When your customers check their email, they are bombarded with an overwhelming number of email marketing messages. Consequently, they quickly mark these emails as spam without even bothering to open them.
However, they suddenly spot something that is applicable to their interests – a discounted offer for the PlayStation 4 which they have been looking at. Consequently, by sending them highly personalized emails that cater to their preferences, you are able to capture the attention of your customers effectively.
Email Personalization
The tactic of email personalization in email marketing involves the use of subscribers’ data to create custom content, specifically tailored for your intended recipients.
Personalized email marketing offers numerous advantages as it significantly improves all email marketing metrics and generates a sales return that is six times higher than traditional bulk email campaigns. Given the high level of competition, customization of emails has become essential.
Email Personalization Techniques
If you are interested in customizing your email marketing, we have provided a series of email personalization techniques that your business can use effectively.
1. Segment your audience
Segmentation is without a doubt one of the most significant advancements in email marketing since its inception. The practice of dividing your email lists enables you to create emails that are relevant, targeted, and personalized to your audience.
If you think step by step, the text below can be rephrased while keeping the same meaning. By doing so effectively, you will notice that you are obtaining:
- Increased open rates
- Increased clicks
- Decrease in unsubscribers
Segmenting is synonymous with considering age, gender, geography, and buyer persona, and ultimately enhances conversions.
Although there are many ways to segment your email list that are creative, innovative, and effective in improving your email marketing metrics, you can delve deeper into your customers’ buyer behavior and segment them based on factors such as buying frequency, purchase cycle, change in content engagement level, and customers who refer to your business.
A study conducted on Mailchimp users revealed that when campaigns utilize segmented data, there is a notable 14.37% surge in open rates and a substantial 67.48% surge in clicks. The act of segmenting your customer base directly amplifies practically all significant email marketing metrics that can be tracked, including opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribe rates.
2. Personalize your sender details
Personalizing your emails, like addressing the recipient by name, adds personality and makes them less generic and boring, resulting in a more positive reception from people.
By giving your company a face and a personality, you are creating a simple change that allows subscribers to relate to it. In the midst of receiving numerous marketing and newsletter emails from various companies, emails that have a personalized sender, rather than just ‘Marketing Team’, are more likely to be trusted and consequently opened.
HubSpot has discovered that including both the sender’s name and their company has proven to be highly effective. They observed a boost in open and click-through rates when using a sender name like ‘Joe Bloggs’ and sending it from ‘joeb@company.com’ instead of using ‘Marketing Team’ as the sender name and ‘marketing@company.com’ as the email address.
3. Product recommendations
When executed correctly, even though it may seem like a basic form of email customization, it can be incredibly impactful. Nonetheless, if executed poorly, your email marketing can take a turn for the worse.
If your ads are constantly popping up, customers may feel irritated and stalked. The best way to combat this is by sending highly targeted emails to engage and convert through targeting ads based on their buyer behavior and preferences shown.
By utilizing visitor data and purchasing behavior of your audience, you increase the likelihood of enticing customers to make a purchase by recommending relevant products.
Since 2000, Amazon has been leading the way in product recommendations. It was once stated that as much as one-third of Amazon’s revenue came from the use of email personalization methods.
Even if you are not Amazon, you can still make product recommendations work. According to Intelliverse, 56% of shoppers are more inclined to revisit websites that offer personalized product recommendations.
4. Use dynamic content
Today, marketing tools provide the ability to send personalized texts as well as images. The utilization of dynamic content allows for the automatic sending of emails with customizable images based on the unique preferences of each individual user.
This technique allows you to create a single email, but the images will vary depending on the individual. It is a quicker method compared to segmentation as it eliminates the need to create multiple texts for different recipient groups. The images are automatically selected and can be chosen based on user responses in the subscription form, their past data, or the products they have recently viewed.
If you have a home decor store, you can incorporate dynamic content to include identical links in every category (such as www.yourcompany/products/plants). Moreover, you can ensure that the images of flowers correspond to the flowers that users have recently searched for on your website by using this approach.
Adding an image of the same plant for all subscribers may not yield desirable outcomes, as they may have varying preferences and interests. Taking careful steps and considering individual preferences will likely achieve better results.
One more instance of email personalization with dynamic content is a graphic that informs about a sale or offers a discount code. By aligning the graphic with the product the recipient has recently viewed or frequently viewed, the likelihood of enticing them to make a purchase is increased.
5. Send personalized offers
According to Salesforce, it is important not to waste your audience’s time and instead personalize messages to capture their interest, as 52% of customers anticipate receiving customized offers.
To accomplish this, send customized product suggestions based on their previous activities on your website.
If your customer recently read an article on your blog about lead generation, you could consider sending them a promotion for a paid course on the same subject. In the future, once they have purchased a course from you, you could extend an invitation for them to attend your conference covering that particular topic.
If you provide online courses and your user has recently been searching for courses to enhance their English proficiency, send them personalized recommendations for classes.
6. Remind about important events
One way to establish a connection with your customers is by demonstrating that you recall significant dates. Consequently, an additional approach to sending customized marketing emails is by commemorating noteworthy occasions, including birthdays. This may involve providing special discount coupons to customers on their birthday (which can be obtained by requesting their date of birth in the subscription form) or acknowledging your company’s anniversary.
WordPress conducted an email campaign that included sending reminders to users about the anniversary of their account creation. The email contained details about different offers that could be beneficial for individuals who have established a website with WordPress and require tools for customization.
7. Try behavioral triggering
Behavioral triggering refers to reacting to specific customer behavior that is connected to your brand. This entails sending automated messages following a particular action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a service.
Setting up automatic sending of an invoice or booking confirmation can be advantageous as it eliminates the need for customers to search through their customer accounts or contact you to request specific files or information, thereby saving them time.
When it comes to signing up for a subscription, there are various options for communicating with new subscribers. One option is sending them an initial email or a series of welcome emails to provide them with information about your company and the offers available. Alternatively, you can send re-engagement emails to those users who have not engaged with your brand for a considerable period of time.
Side notes
If you are not currently utilizing email marketing personalization, we suggest that you begin as soon as possible. However, keep in mind that each audience is unique, so it is recommended to test different alternatives and monitor the outcomes of each campaign.
If you are unsure about which email title works best for a specific group, you can conduct A/B tests to determine which one appeals more to your audience. Additionally, you can leverage cutting-edge solutions like AI Personalized Newsletters that utilize advanced AI methods to personalize the content for each individual subscriber.
