Personalised emails can generate up to six times more revenue than generic campaigns, according to the Data & Marketing Association’s Email Benchmarking Report. But to many brands, “personalisation” starts and stops with adding a [first.name] tag at the beginning of an email. Consumers are too keyed up on emails to know this is just an
Personalised emails can generate up to six times more revenue than generic campaigns, according to the Data & Marketing Association’s Email Benchmarking Report.
But to many brands, “personalisation” starts and stops with adding a [first.name] tag at the beginning of an email.
Consumers are too keyed up on emails to know this is just an automated trick, and the email isn’t really written just for them.
Which means brands relying on this are just missing out on better engagement, loyalty and revenue.
If anything, they’re just increasing the risk of unsubscribes, spam complaints and damage to their reputation.
With smart tools and automation, there are loads more ways to create actual personalised emails without it becoming a manual task that takes loads of time.
In this article, you’ll learn how to do personalisation in email properly.
Email personalisation is about matching your content to the context of why you’re sending the email.
It’s about using your subscriber and CRM data (demographics, purchase or browser history, customer behaviour and preferences and other information) to deliver relevant messages at the right time.
Think of it like a salesperson knocking on your door. The knock on the door might get your attention for a minute, but if the message isn’t something that interests you, you’re going to close the door on them.
And you’re probably going to start looking out the window next time someone knocks, so you don’t get caught out again.
Same goes for emails. You might notice the email in your inbox, but if it doesn’t appeal to you, you’re just going to delete it (or put the sender in spam)
Email personalisation improves your chances of someone opening your emails and taking the action you want them to.
Targeted email campaigns have been known to produce as much as 760% more revenue than non-targeted campaigns.
For brands and marketers, there are lots of benefits to adding personalisation to email campaigns:
Stronger loyalty
More than three-quarters (76%) of customers say that receiving personalised communication has been a factor in them considering a brand.
Higher customer lifetime value
Nearly eight in 10 customers say personalised emails make them more likely to repurchase from a brand.
Avoid spam filters
You’ve probably done this yourself. You got an email from a brand recommending products based on what you’ve bought before. You’d be more likely to open that email and have a look (even if you’re not particularly interested in buying something).
You’ll have also had brand emails that have nothing to do with anything you’ve bought before, or are even interested in. And these emails ended up in the bin or spam folder.
Personalisation is a broad term, and with the amount of data you collect on customers today, there are loads of ways you can personalise communications to stay relevant and improve the chances of getting sales.
Basic personalisation
Use simple demographics like gender to create targeted campaigns for particular products.
For example, instead of having a generic 20% off sale that goes to your entire email list, you could send men and women-focused sales content to make it more relevant.
Depending on your service, you could even use location data to create area offers depending on where your customers live.
You could also use personal milestones like birthdays or anniversaries to send offers at certain times of the year that are personal to your audience.
Segmented email campaigns
With this, you’d divide your audience into groups (like frequent buyers vs first-time customers)
Segmenting your audience like this would allow you to offer “VIP” discounts to one segment of your list, with “introductory” offers sent to first-timers.
In B2B, you could segment your list by job role, tailoring messages based on what the person needs to know to make a buying decision.
Or you could use previous purchases or category interests to send offers to customers based on what they’ve bought before or have shown an interest in.
Use behavioural triggers
With email automation, you can use actions like cart abandonment, browsing behaviour and re-engagement based on last email engagement to target messages and products at customers based on their own interests.
For example, if someone puts an item in a cart and doesn’t complete the purchase, a cart abandonment email reminds them they were buying something and nudges them towards completing the sale.
If a customer hasn’t opened your email for three months, send a re-engagement email (perhaps with an offer or discount) and get them interested in your brand again before you remove them from your CRM.
AI, dynamic and predictive personalisation
AI can use data to identify trends in consumer behaviour or interests to create offers or content that target specific interests or provide certain recommendations. Dynamic content blocks also allow you to display different content to your list based on certain criteria.
Quick ways to improve email personalisation
If you’re already doing email marketing and want to start improving personalisation quickly, then these are the emails, automations and flows we’d recommend you create first to get you started.
If you’re new to email, then use these when you set up your account to get yourself off on the right foot.
Abandoned cart emails
Use automation to trigger this email 24 hours after someone puts an item in a cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. Use the email to show the item the customer left in the cart, and even offer a small incentive to complete the purchase.
Track the sales from these emails to check whether they’re increasing sales and revenue.
Create onboarding flows
For B2B email marketing these are effective to tailor emails based on the buyer stage (trial user vs new customer). Use your trial user flow to guide users through the product and provide social proof. Measure any uptake in sign-ups.
For new customers, set up flows guiding them through the set-up and management of their product with top tips and user guides. Again, measure engagement.
Set up product recommendations
Take user history, like browsing or purchase history and set up emails suggesting other relevant products. You can A/B test these emails with generic “top 10 bestseller” offers to see which email type converts best.
Use AI to optimise send times
Experimenting with delivery times can help you find the best times to send emails to improve engagement when your subscribers are most active. Use AI to identify trends in open rates or click-throughs.
Email personalisation is a constant process of testing, cleaning data and adapting to new tools and even privacy rules.
This is a quick step-by-step process for creating an email personalisation framework:
Audit your data
Review your customer data in your CRM to ensure you have a clean database. Remove duplicate contacts, fix errors with information (like names, emails or phone numbers) and confirm you have consent for marketing communication in line with GDPR compliance
Pick the right ESP
Choose an email service provider that syncs with your CRM and has features like segmentation, automation and dynamic content.
HubSpot, Klaviyo and MailChimp are all good options with reasonable starter prices if you’re new to email marketing.
Create your workflows
Segment your audience based on your chosen criteria (demographics, job role, previous purchases, buyer stage) and set up your trigger campaigns like your welcome sequence, cart abandonment emails and re-engagement campaigns.
Set up tests
Create basic A/B tests to experiment with different parts of your email, like subject lines, CTAs, send times and personalisation types.
Use this data to refine what email types and messages your audience responds to.
Proper personalisation can get you great results, but it can go wrong if you don’t set things up correctly.
Risks of bad data
Misspelt names, outdated information, and wrong information can result in you sending irrelevant content and offers to your audience.
Compliance failures
In the UK, privacy is a big thing when it comes to marketing emails. You have to consider the risks of GDPR and ensure you’re only sending emails to people who have specifically opted into receiving your marketing emails.
The research tells us that personalised emails achieve better results than generic messaging.
Targeting the right messages at the right people at the right time ensures your emails not only get opened, but that customers are more likely to take the actions you want them to.
If you need help with your email marketing, get in touch for a free strategy session with our Director of Strategy and Growth, Sam.
He’ll go through your current email activity to audit what you’re doing and make suggestions for improvements, or see how you can quickly put emails into your existing marketing efforts.
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