.

First-party and zero-party data explained

• First-party data is data you collect via your own channels, such as purchase history, email engagement (like clicks), website behaviour, and app interactions.
• Zero-party data is information your customers proactively choose to share with you when you ask for it. This includes their name, preferences, interests, communication choices, and product needs.

Benefits of owned data

Together, these let you build experiences that feel genuinely personal and relevant. Better segmentation, more relevant messaging, campaigns that reach people through the channels they actually prefer. And crucially, the data belongs to you, regardless of how the advertising landscape evolves.

How to grow your email and mobile audience

Building an engaged and loyal subscriber base takes time, but there are smart ways to make sure you’re attracting the right subscribers and setting up the relationship for long-term success.

Practical ways to grow your owned audience

• Offer real value upfront: exclusive content, early access, or loyalty perks give people a genuine reason to subscribe.
• Make it easy to subscribe everywhere: add clear sign-up moments via pop-ups, website forms, checkout flows, apps, and social channels.
• Use social to feed your owned channels: encourage existing followers to join your email or mobile lists. This boosts reach and protects your audience if a platform changes or disappears.
• Launch a referral program: subscribers who join through a trusted recommendation come in with built-in trust.
• Start strong with a welcome series: set expectations, deliver value early, and improve long-term retention.
• Encourage sharing: include a “forward to a friend” link in emails and invite your audience to create user-generated content (UGC) on their own channels that will boost reach and grow your list organically.

Over time, these strategies help turn anonymous visitors into known contacts who have chosen to build a relationship with your brand.

Take control of your audience and future-proof your marketing

Owning your audience does not mean abandoning paid search, social media, SEO, or influencer marketing. These channels still play an important role in helping brands reach new audiences and build awareness.

The shift is about where the weight sits. When email and mobile marketing form your foundation, everything else becomes a funnel that feeds into it. Paid campaigns drive traffic, social builds awareness, search supports discovery, and the long-term relationship happens in channels you own and control.

On top of that, owned channels are more predictable and cost-effective: you don’t have to worry about sudden algorithm changes or bidding wars, and the audience you build is yours to engage anytime.

If you’re looking for greater consistency, stronger customer relationships, and more predictable results, building your owned audience is the smartest investment you can make.

As performance marketing costs continue to rise and new privacy laws make tracking more limited, in some areas, we also find ourselves dealing with platform algorithms that shift without warning.

This means marketing teams are under pressure to deliver growth while having less visibility and control over the levers they’re pulling.

That’s why we’re delighted to announce we’ve acquired Alia Software Inc., an AI-powered, on-site conversion and list-growth platform, built exclusively for merchants on Shopify.

This isn’t just an acquisition. It’s a deliberate step toward helping marketers strengthen organic growth strategies and scale their owned data systems, at a time when that capability is becoming a competitive necessity.

The challenge of turning anonymous traffic into owned opportunities

Brands are still investing heavily to drive up traffic, but all too often that traffic remains anonymous.

If a visitor leaves without subscribing, identifying themselves, or sharing preferences, the brand has paid for a moment of attention, without yielding any tangible results. Making the ability to convert anonymous visitors into known, consented contacts one of the most powerful growth tactics available.

Alia enables brands to use AI-driven pop-ups and interactive experiences that are intelligently timed, context-aware, and brand-aligned. Instead of generic overlays, merchants can optimize when and how visitors are engaged, increasing subscriber conversion and enhancing the customer experience. And most importantly, Alia captures first and zero-party data at the earliest stage of the customer journey. That data becomes the foundation for smarter email, SMS, and cross-channel engagement within Dotdigital’s CXDP.

Owned data is not optional

As acquisition costs rise and privacy standards evolve, brands are realising something fundamental: You don’t own paid channels and you can’t control platform algorithms.
But you can control your owned data ecosystem.

