| dc.description.abstract | This study investigates the impact of behavior-based personalization on
customer engagement and purchase behavior in the context of email marketing. For
this purpose, the author reviews and combines the following research streams in the
literature: email marketing, personalization of marketing communication, and
customer engagement.
To answer the research question at hand, the author designs a field study in
collaboration with Kahoot! AS, a fast-growing Norwegian start-up company
operating in the education technology industry. Kahoot!’s game-based learning and
trivia platform is used in multiple settings – school and university classrooms,
business training and presentations, social, cultural, and other events (retrieved
from kahoot.com). By leveraging marketing automation technology, which
Kahoot! uses for the email campaigns’ creation and management, the author sets
up and runs the experiment. Findings of the study provide marketing managers with
useful insights on the effectiveness of behavior-based personalization in the email
marketing context as well as contribute to the ongoing academic discussion about
personalized marketing communication and customer engagement.
The results reveal that email communication has a significant positive effect
on customer engagement irrespective of behavior-based personalization. This
proves that email is an effective marketing communication channel, and it should,
therefore, remain a key part of the digital media mix used by marketers. However,
based on the lack of a significant difference in the effectiveness of personalized and
non-personalized email campaigns, the author recommends focusing more on highquality
generic content and the design of the email messages. Furthermore,
consistent with the viewpoints of researchers in the field, the study confirms that
customer engagement is a significant predictor of customer purchases, leading to
the conclusion that firms should invest in customer engagement marketing
initiatives to ultimately achieve better firm performance. | nb_NO |
