In the modern era of digital marketing, the realm of email marketing is fiercely competitive, with marketers inundating customer inboxes in an attempt to attract their interest. Standing out among rivals has become exceptionally difficult in this cutthroat industry. However, this is where the utilization of email personalization becomes crucial.
By enabling marketers to send emails that cater specifically to the needs of the target audience, it facilitates the delivery of resonant messages. It ensures a personalized customer experience that is tailored to individual preferences. In this guide, we will explore various instances of email personalization that can be employed in your email campaigns to provide added value to your customers.
Email Customization
When experiences are tailored to their specific interests and needs, people find it appealing. An astonishing 86%Opens a new window claimed that personalized emails have an impact on their purchasing choices.
Furthermore, a recent study conducted by Validity on the present condition of SMS marketing discovered that 87% of consumers appreciate receiving messages from brands that include their name. Although the study had a specific focus on SMS, it effectively mirrors consumers’ craving for personalized marketing that pertains to their interests.
Senders can use these findings to enhance customer engagement by using data to create personalized emails that go beyond simply mentioning the customer’s first name. Validity’s recent study revealed that 76% of customers prefer to receive messages that are relevant to their previous purchases.
When subscribers come across content that genuinely interests them, they feel acknowledged, thereby enhancing the probability of them responding to an email’s call for action.
The main idea is that customized emails enhance consumer retention rates, conversions, positive engagement, and return on investment. Email campaigns that fail to use customization techniques may overlook important chances to create engagement, develop personal connections with their audience, and generate revenue.
Top Practices To Personalize Email Programs
Instead of utilizing auto-scheduling emails for 10 am on Tuesday, experiment with incorporating these techniques to engage your audience:
1. Split Up Your Audience
By employing a set of defined characteristics such as age, gender, location, or purchase history, one can divide subscribers into different groups, resulting in significant boosts in subscriber engagement.
Segmented email marketing results in generating 14.64% more opens and nearly 60% more clicks compared to non-segmented campaigns. In addition to improved email engagement, open, and click-through rates, brands that implement segmentation strategies can witness revenue growth of up to 760%.
The aim of dividing your audience is to improve targeting by delivering more relevant and personalized content, thereby increasing the likelihood of them interacting with your brand.
2. Build In Zero-Party Data
When customers provide a brand with their name, age, location, and personal interests, this is called zero-party data. By incorporating this information into emails, you can provide customized brand experiences to subscribers.
The greatest advantage of zero-party data is that it doesn’t come with any cost, it is precise, and it adheres to the changing privacy laws and regulations, which is a major concern for customers. Nevertheless, it is crucial to understand that if marketers want to utilize zero-party data for customized email communications, they must request subscribers to provide it. An effective method of accomplishing this is by using a preference center.
Preference centers allow subscribers to offer personal information and determine their email preferences. Subscribers can provide basic details such as their name, age, and birthday. Moreover, businesses can go a step ahead by encouraging subscribers to disclose their preferred email frequency and their level of expertise in a specific subject matter.
The results of Validity’s study revealed that 96% of participants expressed a desire for companies to be more transparent regarding the utilization of their data. By implementing a preference center, marketers have the opportunity to cultivate trust among subscribers, which plays a vital role in attaining customer loyalty and active involvement. This data equips brands with the necessary insights to craft personalized emails that capture the attention and approval of subscribers.
3. Utilize Dynamic Content
Dynamic content in emails can vary depending on the subscribers’ interests, behavior, or personal data. It encompasses various elements, such as email copy, subject lines, interactive polls, or feedback requests.
By following a systematic approach, rephrase the given text while ensuring the meaning remains unchanged: The use of dynamic content allows email senders to customize emails to better connect with each individual subscriber. This creates a personalized experience for the subscriber, making them feel as if the email has been specifically tailored for them, thereby building a stronger relationship with your brand. Even simple details, such as the subscriber’s name, can be utilized to provide personalized product recommendations.
4. Leverage Automation
Automated email marketing is the most significant factor that sets email engagement apart. It enables senders to utilize scheduled, pre-written, and triggered emails to send reminders when product supply is running low or to send automated emails that promote the loyalty of a product or service.
Triggered emails provide a great way to respond to subscriber actions in real-time, while the previous type of email marketing enables easy communication with your audience throughout the year.
Trigger emails are employed in situations when a shopper leaves their cart behind, on a subscriber’s birthday, or when a customer achieves a specific milestone. By sending these customized messages, senders ensure that they stay in the forefront of customers’ minds, promoting customer loyalty and ultimately increasing revenue.
The next phase of advanced email personalization is reached when email marketers go beyond the simple addition of a subscriber’s name and dynamically adjust the email body. This allows automated emails to help brands remind consumers of the value they found in their service or product.
5. Show Appreciation with Thank You Emails
By sending personalized emails with exclusive offers, you have the opportunity to celebrate special occasions and milestones such as your business anniversary, the user’s birthday, or their first purchase. Furthermore, you can show appreciation for their involvement in your organization and their contributions to its growth.
See how Paravel utilizes images to establish a connection with users and evoke nostalgia while generating personalized emails based on their travel history.
6. Recover Sales via Personalized Abandoned Cart Emails
Your sales can be significantly impacted by sending users a reminder that they have not completed their order. These emails are specifically triggered by the user’s action of leaving the cart without proceeding to checkout. They are already tailored to the individual user.
7. Send Product Recommendations
By thinking systematically, sending customized recommendations for products can enhance sales and foster closer connections with the intended audience. For example, you can utilize users’ buying patterns or browsing history to suggest comparable products. It is crucial for these emails to include a distinct call to action.
Amazon’s email is an excellent demonstration of utilizing a customer’s website engagement to suggest comparable products for purchase.
8. Summary or Wrap-Up Emails
One option for communicating with users is to send personalized emails that summarize their weekly activity with your product or services. Furthermore, you can incorporate gamification elements such as streaks, badges, etc., to enhance the personal and creative aspect of these emails.
9. Reach Out to Inactive Users with Re-engagement Emails
If users are not responding or interacting with your emails, you have the option to send them re-engagement emails that are tailored to their specific needs. When crafting these emails, you can review their previous data in order to convey your interest in understanding their concerns and reasons for their lack of activity.
10. Add Physical Location to Boost in-Store Sales
By utilizing the geographical data of the recipient, you can effectively enhance in-store sales by presenting the closest store. These emails provide the recipient with the necessary information such as the store’s location and operating hours.
To enable this level of personalization, you must possess the precise location information of your recipient, which includes their Pincode. Here, you can observe various brands motivating recipients to explore their nearby stores.
If you own a physical store, having a store location email can be beneficial in attracting customers who are interested in making purchases in-person.
Side notes
By personalizing your emails, you can enhance their relevance and offer your customers a superior customer experience, while also improving your engagement, click-through, and open rates. Furthermore, you can take inspiration from the personalized email examples mentioned above to enhance your future email marketing campaigns.