By integrating Alia’s capabilities into Dotdigital’s CXDP ecosystem, we’re strengthening our ability to help marketers:

• Engage visitors at the earliest possible moment
• Grow high-quality email and SMS audiences faster
• Capture richer zero-party data to power deeper personalisation
• Improve marketing ROI through better targeting and automation
• Build a scalable owned data strategy within the Shopify universe

Alia already supports more than 2,700 merchants and has built a strong reputation within Shopify. Bringing that expertise into Dotdigital accelerates the Dotdigital roadmap and helps to strengthen our customers ecommerce success.

The acquisition advantage

This move is designed to help marketers rebalance their growth strategies by focusing on owned channels and data quality.

Our vision has always been to build an end-to-end customer experience and data platform that supports intelligent, personalized marketing at scale. Strengthening on-site conversion and zero-party data capture is a natural evolution for the Dotdigital group.

I’m looking forward to welcoming Shaan, Cory, Bill, Jake, and the entire Alia team to Dotdigital as we continue building a platform designed for the realities marketers face today.

Milan Patel
CEO, Dotdigital

In this post, we’ll help you assess whether opt-out emails are still working for your audience, and what to do next if they are not.

Originally popularised by online florist Bloom & Wild in 2019, opt-out campaigns were widely praised as a thoughtful response to potentially sensitive occasions. They offered customers control and showed emotional awareness at a time when inbox marketing often felt one-size-fits-all.

Several years on, opt-out campaigns are now a near-standard fixture in inboxes. Holiday and occasion marketing continues to drive strong engagement, and many brands plan campaigns well in advance. For occasions like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, there’s a whole other timing element to contend with: opt-out email campaigns.

The challenge is that when every brand adopts the same approach, the gesture can lose its impact. What once felt personal can begin to feel repetitive, and even performative.

What is an opt-out email campaign?

An opt-out campaign is an email sent ahead of a potentially sensitive occasion that allows recipients to opt out of future marketing related to that day. Most commonly, these campaigns focus on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, though Valentine’s Day opt-outs are increasingly common.

From a best practice perspective, this aligns well with preference-based marketing. Encouraging customers to share their communication preferences enables more relevant and respectful messaging.

An opt-out email campaign is typically simple in design, uses an empathetic and kind message, and includes a clear CTA that allows readers to opt out of future sends related to the occasion.

However, while the intention is positive, the sheer volume of these emails means they can unintentionally draw attention to the very occasion a customer may be trying to avoid. In some cases, they act as repeated reminders rather than a single moment of choice.

Have opt-out emails become overkill?

We first asked our LinkedIn audience for their views on opt-out campaigns in 2022, with opinions evenly split. This year, we asked again, and 61% of people voted that these campaigns are overdone. So it seems like these campaigns are getting more prevalent, and people are getting frustrated.

Beyond sentiment, timing has become a significant issue. As marketing calendars expand, opt-out campaigns can arrive weeks or even months before the relevant date.

In theory, customers who find an occasion difficult can simply step away from promotional emails closer to the time. In practice, early opt-out campaigns make that harder. Instead of avoiding reminders, customers may receive daily prompts about a sensitive occasion long before they are prepared for it.

This year, the first Mother’s Day opt-out email I received arrived more than a month before the day itself. It was unexpected, and I feel unnecessary to be sent so early on, and it set the tone for weeks of similar messages to follow.

7 ways to deliver sensitive opt-out marketing

You want to deliver relevant, personalized campaigns while still being emotionally sensitive to your audience. At the same time, many customers are clearly fatigued by opt-out emails.

The solution is not to abandon empathy, but to apply it more thoughtfully. Below are seven best practices for creating effective and empathetic opt-out marketing.

Consider whether an opt-out campaign is necessary

Before sending an opt-out email campaign, consider how much communication you are actually planning around the occasion.

If you are only sending one promotional email, an opt-out campaign may be unnecessary and may simply add to inbox noise. Opt-out emails are most valuable when customers are likely to receive multiple reminders from your brand across a short period.

Use your preference centre year-round

One of the most effective alternatives to repeated opt-out campaigns is a well-designed preference centre.

By including options for sensitive occasions as part of your standard preference management, you allow customers to make these choices on their own terms. For many people, selecting preferences during signup or via an account area feels far less emotionally charged than receiving a standalone opt-out email later.

