Why do you need email marketing personalization tips?
The Cheers theme song said it best:
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name!”
We enjoy eating at restaurants where the server remembers our names and already knows what to recommend based on what we’ve previously enjoyed. We appreciate it when the front desk clerk at the gym knows our schedule and wishes us good luck because we’re about to go in for a leg workout. A birthday message is always welcome.
The Internet is no different.
In fact, the positive effect of a tailored experience might be amplified online since we are bombarded non-stop by impersonal, sterile messages of BUY!/CLICK!/WATCH!/SIGN-UP!, making the personalized ones seem more special. The rarer you make your emails appear, the more likely your audience will be to respond to your Call To Action.
Technology has allowed companies to narrow their messaging and make it exponentially more relevant to the person receiving it and simultaneously provide this experience to a virtually infinite number of people through automation.
This brings up a question in the mind of the average consumer:
“In this day and age, why build long-term relationships with brands that don’t take the extra time and care to differentiate between your needs and the ones of your neighbor?”
Regular emails feel like a company is talking to everybody and nobody in particular, casting as wide a net as possible by shouting their offers from the digital rooftops. On the other hand, personalized emails give the impression of a 1:1 interaction, making the person in question feel seen and much more likely to engage right back with your brand.
So let’s go over what you can do to get started with this concept and some possible ways in which you can apply it in your business!
Collect The Right Data
No amount of email marketing personalization tips will help if you don’t establish a strong base first. Personalization in email marketing starts with gathering the data that you will use to craft an experience for each user that is specific to them. But how do you go about getting this information, anyway? Here are 4 of our favorite methods!
Data collection email marketing personalization tips:
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Cookies – If you are transparent about collecting cookies on your website and ask for user consent, they can become an invaluable source of information that will fuel your email personalization strategy moving forward. Just make sure they are first-party and not third-party cookies, since the industry as a whole is moving away from them.
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Forms/Questionnaires – This is where you can let your creativity shine and ask for information that could only be learned from the people themselves. A good practice is to withhold your value-adding lead magnets until the prospect fills out a form with data that you can use down the line in your email marketing strategy personalization.
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Surveys & Reviews – Unlike the previous two methods, these can be used only after a customer has already had some level of engagement with your brand. You can send them out yearly or during specific times like holidays, but not too often, as they can become tiring if they’re deployed back to back. Use them to gauge the satisfaction level of your audience regarding your products and services while noting any feedback they might provide.
Now let’s talk about exactly what pieces of information you should acquire. Here are just some, but you can always ask for any information you think might be of any use:
- Age
- Interests
- Job Title
- Gender
- Other Services/Products They Enjoy
- Habits
- Industry
- Company Name
- Full Name
Unlike others on this list, things like name, timezone, company, city, and job title can be gathered from social media profiles or LinkedIn to aid in cold email personalization like this:
“Hello, [Name]! I know you are the [Job Title] at [Company Name], so I thought you were the perfect person to send this email to…”
Segment Your List Accordingly
Take the information mentioned above and segment the people in your email list into different categories. Add to the list other differentiation factors like ones based on behavior:
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Purchase History
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Browsing History
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Buying Frequency
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Interest Level
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Stage in Sales Cycle
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Last Order Data
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Average Order Size
Once segmented, send targeted email sequences specific to their circumstances.
Don’t spread yourself too thin. The categories should be designed with multiple factors in mind to give a better impression of a particular buyer profile.
Tinker With Technology
More than all other email marketing personalization tips on here, this is the one that can have the most impact.
An email marketing automation flow for the previously discussed sequences can be easily set up through email marketing campaign tools. Out of all the personalized marketing tools out there, some of our favorites are ActiveCampaign, Ontraport, Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft) and Maropost.
Look at what benefits each of them offers and see if their brand fits your way of doing things. For example, you may find that the ActiveCampaign email personalization style meets your needs far better than the B2B solutions of Keap.
However, both B2C and B2B email marketing automation solutions should offer integration with a CRM platform like Sticky.io. This is done so you can leverage the data collected from its systems and offer more robust and comprehensive user profiles, opening the door to even more impactful personalization.
8 Ways to Implement these email marketing personalization tips
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Birthday messages with special offers and coupons.
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Follow-ups to cross and upsell (offering complementary products or services).
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Subject Line with the person’s name – Let’s say you’re living in a shared house with five other people. As you’re going through the pile of letters on the hallway table, the ones that will catch your attention will undoubtedly be those with your name on them, as opposed to the other 27 addressed to nobody in particular.
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Follow-ups with tips and instructions for a product they just purchased, to make the most of it.
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Cart abandonment emails, mentioning the products in their cart and offering a discount or an alternative product.
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End-of-year look back like Spotify and Facebook do (timed to go out at the end of the year or on anniversaries such as“2 years since you purchased this item” or 1 year since you signed up for this course! How has it positively impacted your life?”.
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Useful reminders that make someone glad they subscribed to your list when they see it like maintenance milestones (time to get your yearly car examination), something on their wishlist being on sale, a new product that matches their interests launching soon, or an event they wanted to attend happening in the next week.
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Congratulations on achieving certain levels of your loyal customer/VIP rewards system.
Final Words
We hope you have found value in our email marketing personalization tips. If at any point you feel like you would like to reap the benefits of what we’ve talked about, but you neither have the time nor the technical know-how to implement it, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll schedule a call to discuss tangible and impactful ways in which you can put these email marketing personalization tips into practice to scale your business!
