Miami-dwelling Joe likes the colorful Bermuda shorts and green boat shoes he found on your website. But when he gets the email promotion featuring the black winter jacket? Not so much.

Today’s consumers expect relevant communication from retailers, and in this example, Joe’s expectations were not met. It’s also the kind of example that’s been used to knock batch-and-blast emails as an ineffective strategy. But what if you could still batch-and-blast – and personalize?

With segmentation tools, recommendation engines, and easy-to-use lifecycle messaging automation, you can actually make batch-and-blast emails relevant to the individual consumer. Let’s explore how you can use these tools to revive your batch-and-blast messaging.

Segmentation Tools

Tools for segmentation are now built into most marketing automation platforms and make audience segmentation easier than ever. They also put the data, such as web browsing, email and purchase activity along with information provided by the consumer, in the hands of the actual marketer, not the IT department. This immediate access to data can be used to seriously enhance the overall user experience in a variety of ways. For instance, location data can be used to insert local store information into emails or target customers in the area when a new store is opening.

Product Recommendations

Once you’ve gathered segmentation data, you can use it to determine which products to display to the individual user. Using product recommendations based on subscriber data as secondary content in batch-and-blast emails increases the relevance of your message, and it can all be done without developing multiple variations of the message. You can use them to recommend similar products, upsell products, suggest accessories, or increase average order value among other things.

Lifecycle Messages

Lifecycle messaging automation is an extremely effective strategy for retailers and can be a great way to augment batch-and-blast messages. Lifecycle messages, such as a welcome series, post-purchase series, and shopping cart abandonment, are high revenue drivers, and retailers now have the ability to automate these messages with ease. They’re already very relevant to your audience, but you can enhance the experience for your customers even further with meaningful product recommendations.

Since crafting unique versions of day-to-day emails is no longer required, consider spending that saved time on creating more specific messaging for these series based on other factors, such as source of acquisition or category of products purchased. For instance, a post-purchase series for my new television should be different than the one for my new headphones. Combining this unique messaging with recommendations can be a significant win-win.

Having these tools readily available gives you the ability to take a one-size-fits-all email message and make it increasingly relevant. Since that winter jacket email to Joe now also highlights the latest tropical warm-weather items he’s sure to love, he doesn’t have to worry about being left out in the cold by an irrelevant email.

Batch and blast isn’t dead. It’s just growing up.

This was originally published on Multichannel Merchant.

Greg Zakowicz is a retail and eCommerce marketing speaker, analyst, strategist, and award-winning podcaster whose experience spans email, mobile, and social media marketing. More about Greg here.