If email marketing is part of your digital marketing strategy in 2024, you need to be prepared. The field of email marketing is dynamic, and as the new year comes, new challenges and trends will surely greet brands and businesses. One thing is for sure, though: email personalization will help email marketers gain a significant advantage over the competition.
What is email personalization?
Email personalization can be easily defined as the marketing tactic or practice in which brands or businesses tailor email marketing content based on the individual recipients’ personal information, characteristics, preferences, behaviors, demographics, and more. This is done to create a more personalized, engaging, and relevant experience for the recipients. This, in turn, can lead to higher engagement, better information retention, higher leads and conversions, and better overall effectiveness for the email marketing campaign.
Email personalization can appear in various ways, including:
- Personalized salutations – The email addresses the recipient by their first name or full name in the email greeting, subject line, or more.
- Email segmentation – This groups email recipients into segments based on specific criteria (such as location, age, purchase history, event, or interests) and sends specific or targeted messages and campaigns to each segment.
- Behavioral triggers – This means automated emails are sent based on a user’s behavior on a brand’s website. This includes abandoned cart emails, post-purchase follow-ups, or re-engagement campaigns for people who haven’t engaged with the business for a while.
- Personalized recommendations – This can be a section of the email content where brands recommend products or services based on the recipient’s past purchases, browsing history, or preferences.
- Relevant and dynamic content – This is customizing the content of the email based on the recipient’s preferences, past interactions, or behavior. This may involve showing different product recommendations, promotions, or content blocks.
- Localization – This refers to adapting content based on the recipient’s location or language. This helps make it more relevant to the recipients’ cultural context.
- Time-based triggers – This is sending emails at optimal times based on the recipient’s time zone or their historical patterns of engagement with the business.
Email personalization has brought a lot of benefits to those who have utilized and perfected the technique. As the digital marketing field and consumer industry continue to evolve, personalized emails will only continue to connect with people.
Here are a few statistics that prove how significant email personalization can be:
- Email segmentation is one of the most effective forms of email personalization for 51% of marketing influencers, according to Instapage.
- Some brands also report an 8x improvement in clickthrough rates when it comes to emails with personalized videos.
- According to Sender, 80% of consumers are most likely to purchase from brands that engage in personalized marketing.
- Email personalization is also believed to lower the cost of customer acquisition for brands by up to 50% and boost revenues by 5-15%.
- ActiveTrail also reported that 52% of customers will turn to other alternative shopping destinations if an email lacks personalization.
These are just a few of the facts that show the potential of email personalization. If your brand is not finding ways to personalize your email marketing, then you might be missing out on opportunities and growth.
What are the best email personalization strategies to try?
If your brand hasn’t tried email marketing before or you are looking forward to finding new ways of utilizing your emails effectively, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the best practices or any new trends.
Successful email personalization involves a combination of thoughtful approaches to create a more engaging and relevant shopping experience or buyer’s journey for the recipients.
Here are some of the best email personalization strategies you can try in 2024:
Segment your emails
Make sure to divide your email list into segments based on demographics, preferences, behavior, events, or other relevant criteria. This will ensure that you will only be sending relevant emails and content to recipients who want them. Create targeted campaigns for each segment, delivering content that resonates with their specific needs and interests.
Experiment with your subject lines
The subject line is one of the first things recipients will see in an email. This makes it important to have a catchy and personalized subject line to greet them. Personalized subject lines can lead to an average open rate of 7.4%, according to Instapage. So try experimenting with them; include the recipients’ first names or other personalization tokens. You can also use emojis to show friendliness and excitement, or time-related words to show urgency or sensitivity.
Keep your content dynamic
Dynamic content personalization led to a 52% increase in conversions for users, according to Litmus. This is because dynamic content keeps things engaging and drums up excitement for specific campaigns or products. You can use dynamic content blocks to showcase special offers, countdown timers, social feeds, or even live weather feeds.
Of course, you can also tailor the content of your emails based on recipient data, such as location, past purchases, or their browsing history.
Try to include product recommendations
Product recommendations can also be part of dynamic email content. You can leverage machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) to provide personalized product or content recommendations to your recipients.
Analyze purchase history and user behavior to suggest products that align with individual preferences. This makes it easier for you to connect with your audience and let them know that you care about their preferences and interests.
Use surveys and ask for feedback
Email marketing is also a good way for you to integrate surveys and feedback forms. Collect information directly from your audience through surveys or preference centers. Use feedback to adjust your personalization strategies, improve the relevance of your emails, and even improve your product offerings.
If you can personalize these surveys even more according to the recent purchase or specific event, it would create an even better experience for your audience.
Automate your emails
Email automation and behavioral triggers are also musts when it comes to email personalization strategies. Set up automated email sequences triggered by specific user actions or behaviors. This includes abandoned cart emails, sign-ups, or purchase follow-ups. You can also send follow-up emails based on the recipient’s interactions with previous emails or website visits.
Of course, you can also automate your emails based on time. Send emails at times when your recipients are most likely to engage, considering their time zone and historical behavior.
You can experiment with sending emails on specific days or during particular events relevant to your audience.
Invest in your email design
You can also invest in your email design this 2024. According to The 2023 State of Email Report by Litmus, about 35% of companies have an email design specialist. This number will most likely continue to grow this year.
Email design is essential and helps ensure that every piece of information and content in your email is presented in the best possible and most effective way for the recipients. If you have a confusing or incomprehensible design, then you might negatively impact your campaign and your results.
Your various business emails are an important tool to build reputation, connection, and growth. These email personalization tips and strategies will help you send your message to your recipients and achieve successful results.
Marketing Experts PH can help you navigate your email marketing strategy. Talk to us today and find out how you can strengthen your email marketing.
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