Many companies are failing to catch up with email personalization – it has been reported that just 5% of all businesses are actively working on such techniques. This is perplexing as marketers are well aware of their benefits. The vast majority of companies will agree that personalization is crucial to success, both at present and in the future. You don’t need to struggle with email marketing personalization. There are many easy ways to use it, which this guide is about to share.
Elements of a Personalized Email
Using the first name of the recipient is a tried - and tired - tactic. Personalization that gets real, lasting results goes beyond that. An email should come from a person. Recipients are more likely to relate to and trust an email that’s from an actual human being and not a business. Use a face rather than a logo along with a person’s name in the “from” line. A reliable people finder can help you learn more about a given recipient.
Personalize Your Company
Client data isn’t the be-all and end-all of personalization. Brands can be personalized as well. This approach introduces the human factor in interaction with clients, softening the edges of business. HubSpot performed an experiment, which involved a series of tests in an attempt to achieve personalization as well as enhance client engagement. They sent two types of emails: one from the company and one from a person. The second email generated about 300 more clicks and a clickthrough rate of 0.96%, compared to about 0.75% for the email from the company. This shows that clients react to personalization more positively.
Pitfalls of Adding a Name to the Subject Line
A study by Stanford Business School found that doing this will boost sales by almost a third and make your email 20% more likely to be opened. Going overboard with this trick, however, will ultimately achieve the opposite effect. Your readers might even start to feel weird about seeing their names used so frequently. Readers will begin avoiding your brand if you don’t use email personalization techniques properly.
Grabbing Attention
The “from” line has a bigger font and text on many mobile and desktop clients. This helps people see who’s sending an email, based on which they decide whether to open it or not. In addition, the subject line has a heavier and darker text. This is to make it stand out.
Relevance
Relevance is the cornerstone of email personalization. The average employee gets more than 100 emails a day. People’s inboxes are overflowing. To attract attention, the content you’re offering must be relevant. If it isn’t, there is a great risk of it ending up in the trash.
Collect Data
This is another component of a personalized email. You’ll be aware of the type of content your customers require at a certain stage if you collect sufficient data about them. For instance, you gain insight if they look for a specific solution or product on your website. Then, you can create and send them a timely email.
So how do you collect data? You can begin by gathering information on signup forms. Ask questions beyond their name and email when they subscribe. Ask for their job, birthday, location, or more in other fields.
Ask for Reasons for Visiting
To be able to personalize your audience in an effective and straightforward way, you should ask them why they want to become a user (if that’s the case), why they are visiting your site, or why they subscribed to your newsletter. These are simple but very valuable questions. Eventually, your company will start sending very targeted emails based on this insightful data. If you’re sending all of your users the same email, they will realize it eventually and lose interest. People have different reasons to use a product or service.
Use Time and Place
Some times of day are better for sending out emails than others. These times differ depending on the person. Some prefer to receive them in the morning, others – after work. In addition, they may be on different time zones. You might have clients in different countries who’re getting emails at less than optimal times. If you’re targeting only those in your time zone, you’re missing out on international customers.
It may be a good idea to segment users into different time zones with the purpose of all subscribers receiving them at a reasonable time. You can set your emails to arrive at 1:00 pm for each time zone, for example. Case studies of companies who have done this show that emails are most impactful when they are sent at this time. That alone won’t guarantee results, though. You’ll also need to make the content timely and relevant. You might analyze user histories in order to establish the best possible time to send an email.
Companies who make this effort experience significantly higher clickthrough rates. It impacts their sales positively as well. This might also lead to an increase in email revenue, proving the significance of timeliness for emails.
Landing Pages and Personalization
Your business can do much more than simply personalize your emails, although that’s a very important step toward effectively targeting a client. You can combine landing pages and personalized emails to augment your success rate. Your landing page and email should have consistent text, a consistent appearance, and an identical (and personalized) message inciting the customer to action. As a result, they will enjoy a consistent experience, rendering them more prone to convert. After all, you’re delivering personalized data-based content.
A health organization achieved impressive results after making this a component of its strategy. They wanted to pair landing pages with personalized emails with the purpose of lead generation and increasing membership subscriptions. Then, they created a few landing pages corresponding to various client segments and wrote customized email copy for each one. Both the landing pages and the emails had similar content with identical emphasis, attempting to convert clients depending on concrete business interests.
The company witnessed a high increase in conversion and clickthrough rates, about eightfold to be exact. This was evidence that clients respond to a more targeted and personalized campaign positively. These campaigns should be uniform across all areas. To make your company seem more personal and less formal, you can go further. Make emails seem like they were sent to the recipient personally. Use the first person singular and plural and use a conversational tone.
