Email marketer Bluecore adds advertising to its resume

Once known as TriggerMail, Bluecore has made its living as a provider of emails that are triggered by user behavior. Today, the New York City-based company announced that it is moving into advertising with the launch of Bluecore Ads.

Marketers have used Bluecore to follow up website visits with personalized emails that are tied into catalog updates and user behavior. A registered user who visited a product page for Converse Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers on a retailer’s site, for instance, might automatically receive an email when the price for those shoes drops.

Now, the marketer can choose to show a display ad about those sneakers to the same user, on the desktop or mobile web, or on Facebook. Bluecore ties a cookie or mobile device ID to the email address, so it can recognize users even if they aren’t logged in.

Bluecore handles the creative and the ad delivery, while ad bidding is managed through integrations with MediaMath, Facebook and Google. Websites are integrated via a snippet of JavaScript code. Here’s a Bluecore-targeted and -created ad on Facebook:

Users do not necessarily have to be logged in. Bluecore can, for instance, match a user’s cookie or mobile device ID with your previous click on a link in a retailer’s marketing email. Eventually, co-founder and VP of product Max Bennett told me, up to 40 percent of the anonymous traffic to a web site can be identified.

The company’s newly released Predictive Audiences can also be employed to issue ads or emails based on users’ predicted behavior, like an expectation that you might unsubscribe from an email list or be interested in a new product. Additionally, brands can use lookalike ad targeting on Facebook to find prospects resembling the best customers on their email lists.

Bennett said that, while integrated marketing platforms like Salesforce offer coordinated email/ad campaigns, Bluecore offers “much more behavioral data” for targeting.

The new announcement is the latest in Bluecore’s efforts to expand beyond its roots in email marketing. Last month, for instance, it announced a collaboration with UGC platform Olapic to incorporate user-created photos in marketing emails.