KEY Advice for Email Marketing: Personalizing emails
Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%
When people talk about email personalization, they mostly talk about adding a name to the subject line and email body, which it surely is. But this is not all thats there to it.
As John Bonini of Litmus pointed out in his webinar, email personalization can be as simple as making a meaningful offer.
Bonini gives the example of Dollar Shave Club. He explains how this company personalizes the email experience without needing the [first_name] tag.
Heres the emails personalized message:
Hey, before we go and ship this box, want us to save you a trip to the store? Whaddya need? Shaving cream? Hair gel?
So... How to Make an Automated Email Feel Personal?
WHAT are the 3 metrics that you look for in an email campaigns report?
Well, if youre anything like me (or like most other email marketers), youll immediately look for:
your campaigns open rate
its click through rate
and the number of unsubscriptions
After all, no matter what your campaigns goal is, you cant IGNORE these metrics.
Now:
What if I were to tell you that theres a tactic you can use to improve all these metrics automagically?
Youd be interested, right?
Who wouldnt be! So here it is EMAIL PERSONALIZATION.
A research conducted by Experian showed that personalized subject lines drove a 26% higher overall unique open rates for companies across different niches.
Not only that, personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. Email personalization also brings down the number of unsubscriptions by making the email content relevant to the subscribers.
Ill first give you a primer on how email personalization works and the tools youll need, and then well see some tactics you can use to make your automated emails feel personal.
Personalizing automated emails
In personalized email marketing, you dont bombard your list with the same email. Instead, you send your subscribers an email thats personalized for them.
Personalized emails use your subscribers details to tailor the emails subject line and content.
Email personalization uses details like a subscribers:
name
demographics
gender
interests
age
date of joining the list
interactions and engagement with the product (shopping or browsing history)
A quick note about email personalization tools
Im sure when you hear the term email personalization, you wonder about all the DATA youll need and the different TOOLS that will get you this data.
But there are no special email personalization toolsall you need is INTEGRATION between whatever customer management tool you use and your email marketing software.
Based on your personalization requirements, you can integrate your email marketing service with any of the following tools:
CRM software (like Salesforce or HubSpot)
eCommerce platform (for e.g., Shopify or BigCommerce)
Accounting solution (like Quickbooks or Freshbooks)
The above tools pass on their data to the email marketing service that uses it to deliver personalized campaigns.
How to start personalizing your emails
As you saw in the first section, you can personalize your emails with such basic information as your subscribers names. You can also use information like their demographics, gender, date of joining and others.
For a higher degree of personalization, you will have to use segmentation and data from your CRM tool.
Lets now see some of the most effective email personalization techniques that you can start implementing today.
Personalize your emails subject line
If youre just starting with personalization, Id recommend that you begin with personalizing your subject line. All you need to personalize a subject line is your subscribers name something you can collect right in your email signup form.
When MarketingSherpa conducted A/B tests on 7 personalized subject lines, they found that the personalized subject lines got higher open rates. Each time. The higher open rates resulted in a 17.36% higher average click through rates.
Despite being effective, about 70% businesses fail to leverage personalized email subject lines.
Personalize your emails content based on your list segments
Im sure weve all, at some point, unsubscribed from a great list. What do you think prompts people to unsubscribe after opting-in for a list?
According to Epsilon, its irrelevant content. Epsilon reports that a whopping 64% of unsubscriptions happen because people find the email content irrelevant.
Luckily, email personalization can bring this down.
To personalize email content, you need to know about your subscribers interests. And you can learn these easily if you focus on building segments in your lists.
Heres what I mean:
If you run a Games review site, dont build a generic email list of fans.
Instead, build a segmented list with the segments having fans of the different games like, say, the Fallout 4 and Pokemon.
And when you post content about the Fallout 4 series, send an update email to just the Fallout segment. This way, your email content will look relevant to the subscribers of that segment (and they wont unsubscribe).
(You will have to use your list building tools page/post level targeting features to build such segmented lists.)
Personalize your emails offer using behavioral triggers
CRM tools or eCommerce platforms store data about a users interactions with the site. This information can be used to trigger emails with customized offers based on what the user recently showed interest in.
Such emails are called trigger emails because theyre sent when users do a particular action. Trigger emails report a 152% higher open rate when compared to traditional emails.
Personalize your email copy using subscribers information
Again, personalizing email copy can be as simple as using the subscribers first name to address them, or it could be as advanced as using dynamic content.
Personalize your emails from field
Personalizing the senders field can make an email look more welcoming. So instead of sending your emails from your companys (or blogs) name, send them using your name.
HubSpot found that personalizing the sender name and email address increased their open rate by about 3%.
On a more advanced level, you can customize your email senders field with the name of the person from your company that a particular subscriber interacts with.
CampaignMonitor tells how Dubsat personalizes their emails so that they appear to come from the account manager the client regularly deals with.
Conclusion
I know a few of the personalization tactics I listed need data from the CRM tool, but not all. Even if you just have your subscribers name, you can still personalize their email
experience.
Your next step could be to segment your lists based on your subscribers interests and to send personalized content to the segments. You dont really have a reason to not try so send personalized campaigns and measure the results for yourself.
What are some of the most personalized emails youre subscribed to?
And what do you like the best about them?
Do share in the comments!