Preference centres mean you can store these preferences permanently and apply them automatically across campaigns, reducing the need for repeated opt-out messaging year after year.

Bloom & Wild and Hotel Chocolat provide strong examples of how preference centres can be used to manage sensitive communications and topics clearly and respectfully.

How your preference center can boost deliverability

Giving your audience the chance to opt out of campaigns around certain occasions can also improve your email deliverability. When subscribers repeatedly get email campaigns they don’t find relevant, they’re more likely to mark your email as spam.

By giving your audience a clear place to let you know exactly what they do and don’t want to hear about, you’re protecting yourself from unnecessary unsubscribes and even spam complaints.

Remember these preferences

Many opt-out email campaigns link only to a single opt-out button rather than a full preference centre.

In theory, this should still capture a customer’s choice. In practice, many people find themselves opting out of the same brands year after year, suggesting those preferences are not always stored or reused effectively.

This creates unnecessary effort for your customers and introduces friction that you can easily avoid. Linking opt-out campaigns to a preference centre allows customers to manage all sensitive occasions in one place, one time, and ensures brands retain and respect those choices long term.

Include the opt-out in a broader email campaign

If you do choose to send opt-out emails, consider making them a secondary element within another email rather than the sole purpose of the message.

Emails entirely focused on opting out can feel heavier than necessary, particularly when their design closely mirrors the promotional campaigns that follow. A small block or banner can provide the same control without making the email itself emotionally charged.

Use banners thoughtfully

This approach works particularly well when integrated into broader campaigns. This example from Harvey Nichols shows how a discreet Mother’s Day opt-out banner can sit within a regular email.

The opt-out option is clearly available, but it is not the central message. This strikes a balance between visibility and restraint.

Use segmentation to deliver relevant email campaigns

For those who do opt out, use segmentation to send an alternative campaign on the day itself, with no mention of the occasion at all. Segmentation means you can make sure that any opted-out customers get a positive and relevant email campaign on the day in question and aren’t excluded.

Create inclusive campaigns for sensitive occasions

Sensitivity should not stop once an opt-out option is offered. When creating campaigns for these occasions, inclusive language can make a meaningful difference. References to mother figures, step-parents, grandparents, chosen family, or those who fill a parental role help soften the impact without detracting from the message for those without sensitivities around the day.

It is also important to remember that email is only one touchpoint. Customers cannot opt out of social media, television advertising, or in-store messaging, and not everyone who finds an occasion difficult will have opted out.

This creates an opportunity for email marketing to act as a safe space within a broader commercial environment.

A strong example comes from cookware brand Our Place, which handled Father’s Day with honesty and empathy. The campaign acknowledged the complexity of the day and included inclusive copy aimed at those who may not celebrate in traditional ways. I wouldn’t expect a huge Father’s Day focus from a cookware brand, but the leaning into the occasion and the many ways it can look for different people added a real layer of intention and stops the campaign from feeling like using a familial holiday for commercial gain.

The next stage of empathetic marketing

Seasonal and Hallmark holidays remain important commercial moments, but they are also opportunities for your brand to demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence.

With a bit of forward planning and a considerate preference center, you can deliver sensitive campaigns (or not) without asking your customers each year. Delivering a positive experience and making your customers feel cared for has never been more important. Luckily, we do have the tools to do just that.

By moving beyond performative opt-outs and investing in smarter preference-led marketing, brands can create experiences that feel genuinely respectful and customer-first. With the right tools in place, it is entirely possible to balance commercial goals with care and consideration.

For over 70 years, Max Spielmann has been helping UK customers turn their memories into something they can hold. As part of the Timpson Group, Max Spielmann specializes in photo printing, personalized gifts, and same-day services across stores in supermarkets and high streets nationwide.

When Alannah Sneyd joined as Digital Marketing Manager in August 2024, she knew there was work to do.

The challenges were clear

Legacy database dragging performance down

Hundreds of thousands of inactive contacts from in-store photo kiosks were inflating email send volumes but contributing almost nothing to engagement or revenue.

