Imagine this– you have the ability to reach each and every one of your subscribers as though they’re someone you know, like a trusted friend. You call your subscribers by name, provide them with messages they adore, and deliver content that’s perfectly tailored to their needs. As a result, your subscribers look forward to receiving emails from your brand.
Thankfully, with a top email service provider and the use of personalization, you don’t have to use your imagination to make this scenario come true. By recording information about your subscribers and segmenting your audience, you can create personalized campaigns that delight your audience.
Email personalization is the perfect way to individually reach each of your unique subscribers. Personalized campaigns drive 18X more revenue than email without personalization.
Want to make personalization a reality for your brand? We’re sharing 6 ways to use personalization in your next email campaign.
1. Personalize your copy
How much better do you feel when an old friend walks up to you and starts a conversation by saying your name, rather than “Hey, you!” It makes a world of difference in terms of setting the tone for the conversation.
The same is true for email messages. Subscribers want you to give them a personal shout out, and like hearing their own name. That’s why emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
For example, Red Lobster is killing it when it comes to personalizing the subject line. They often send reward points updates that include the subscribers first name.
But, Red Lobster don’t stop there with the personalized shout outs. They also include the first name of the subscriber in the content of the email. This is another winning strategy and a way to remind customers you’re concerned about their individual experience with your brand.
2. Personalize your imagery
Another awesome way to increase your click-through rates, is to personalize your images. You can personalize images based on different data and customer profiles.
For example, if you have location data, you can customize images by location. In a recent campaign, Virgin created three different images for subscribers in the US, UK, and Australia, and sent the corresponding image to subscribers in the 3 different locations.
The result? Click-through rates increased by 29%.
You can dynamically change images based on other types of data you collect as well. This could include gender, loyalty program status, weather patterns, personal preferences, and more.
3. Personalize your offers
Did you know personalized emails can improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversion rates by 10%?
You can enjoy the increase in click-through rates and conversions by personalizing your offers. Savvy marketers will use data to create customer profiles and then create different content offers for different types of subscribers.
The possibilities for personalizing offers are robust and endless, but here are some brands that are really crushing it when it comes to personalizing offers.
Adidas personalizes by gender
Adidas personalized offers by gender. Rather than sending their entire collection of men’s and women’s shoes to everyone, they send only the men’s offers to males and women’s offers to females.
Uber personalizes based on location
Uber is another brand that personalizes their offers based on location. They know where their subscribers live or at least where they typically travel, and send offers based on location.
This particular subscriber travels to SFO, so Uber sent them an offer to travel to SFO for only $20. Personalization based on location is the perfect way to ensure subscribers open offers and use them.
Chewy personalizes based on past purchases
Chewy is another brand that is using data to personalize offers. They keep track of the products customers previously purchased and then send a reminder email to reorder when they know the product is getting low.
You may have the best offer in the entire world, but if it’s not relevant to your customers, they won’t care about it. Use data to personalize offers to each of your subscribers.
4. Personalize your product recommendations
In theory, it would be awesome if consumers purchased whatever you recommended to them. In practice, subscribers will only purchase recommendations if they are relevant to past purchases or personal preferences.
With the help of an email service provider, you can integrate a customer’s recent purchases or browsing history into your email marketing. Marketers can use data on customer behavior to create more relevant email campaigns. When relevancy increases, cross-selling and up-selling becomes more viable.
Making targeted and relevant product recommendations in email marketing helps foster a long-term relationship and increases the lifetime value of the customer.
5. Personalize cart abandonment emails
Want to hear something shocking? $4 trillion of revenue is lost each year through cart abandonment. However, 65% of abandoned carts can be recaptured within 24 hours, and emails sent within 60 minutes of cart abandonment have a 40% open rate.
You can increase the likelihood of conversion when you personalize abandoned cart reminders based on customer data.
J.Crew uses the shopping bag
J.Crew uses a combination of fun copywriting and personalized content to urge customers to finish purchases.
When a customer abandons their cart, J. Crew sends a reminder email with a nice image of what is already in their shopping bag. With the simple click of a button, subscribers can return to their J. Crew cart and finish the purchase.
Jack Wills sends recommendations
Jack Wills will send cart reminders, but they take it a step further by offering product recommendations based on customer preferences.
With the help of email marketing, not only is Jack Wills able to send cart abandonment reminders, but they are also able to offer upsell opportunities based on what the customer may like.
To sweeten the deal, they draw special attention to a 50% off sale. What shopper can resist that?
6. Personalize based on behavior
A more complex, but insanely beneficial email marketing tactic is to personalize based on customer behaviors.
Email marketers can compile data from social properties, back-end system, and email service provider to send more relevant offers. These highly targeted segments are based on customer interested, behavior, and engagement with their marketing properties. Once lists are segmented, marketers can trigger automated customer journeys with personal offers.
There are several different ways to personalize messages, automate content, and segment lists based on behavior. How you end up employing this practice will depend on your company, the data you collect, and what works best for your brand.
Great News is a brand that is doing a good job. By using a collection of personal data from subscribers, they are able to report on individual perks, offer relevant deals to different consumers, and share a unique referral code, among other things.
In this day and age of marketing, using data to enhance the customer experience is not only a great way to engage customers, but it’s a must to stay competitive.
Wrap up
Personalizing your email content is the perfect way to reach subscribers, keep messages relevant, and increase your conversion rates. With the help of a top email service provider, you can personalize messages using data, dynamic content, segmentation, and more.