Personalized email marketing: a complete guide

There are a lot of similarities between how businesses interact with clients, and how individuals interact with each other. Take dating, for example. When attempting to establish a possible relationship the initial messaging — as shared through eye contact, introductory conversations, body language, etc. — is vital. It shares valuable information about those involved, and helps those involved make informed decisions about the relationship. When the initial messaging is forgettable and impersonal, the recipient will be unlikely to respond favorably. Overused pick-up lines don’t score dates, and spammy, impersonal marketing content won’t score customers.

Your individual clients don’t want to be treated like just some faceless customer; they want to be treated like the only customer in the world. In order to be able to do that across email marketing for a wide variety of clients and leads, you need email personalization and an effective email marketing system.

What you’ll learn:

• What is Email Personalization?
• Potential Benefits of Personalized Email Marketing
• Finding the Right Email Marketing System
• Salesforce’s Email Personalization

Email personalization is a dynamic way to deliver individualized content to your customers based on their data. By gathering and analyzing relevant information businesses can craft email messaging that is personally applicable to individual customers. This results in emails that feel less like a sales pitch, and more like the beginning of a conversation. Customers crave this kind of personal connection. Experian reports that not only is personalization proven to lift transaction rates and revenue, personalized promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rate.

Effective email-personalization strategies provide a number of benefits.

Users are more engaged when email content is personalized. That increased engagement leads to higher open and click rates, which eventually results in improved sales and a strong ROI.

A personalized emails continue to build the relationships beyond the initial sale. This opens the door to remarket to these customers who have already committed to purchases before. Remarketing can boost advertisement response-rates by as much as 400%.

Personalized emails are especially effective for analytics. By tracking and evaluating email data, you’ll be able to use analytics to streamline your organization. Segmentation will give you power to market to large groups on a personal level. A/B tests will show you what is and isn’t working in your various campaigns. The insights gained through in-depth analysis can then also be shared via advanced, real-time reporting features.

Despite the effectiveness of email personalization, surprisingly few businesses are doing it. Econsultancy reports only 5% of companies personalize extensively. This is reflected on the consumer side as well, with only 21% of consumers reporting that they've received a memorable promotional email in the past two months. There’s a lot of room in this space to gain an edge over your competition. Email-personalization best practices you can make your campaign more effective.

Most email-personalization campaigns will rely on CRM-based software. Here are some features to look for when choosing email-personalization software:

There is much more involved in email personalization than inserting your contact’s name into the subject line. True personalization requires that your messaging is effective on all levels, and that takes the right tools. Customizable templates enable you to use only the most effective language in your messages, while also avoiding the look and feel of a form letter. Predictive technology can anticipate customer desires and enable you to craft content that speaks to your customers individually.

Email automation ensures that whenever a customer should be receiving an email — such as when first signing up for service, after completing a transaction, or during special offers on items they might be interested in purchasing — a personalized, relevant email is crafted and sent. Thanks to built-in event triggers email marketing systems can help you keep up with your customers. Trigger emails have a 152% higher open rate compared with traditional emails.

Your email-marketing platform should be something that compliments them and boosts your other existing systems. Likewise, it should be easy for your employees to use, otherwise the associated training costs will end up eating into your potential ROI. Usability across all fronts should be a key consideration when choosing a platform.

Your business isn’t static. Your email-marketing solution needs to be able to grow and change to fit your needs. A flexible tool is important so that you’ll be able maintain a solution that works with your company, and that will continue to do so far into the future.

Audience segmentation enables organizations to group customers and prospective customers by a number of characteristics. This ensures that the emails being sent are relevant for the recipients. The more you are able to segment your audience, the more personalized your messages become, leading to higher click rates and improved ROI.