Batch-and-blast approach

Segmentation was based solely on open rates (increasingly unreliable), with a “sales are down, let’s send another email” mentality rather than strategic engagement.

Generic automations with zero personalization

Browse abandonment didn’t show customers the products they’d viewed. Welcome emails didn’t check if someone had already purchased before asking for reviews.

No dedicated owner

Email had been managed as an afterthought rather than a strategic channel.

For a small team managing marketing across multiple Timpson Group brands, it was time for a change.

Rebuilding email from the ground up

Working closely with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager, Alannah took a phased approach to transforming Max Spielmann’s email program.

Phase 1: Getting the data right

The first priority was audience quality. Alannah discovered that engagement from contacts acquired through in-store photo kiosks was dramatically lower than those who signed up via the website.

The solution:

• Introduced double opt-in for all new kiosk sign-ups to ensure quality over quantity
• Rebuilt segments based on click behavior, browsing activity, and recency – not just opens
• Removed long-term inactive kiosk customers, reducing average newsletter sends from 323,000 to 63,000

“People get nervous about reducing volume, but with the right insights in place, testing it on a handful of newsletters is often enough to show the impact,” Alannah notes.

Phase 2: Automation with actual intelligence

Next came a complete overhaul of Max Spielmann’s automations.
Key improvements:

Browse abandonment that actually works

Customers now see the exact products they browsed, not generic category links.

Extended abandonment series

A follow-up email added to the browse abandonment journey.

Welcome series with logic

Added purchase checks so customers who’d already bought didn’t get irrelevant “leave a review” emails, and those who didn’t purchase received a reminder to use their offer.

“It was a mix of everything – technical setup, design refresh, messaging, and adding sophisticated rules that just weren’t there before,” Alannah explains.

The team also tested continuously throughout the year to understand what resonated before peak season.

Phase 3: Smarter seasonal strategy

With cleaner data and better automations in place, Max Spielmann approached peak season differently – sending more strategically while actually reducing overall volume.

“Even with additional sends during peak, volume was down year on year,” Alannah says. “It’s about sending to the right people, not just the most people.”

For Christmas (when December 23rd is consistently their biggest day), the team pulled back on discounting and focused on convenience messaging for last-minute shoppers.

Working with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager made the transformation possible, Alannah says “with our Customer Success Manager’s support, we’ve been able to achieve things that would normally require a much bigger team or agency support. The relationship is more like a consultant-client dynamic – I come with challenges, and he gives me the blueprint to execute.”

With our Customer Success Manager’s support, we’ve been able to achieve things that would normally require a much bigger team or agency support. The relationship is more like a consultant-client dynamic – I come with challenges, and he gives me the blueprint to execute.

Alannah Sneyd
Digital Marketing Manager

The numbers tell the story

Peak period 2025:

• Total email revenue increased 41% YoY
• Email sends reduced 63% YoY
• Open rates increased from 35% to 42%
• Click-through rate improved from 1.58% to 3.17%

Automation performance:

• Revenue up 78% YoY
• Automations now account for 38% of total email revenue, up from 30%
• Conversion rate increased from 17% to 37%

Impact beyond the metrics

The efficiency story resonated with leadership too. “Senior people in the business like efficiency. The fact the results have been driven from fewer sends – and we didn’t have to spend more – that went down really well. Especially when other channels are getting more expensive year on year, having email working better is just a good story internally.”

Looking ahead

With solid foundations in place, Alannah is eyeing bigger opportunities:

Unlocking in-store data

“We could almost replicate all the campaigns we’ve got just around those kiosk machines if we sorted out the data.”

Multi-channel expansion

SMS and WhatsApp remain untapped. “For customers using their phone to get photos onto the kiosk, it makes sense to explore.”

“Dotdigital has been really good for us,” Alannah notes. “The drag-and-drop builder means I can do things myself. The automation builder with visual notes means I can document why I built things a certain way. For a generalist marketer managing multiple brands, that matters.”