Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
What if your email subscribers liked receiving your emails? Didn't you just tolerate them to hear about an occasional offer (or, worse, gave you their email address in exchange for protected content and never got around to clicking unsubscribe)? What if they actually looked forward to seeing your company’s name in their inbox?
To be too good to be true? Not necessarily. Numerous email marketing campaign best practices increase email open rates, increase clicks, and increase subscriber satisfaction. However, the greatest potential for long-term growth comes from effective personalization. Studies show that personalized subject lines are 22% more likely to be opened, making them one of the most successful email marketing techniques.
We'll discuss what email personalization is, some key personalization techniques for your email campaigns, and some tips to get you started.
What exactly is personalization?
The first thing most marketers think of when they hear “personalization” is including the recipient’s first name in the email subject line or greeting. Although this is technically personalization, it is often superficial and can be achieved through automation. Showing that you know your subscribers' names doesn't mean you know them, just as reading someone's name tag at a convention doesn't mean you're best friends.
In other words, using first names in email campaigns can provide personalization, but it's not very personal. So what does personalizing a good T look like?
Email personalization uses subscriber data (more than just their names) to tailor each email to individual subscribers. This way you can build a relationship with your customers. After all, marketing is all about customer relationship management. Although there is no one-size-fits-all way to define or create personalization, your personalized emails should make each subscriber feel like your company is specifically reaching out to them.
What are some key email personalization strategies?
The term personalization covers many different tactics. Here are seven key email marketing strategies to get you started:
- to give recommendations
- Get to know your subscribers
- Segment your audience
- Send triggered emails
- Use personalized images
- Use dynamic content
- Choose the right time to send emails
Let’s dive into each of these strategies.
1. Make recommendations
One way to stay in touch with subscribers is to send personalized emails with product or content recommendations. Businesses can send daily updates about discounts, new releases, and updates to retain subscribers.
Here is an example of a personalized email from BookBub. They often inform their subscribers about discounts, sales, and deals on their favorite authors and genres based on browsing history and previous purchases:
If you're not an e-commerce company with a large product collection, you can send your subscribers email newsletters with a personalized selection of content based on interactions on your website or their potential interests.
Explain in detail how you collect this data and why you should get to know your subscribers to improve and boost your email personalization
2. Get to know your subscribers
Whether you use the most advanced dynamic content techniques or create customized messages for each segment, you need to know your subscribers to personalize effectively.
This means you have good data about your subscribers and need to analyze that data to determine what message influences different subscribers. These data points include purchase history, cart abandonment, browsing behavior, and survey responses – but almost all data is useful.
“First-party data” is extremely valuable because it provides insights into how customers and subscribers interact with your digital properties, including your website, blog, and emails. But if you don't know, you can always ask…
BookBub asked me to choose a handful of favorite authors and genres and then used that information to recommend additional books. Bookhub then recommended several interesting reads that suited my tastes. This attempt to learn my preferences wasn't scary. This made me feel like a valued customer.
Another company that offers effective personalized emails is Spotify. Subscribers receive regular updates about new releases from artists they have listened to or follow. Spotify even recommends nearby concerts to its subscribers – and may send them an advance ticket code.
Spotify personalizes emails based on the music the subscriber listens to.
Data management is fundamental to personalization. If you want to personalize emails, your relevant data must be available in your email system. This may sound obvious, but often data is stored separately, making it virtually non-existent for email purposes. Think about what relevant data you don't have and how you can collect it.
The complexity of data management is another issue, but you need to consider it before developing personalization strategies.
3. Segment your audience
While segmentation and personalization are separate email marketing practices, they are closely related. When your list is strategically segmented, it's much easier to provide relevant email personalization.
It's important to segment your audience to send multiple emails within an eCommerce campaign – each targeting a group of people with common characteristics such as demographics, geographic location, or behavioral patterns. This way, your email will be more likely to resonate with your target audience and your click-through rates and conversion rates will improve.
Check out this email from Lululemon. While many of their subscribers primarily purchase women's clothing, Lululemon knows that there is a percentage of subscribers who are interested in other products. In the example below, they segmented their audience by gender to cater to their male demographic.
4. Send personalized triggered emails
Don’t underestimate the power of automated transactional emails and other types of triggered messages. Transactional emails are typically simple messages like order confirmations and password resets. But there are other types of triggered emails, such as messages sent to your readers when they reach certain points in the customer journey.
In this case, you rely on customer behavior to trigger personalized emails. In B2B email automation, a lead nurturing campaign could trigger the next email after a prospect opens or clicks on the previous message in the nurture track.
E-commerce offers numerous options for personalizing triggered emails. Check out this abandoned cart email from Jack Wills, which is based on a customer touchpoint – when they visit your website but leave items in their cart without proceeding to purchase. This triggered email reminds subscribers of an abandoned cart.
5. Use dynamic content
In addition to email list segmentation, you can use dynamic content to swap elements in emails, including images, text, or links, based on subscriber information.
Check out Fit for Me’s promotion for their subscribers. They changed the images depending on the subscribers' dates to reflect their age demographic, but kept everything else the same.
6. Use personalized images
Just like your email copy, you can personalize images to send targeted emails. Typically, personalized images in emails are dynamic content that adds names or other personal information to a graphic. Here is an example from NifyImages.
7. Choose the right time to send emails
Let's say you run a global business and your subscribers are in multiple time zones. If you send an email to someone in Singapore in the middle of the night, you're likely to get a very different response than someone in London who receives the same email at the end of their work day. Consider time zone differences and personalize your email content to appeal to your subscribers.
Send time optimization isn't necessarily considered traditional email personalization. However, it shows that you know your subscribers and care about their everyday lives.
Personalization in a nutshell
Personalization ensures the right message reaches the right person, rather than sending generic messages to as many people as possible. Create a personalized experience tailored to your individual customers. This requires an investment in time and resources, but it is an investment that will produce better results in email marketing metrics. And maybe it can change the way your subscribers think about your emails.
Use Email on Acid's testing suite to ensure the deliverability of your email so it lands in your subscriber's inbox.
THis article was updated on November 22, 2022. It was first published in November 2018.
Author: The Email on Acid Team
Email on Acid's content team is made up of digital marketers, content creators, and real email geeks. Connect with us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook, and tweet @EmailonAcid on Twitter for more great email marketing news and great convos.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
