Customizing your emails to each prospect helps you create a more engaging and personal experience and, more importantly, increases the chances your email gets opened.
With so many different ways to personalize emails, it can be hard to know where to start. In this article, we’ll be covering:
- What email personalization is
- What makes it so effective
- And email personalization tips and techniques that will help you drive engagement and make your target audience come back for more
What Exactly Is Email Personalization?
Email personalization is a fun and engaging marketing method that creates custom email content for users based on data collected through marketing or social media channels. By creating personalized emails, marketers give their target audience a chance to receive content tailored to their interests and activities. This allows for a more exclusive and relevant offer, discount, or piece of content that will be important to the subscriber.
We all know how frustrating it is to get emails that look like nothing but ads. But with personalized emails, you can create a human touch for your brand that makes recipients feel like the message is meant just for them. And thanks to automation and AI tools, you don't have to type out thousands of prospect names one by one.
The goal of email personalization is to make your emails irresistible! They should be relevant to your prospect's needs and interests so you capture their attention and get them excited about opening your messages.
How Effective is Email Personalization?
Almost 74% of marketers have seen a significant uptick in customer engagement thanks to email personalization! It's a helpful tool to look into if you're looking to boost sales engagement and turn leads into paying customers.
If you're not convinced yet, here are some benefits of why email personalization works. It can:
- Reduce unsubscribe rates
- Boost open and click-through rates
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Provide remarketing opportunities to new and potential subscribers
- Convert prospects to actual customers
- Engage customers with unique content
- Address customer needs
If you want to add a personal touch to your emails, you don't have to go overboard. You don't want your messages to seem forced and risk gradually losing your audience. Instead, focus on what works for your customers to create the results you want for your campaign.
13 Email Personalization Tips and Strategies That Drive Results
You might think that personalizing an email is as simple as just using a person's first name. But the truth is, there's a lot more to it than that! Here are 13 tips to help you create personalized emails that will get great results.
Gather Important Data and Statistics
Collecting data is the way to go if you want to get to know your customers better. Analyzing your data allows you to see patterns and trends that can help you create more personalized and engaging emails.
A quick and easy way to get started is by adding a sign-up form to your website or blog and collecting your visitors’ contact information. In addition to the basics (email address and customer name), you can also ask about relevant details as part of a quiz or in return for a digital service that requires this information e.g. like for a car insurance calculator. After all, you want customers to answer willingly.
Collecting data can also help you craft engaging networking emails if you want to build partnerships and collaborations.
Create a Customer Persona
What qualities should your customers have? Build a persona to find out! This includes being particular with the ideal customer persona through user demographics, key locations, activities, and behaviors.
If you want to better understand your customers and craft more personalized emails that address their needs, being more specific with your customer persona can help. You can start by using the data you have from your current customers and drilling down into particular traits and activities they have.
Once you have the ideal customer persona outlined, you can make better decisions on the best personalization tactics to use in your marketing campaigns.
Come Up With the Right Questions
Get to know your audience and figure out where they are in the buyer's journey by asking them the right questions! This can help you group them and better understand what they need from you. Ask them questions like:
- What are their specific needs, and how is your product helping address them?
- What led them to visit your website?
- What are their main reasons for using your products?
These questions matter, but try to keep things light! Relate to your customers with emojis, discounts, and comedic or emotional appeal. You can also ask your customers firsthand to make them feel their opinions are valued. Getting the answers to these questions can help you see what works for your customers and make creating personalized emails seamless.
Craft Catchy and Personalized Subject Lines
Email marketing success depends a lot on having personalized, interesting subject lines. It can be tough to come up with the perfect subject line for each email, but it's worth taking the time to do it. You can test out different subject lines to see what gets the best results.
Create Behavior-Triggered Emails
What are behavior-triggered emails? If you're a marketer, you might be using behavior-triggered emails to send an automated response based on your customers' recent behavior toward your products or services. You can set up behavior-triggered emails when you want to nudge users who have abandoned their carts or no longer open your emails.
Behavior-triggered emails are becoming a trend for many reasons. One is that they tend to boost open rates. And two, they also allow brands to create a personalized connection with customers with minimal effort. They're a great way to convert subscribers to actual leads, re-engage inactive users, and upsell relevant offerings to existing subscribers.
Send Personal CTAs Through Subscriber Tags
Subscriber tags are a great way to add a personal touch to your email content and help trigger emails. You can use tags to segment your audience based on their activities, such as web visits, link clicks, and product purchases. This allows you to create a tailored marketing approach for each group of customers and as a result, boost conversions.
Add “Recommended for You”
This tactic is a great way to upsell and cross-sell relevant products to your subscribers based on their recent purchases and searches. By suggesting related products or offering discounts and promos based on the products they previously bought, you can deliver audience-centric content and target those who have already interacted with your brand.
Optimize Your Product Landing Pages
The goal isn't just to get people to open your email. You want them to become actual paying customers! Make sure your landing pages are optimized for conversions as you drive traffic from personalized emails. Ensure your images, sales copy, and page navigation are all on point to close a sale.
Leverage the Power of Urgency
"Hurry! These limited-time offers won't last forever."
A sense of urgency helps drive up sales when there’s a need for your offer. With limited-time discounts, countdowns, product launches, and giveaways, you can increase sales when targeting the right audience. Promote your products and remind customers to make that purchase today.
Set a Personal Tone for Your Brand
Make your brand more approachable and engaging by customizing your brand identity to better connect with your audience. You can send welcome messages and emails on upcoming birthdays and campaigns, offer confirmations, and more. Shifting your tone to become more conversational lets your subscribers see the human side of your brand and be more likely to respond.
Keep Track of Customer Milestones
Celebrating customer milestones is one way to build brand loyalty and make you stand out from the competition. Acknowledging your customers' achievements shows that you appreciate them, and this makes them feel remembered. Some of these milestones can include their birthdays or their anniversary as your customer.
Follow-up With Customers
Email personalization can help bring those inactive users back and help you engage with them more. You can reach out to them with a coupon code, special discount, or follow-up emails scheduled a few days after their last visit. You can also trigger emails and extend help with tutorials and resources to address their concerns based on customer data.
When you finally get their attention, make sure to follow up! Determine their behaviors and patterns, such as:
- How well your customer understands your product offers
- Specific areas of improvement for a better customer experience
- What features they want to see in the future
- How your recent engagement helped solve their problems
Go Into the Nitty-Gritty
Small details matter when you're personalizing your emails. A/B test your emails to narrow down to the best results. To A/B test a campaign, simply create two different emails for the same campaign and send each one to a different group from your list. The email that performs the best in terms of open rates and conversions will be your winner.
By experimenting a little and making small adjustments here and there, you’ll see the difference when working with even a moderate customer base. Performing A/B tests, monitoring analytics, and using the right email tools will let you know where these changes need to be made and help you quickly scale your growth.
Key Takeaways
With the right tools and approach, personalized emails can be a powerful way to nurture your customers and drive more sales. Email personalization can offer many benefits, so it's worth exploring what tactics and ideas work for your subscribers. Creating a compelling email personalization strategy can make a big impact on your email marketing.
- Boost email click-through rates
- Increase customer loyalty and engagement
- Convert leads to new customers
- Drive awareness for your brand
- Help address customer needs
Instantly can help you navigate all the above and save you countless hours with AI-powered personalization. Try our 14-day free trial and decide if it’s the right platform for you. Click here to learn more!