Customers want services and goods that are personalized to their own demands in today’s always-connected, always-on world. Knowing your clients’ names demonstrates that you performed the bare minimum – customers will be interested if they receive an email addressed specifically to them. However, true email personalization extends beyond first names.
Email marketing, like any other marketing or customer care strategy, does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. Spamming consumers or prospects with irrelevant content isn’t just a terrible practice; it’s also bad business, since it can put people off your brand and the value it intends to provide. Personalized email marketing, on the other hand, will help close sales and encourage repeat purchases.
Email as a medium is alive and well, and the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that it can still be profitable. When the epidemic hit in 2020, email became the most popular route for firms to communicate with their customers. This shift in customer behavior was dramatic—understandable given the circumstances—and is expected to occur again. As a result, organizations would be smart to engage in email customization now in order to gain long-term benefits such as consumer retention and loyalty.
What is Email Personalization?
Email personalization is a marketing strategy in which a company creates email communication based on subscriber data so that it can be customized to a single person’s requirements and interests. Companies can leverage other data they know about their consumers, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and product preferences, in addition to their names, to produce more relevant content and offers for each customer. Email personalization can be streamlined through a platform such as Ongage, which helps businesses to understand their target audience better. An approach like this is more effective than sending impersonal email blasts that contain information and recommendations that may or may not be relevant to specific customers.
With people spending more time on social media, email appears to be an outdated means to reach out to customers. On the other hand, email remains a more personal approach when compared to social media networks, where different people and businesses virtually yell at the top of their lungs just to get their point across. Even if they do, it’s not guaranteed that the people who heard them are the ones to whom they should be speaking.
With email marketing, your message is crafted specifically to provide relevant content directly to a customer or prospect. A well written personalized email gets your foot in the door, and it may be what ultimately helps you close a sale. It also puts your brand in front of billions of potential customers; in 2020 alone, there were an estimated 306.4 billion emails sent and received each day around the world.
Why is Email Personalization Important?
With the number of emails the average person receives in a day, your customer or prospect will not open your email unless they feel a “connection” with them. Remember that you don’t know the customer personally, therefore they won’t respond to your email until you provide the customer something he or she wants. “What’s in it for me?” should always be the question you ask if you want to capture the client’s attention and begin creating a meaningful relationship that leads to customer loyalty.
Personalized email marketing also increases brand demand and improves brand recognition. Customers that value your marketing communications will remember you and want to hear from you again. This is a great time to share information about new product features, product launches, and other marketing milestones or events as well as sharing your brand values – A recent study by Feefo showed that 74% of UK consumers consider brand values before purchasing. Providing clients with relevant information and content that meets their requirements fosters trust, which serves as the foundation for long-term customer relationships. This can also lead to personal referrals and word-of-mouth promotion, which can help you extend your customer base and boost the reputation of your company.
How Do You Personalize Your Email Marketing Efforts?
Email personalization is a concept that goes beyond the content of the message itself. There are a variety of methods you can follow to get the most of personalization. Below are a few tips on how you can maximize the benefits of personalized email marketing.
Segment Your Customers
Not all customers are the same; even the similar ones will have differences in product preference or intent. A one-size-fits-all approach may make some customers happy, but do you really want to rely on luck for your marketing campaigns?
Dividing your customers into segments or groups based on their interests and other demographic data allows you to craft and distribute content that’s more relevant and tailored to fit the needs of each segment.
Use Personalization Tags
Personalization tags are elements that help you customize messages for a certain purpose or specific customer segment. Collecting subscriber data is vital here, since email personalization will be based on this information. Personalization tags are variable placeholders within email messages that draw unique information from individual contact profiles to personalize messages.
Collecting data from your customers will allow you to personalize beyond demographics and first names. Technology has made data available for both businesses and consumers so they can be used to ease the customer journey and address friction points. Utilize accessible data to deliver more value to your consumers and send them relevant emails with the information and advice they require.
Design for Attention
Creativity is essential in producing emails that capture the attention of customers right away. You should, however, consider the medium. The space constraints of desktop and mobile screens, not to mention inbox storage limits, hinder your creativity when designing email messages.
Experiment with a vertical scrolling design that will appeal to your clients and keep in mind ways in which to ensure your emails are mobile-friendly. It should also be emphasized that, regardless of the style, it is still an email message. Design accordingly and incorporate aspects that work with the email format.
Use Dynamic Content
Today’s email software allows companies to create dynamic content, allowing them to show certain blocks of content to individual clients. This is useful for sending personal emails or running an email marketing campaign.
With dynamic content, you can create several versions of an email message and personalize each based on the customer data you have. Rather with the spray-and-pray email blasts of the past, this ensures a more targeted approach.
Don’t Forget to Follow Up
To increase reply rates, it’s advisable to make follow ups to your initial email message. Since you’ve already made contact with the customer, you can now design your follow-up email to elicit a reaction. Maintain your attitude of simply delivering information that your consumers want or need. Follow-up emails are not a reason to bombard your clients with spam.
“Are You Talking to Me?”
Reaching out to your clients is one of the most effective ways to increase click-through rates and convert leads into loyal customers. Knowing your customers—and knowing more than just their names—is the key. Effective email subject lines, headlines, and calls to action necessitate a thorough understanding of your audience, which can only be attained through a data-driven strategy.
Lead nurturing relies heavily on email personalization. Through a personalized approach, your leads can get to know your brand while you get to know them. This results in a trust-based relationship that, more often than not, leads to conversion and sales.
Interesting Related Article: “Five Helpful Tips for Creating an Email Marketing Campaign That Stands Out“
