How much time do you invest into email personalization?
These days, sorting through an email inbox is quite the chore.
Businesses send endless messages to their customers every day. Then on top of that, there are work emails, purchase confirmations and other correspondence to sort through too. It’s no wonder that companies struggle to stand out in this sea of email.
According to Litmus, only 21% of consumers say that they’ve received a memorable email in the last 2 months. If you want your email content to generate real results, then you need to be part of that 21%.
Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: email personalization.
Email Personalization 2019: What You Need to Know
In a world where customers want deeper, more bespoke connections with brands, email personalization is the number 1 strategy for 2019. Just look at the stats:
- Email personalization delivers an increased transaction rate of up to 600%.
- Personalized campaigns improve click-through by up to 14%, and boost conversions by 10%.
- Companies achieve a 20% sales increase when committing to email personalization best practices.
Ultimately, giving a personal touch to your emails makes your messages feel more like they’re coming from a friend – rather than a corporate robot.
The good news? Email personalization doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think.
Here, we’ll cover 7 simple ways to customize your campaigns.
1. Personalize Your Email Copy
Everyone likes being referred to by name.
“Hey, Chris” feels far more warm and friendly than “Hey You.” One of the simplest ways to nail email personalization in 2019 is to make sure that you’re using the first name in every message. You can even take things a step further by using someone’s name in the subject line too. According to Campaign Monitor, custom subject lines are 26% more likely to lead to clicks.
Amazon is one of the best-known brands in the world for personalization. When you log onto your account, they’ll show you product suggestions based on your recent purchases, and they even refer to you by name. That strategy carries through into email too. Both subject line and copy in the email below include a first and last name.
2. Celebrate Your Customers
One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is only using personalization for promotional purposes. While it’s fine to call someone by name when you’re asking them to check out your latest offers, don’t forget to show them that you care about more than their bank account.
According to Experian Marketing, messages with a celebration email, like “Happy Birthday” significantly improve click-through rate. All you need to do to connect with your consumers on these special days is ask for their date of birth when they sign up for an account.
You can even celebrate other dates too. For instance, how about the anniversary of when your client first agreed to subscribe to your emails? JetBlue shows its customers how much it appreciates them with anniversary shout-outs.
3. Adjust Your Offers
According to the DMA, emails that are both segmented and targeted generate about 58% of all revenue.
People in this fast-paced era don’t have time to waste on emails that aren’t tailored to their needs. If you want people to stop and pay attention to what you’re saying, then you need to make sure that you’re delivering customized value to clients.
When it comes to email personalization best practices, adjusting your offers according to customer preference is crucial. Great marketers use data to create in-depth customer profiles, then provide unique content depending on the subscriber. There are many different ways that you can make sure your offers resonate.
For instance, Adidas practices email personalization according to gender. Rather than sending everyone an entire collection of clothes to browse through, they convey different offers depending on the gender you chose during sign-up.
Another great option is to personalize offers based on location. After all, it’s no good offering in-store deals in Boston, if your customer is located in New York City. Since Uber collects plenty of details about their customers’ travel habits, they provide content based on client location:
4. Provide Personalized Product Recommendations
Campaign Monitor studies show that marketers see an up to 760% increase in revenue from segmented emails. Showing your customers different content based on their location or gender is a great start. However, if you really want to nail email personalization in 2019, you need to go a little further.
One of the best ways to convince your customers to act today is to suggest products and services based on their past purchasing behavior. Many modern email software solutions come with options to integrate customer browsing history and purchases into your campaigns. Just remember to make sure that you’re not breaking any privacy rules here.
Netflix is an excellent example of a company that uses email personalization to its advantage. The company knows how much time users spend agonizing over what to watch. That’s why they send unique emails based on things you’ve seen before:
5. Personalize Your Cart Abandonment Emails
People get distracted. These days, there’s everything from social media, content streaming to pull your customer’s attention away from your website. Unfortunately, that means that $4 trillion in revenue is lost each year due to cart abandonment.
The good news? Up to 65% of abandoned carts can be earned again within 24 hours. Plus, if you can send an email to your lost customer within an hour of them leaving your site, you’ll get a 40% open rate.
However, just like any other kind of message, you’ll need email personalization best practices to increase your chances of success. For instance, Asics sends reminder emails telling their customers to come back and repeat the purchase. They even add a picture of the product you were looking at.
6. Adapt to Your Customer’s Behavior
We’re living in a world where data is everywhere. Why not take advantage of it?
If your emails agreed to allow you to collect data about them and use it for marketing purposes, then make the most of that fact. Find out what your customers are doing and use their behavior to send more relevant offers.
One of the best ways to use data in email personalization today is with automated content. For instance, you can automatically update a customer on their progress using your service each week. Grammarly uses this strategy to keep customers engaged. Every week, you get an insight into how productive you’ve been, and what you’ve accomplished with your work:
Another option is to use your customer’s purchasing history to send them highly customized deals. Everyone loves a money-off voucher or discount code. We love them, even more, when they’re tailored to help us buy the things we want. This is a particularly good idea if your clients haven’t bought anything for a while. For instance, Birchbox admits that it looks through customer sample and purchasing history. However, it uses that information to deliver bespoke discount codes:
7. Deliver Dynamic Images
Visual content is more appealing today than ever. According to research from Skyword, material that includes images generates 94% more views on average than their counterparts. As email marketing technology becomes more advanced, businesses can now adjust the imagery on their campaigns using “dynamic” content.
Dynamic content automatically changes depending on a specific factor. For instance, if you’re an airline sending flight suggestions, the image might change based on where customers had visited in the past.
Monica Vinader delivered an excellent example of dynamic email personalization in the “This Season it’s Personal” campaign. As well as covering the basics like including the subscriber’s name in the subject line, the content also personalized images of jewelry with the customer’s initial:
Time to Get Personal
Many different factors can make or break the success of your email campaigns.
Everything from the words you use in your subject line, to the kind of CTA button you provide can alter the way a person feels about your content. However, in today’s customer-centric world, there are few things more important than email personalization.
Today’s customers aren’t happy being part of a crowd anymore. They want brands to recognize them for who they are, and deliver content accordingly. This is particularly true among younger generations. 62% of millennials say that custom content drives loyalty to a brand.
Show your subscribers that you appreciate what makes them unique with email personalization best practices. It might mean extra work at first, but it will also deliver higher returns on investment in the long term. Don’t fall behind the crowd in 2019. Catch up with the era of personalization.
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