Personalization in Email Marketing: Benefits and Tips to Try

The days of cold calling may be over, but that doesn’t mean that outbound marketing doesn’t work. Email marketing has undeniably replaced physical mailers for many brands – and for good reason. 

According to statistics compiled by Backlinko, 42.3% of Americans subscribe to email lists to receive discounts and other special offers. What’s more, nearly 60% of consumers say that the emails they receive have an impact on their buying decisions.

That said, not all email blasts are equally effective. Spam Laws report that 14.5 billion spam emails are sent each day and that 45% of all emails sent are considered to be spam. 

Even if you’re not technically spamming your customers, your emails could end up in the trash if you don’t stand out for the right reasons.

One effective way to convince recipients to open the messages in their inbox? Personalize them. Let’s take a closer look at what this means, why you should personalize your marketing emails, and how to get started.

What is Personalization in Email Marketing?

• First, let’s define what “personalization” means for email marketing.
• It basically means that you craft an email that’s specifically tailored to your recipient. 
• This usually involves utilizing the data you’ve gathered about your target audience to create a connection.
• Personalized email marketing may vary depending on the tools you use and how granular you want to get. But the main goal is to make an email more relevant to the recipient.

Why Should You Personalize Your Marketing Emails?

Relevancy can have a big impact on marketing conversion rates.

For example, a white label SEO company will suggest that you optimize your site for the search terms that are most pertinent to your ideal customer. As a result, you’ll be more likely to appear in web searches performed by those customers. And if you provide real value, you’ll be more likely to make a sale.

It’s a similar situation with personalized email marketing. If you can tweak your emails to appeal to specific customers and provide them with more value than a generic email blast, there’s a better chance that those customers will open the email, click on what’s inside, and even buy something. 

In fact, OptinMonster estimates that 47% of email recipients will open a message just based on the subject line alone. Not surprisingly, emails with personalized subject lines have a 26% higher open rate than those without.

According to SocialMediaToday.com, over half of customers will actually buy from a competitor if the emails they receive from a brand aren’t personalized. Generally speaking, personalized emails come with higher open rates and click-through rates. That can have a positive impact on your revenue stream. 

But it’s about more than a one-time purchase. Personalized emails can allow you to create more substantial connections with your customers.

When you personalize your emails, you’ll show your customers that you care about them and their experience. And as we’ll see in the next section, it’s not difficult to personalize your emails – so the return-on-investment potential is huge.

Not only will personalized emails improve your conversion rates, but they can also improve your brand perception. If you go about it the right way, you can strengthen your customer relationships and build trust while maximizing your growth potential.

How Can You Make Your Marketing Emails More Personal?

With those benefits in mind, it’s clear that marketing email personalization can pay off. But how do you go about this process?

Fortunately, you don’t have to manually create new emails for every single customer. In many cases, you can use the software tools at your disposal to use the information you already have and program them to automatically personalize your messages.

Here are just a few tips you’ll want to consider when personalizing your marketing emails.

• Include Their Name: Mentioning the recipient’s name in the subject line and the opening line of an email may not seem like a big deal, but it can have a huge impact on conversions. While you don’t want to overuse this tactic, it can be highly effective when implemented on occasion.
  
• Use Activity to Customize Content: Did you know you can trigger emails based on user behavior? You can personalize emails to be sent out after a customer makes the first purchase after they sign up for an email list, or after they abandon their shopping cart. You can also set up an email to be sent after the customer makes a purchase to suggest other items they might like. This can make your marketing emails more relevant and timely to your customers, especially if you provide them with some kind of incentive. 

• Segment Your Email List: When a customer creates an account on your site, makes a purchase, or takes a survey, you have an opportunity to collect data that you can use in your marketing emails. You’ll be able to segment your email lists based on attributes like gender, age, location, and other interests to ensure your messages really hit the mark. From there, you can send product recommendations, special offers, and other promotional information that’s likely to interest them.

Ultimately, personalizing your marketing emails is an easy step you can take to improve your results. Since you’re already collecting customer data, you can put that information to good use and get more out of your marketing budget with personalized emails.

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