Have you ever received a personalized email? If so, how did it make you feel? What did it make you think? Email personalization is a strategy that can give you some serious success in your marketing campaigns.
There’s nothing more effective than a successful connection in business. Whether you’re selling a product to a customer, winning over an investor, or sweet-talking a landlord — connections matter. And that’s a lesson that carries over to email marketing.
The average person receives 121 emails a day. Scary, right? With that in mind, you want your email to stand out. The best way to do that is through email marketing personalization.
In this guide, we’ll help you to understand why being personal matters so much in business. Get ready for definitions, benefits, examples, and how-tos. In just ten minutes, we’ll provide you with the most comprehensive introduction to personalize your marketing emails.
What Is Email Personalization?
Email personalization is where the email content is uniquely targeting the individual recipient. This approach is much more effective, boosting open rates, engagement, and more. If you want to increase your profits (and who doesn’t), then this is an excellent strategy to learn. It’s hugely influential as a psychological tool to drive connection and rapidly build rapport.
Did you know that a personalized subject line alone makes a recipient 26% more likely to open an email? There are numerous ways to utilize this strategy, ranging from the timing of your emails to their actual content.
The most obvious email personalization strategy is to add the recipient’s name to the top. Instead of not referring to them or adding a general greeting, you purposefully insert individual names into your messages.
Alternatively, you could invest one step further in something like birthday marketing. This more tactical strategy involves collecting subscribers’ birthdays so you can reach out on their special day. It’s playing the long game slightly, but sending out a personal message builds rapport.
You might think that these strategies mean waving goodbye to automated emailing and valuable software. However, just because you’re adding personal details doesn’t mean you’re relying on manual work.
Growing customer loyalty with marketing automation is actually easy with the right email marketing platform. There are usually plug-ins or features that specifically allow you to incorporate these more individualized details. This way, you can still utilize individualized approaches, even when using strategies like email blast marketing.
5 Benefits of Using Personalization in Emails
There are tons of reasons why you should be using personalization in your emails. Generally speaking, it’s a hugely effective tool to promote better connections with customers. And why wouldn’t you want to be closer to your target audience and consumers? Connection translates to sales.
But we can dig deeper than that surface-level summary. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the specific ways that personalized emails can boost your campaign. Here are the top five things to consider.
1. Lower Unsubscribing Rate
The length of business email lists means nothing if people unsubscribe rapidly. A lower subscription rate is a sign of a healthy email list and a successful campaign. And how do you achieve this? Through building connections with recipients and associations of value.
Addressing people on a more personal level reduces their likelihood of severing that cord. The content also appears less spammy, a common trigger for unsubscription.
If you’re providing relevant content with an individualized edge, you’re on to being a winner. It’s easy to see why retaining your email list (and hopefully growing it even longer) is such a positive thing.
2. Happier Customers
Email marketing KPIs are great but tend to skim over vital details, such as whether customers are happy. Without investing in sentiment or reputation analysis tools and collecting feedback, this can be hard to measure. So, it’s good to know there’s a simple approach to boosting customer happiness in your email marketing.
By addressing customers more personally, you are investing in them as individuals. That feels nice, doesn’t it? It shows you care and communicates that you value them and your interactions.
Everyone likes to feel valued. Personalized emails are a great hack and a one-way ticket to a happier contact list.
3. Increased Profit
We can’t deny that profit is one of the most essential benefits of personalizing your emails. While these benefits contribute towards a more successful business, you’ll also notice a direct profit increase.
That’s because, with more success in your email interactions, there’s more chance of closing sales. For instance, if you get a higher open rate on a promotional email, there’s a higher likelihood of a purchase. And with fewer unsubscribers and happier customers, more people will be ready to engage with and buy from your business.
It sounds simple, but the scale of positive impact can be overwhelming — and for all the right reasons. Track the difference! There’s nothing more motivating than seeing those extra dollars coming in.
4. Higher Open Rate
As we’ve just mentioned, personalizing your emails can rocket your opening rate. There are a few reasons behind this and ways to approach it.
The first one is that you could incorporate an individualized subject line. When you adopt some degree of personalization in the subject line, a recipient is 26% more likely to open an email. How amazing is that?
Secondly, regularly referencing people by name in emails and building rapport can encourage better opening rates. Recipients may just look at your emails more favorably due to positive associations or familiarity.
Lastly, if you personalize the time of emails, that can help you pull the “right place at the right time” card. You can see how quickly all these methods of personalization add up to create a perfect storm for better opening rates.
5. More Branding Potential
Opening the door to that level of personal relationship leaves more room for your branding. You can build more of a sense of personality and really draw on that rapport to emphasize your business’ ethos. All of this is great for propelling your company towards success.
That more conversational tone can make you appear more authentic. However, you can still add differentiating factors to the text, like careful phrase choice or even stats, to appear professional.
Life insurance companies might adopt a responsible yet calm and reassuring tone, while bars might take an upbeat and casual approach. However, adding that initial personal touch gives you more opportunity to introduce your brand character.
5 Personalized Email Examples
With all those benefits in mind, you’re probably raring to start. We don’t blame you; personalizing emails is one of the marketing hacks of the century. To support you as best we can, we’ve compiled five examples of how you can use this strategy.
Nothing beats inspiration when you’re just starting out — steal these entirely or adapt them for your own. Are you ready for some personalized email examples? Try these for size.
1. Name Dropping
As the most popular strategy to personalize communications, name-dropping had to come first. This is where you simply drop in the recipient’s name. The most common places to do so are in the direct address in the email body or the subject line.
2. Specific Timings
You can personalize emails by sending them at an optimal time for individuals. For example, you could adapt it to time zones. Or you could take it one step further and send emails based on their past engagement history.
Some software might offer this as an in-built feature even when bulk sending by scheduling them based on optimized times. It’s worth researching before you commit to a software purchase.
3. Dynamic Content
While less discussed in personalization, dynamic content is a great way to prompt purchases through individualized targeting. Dynamic contents change depending on which user views it.
In email marketing, this is a common method for retail and promotional messages. There might be a carousel of items, but the items included change depending on who opens it. You might sync your website’s cookies and automated insights with your email marketing software. Smart, isn’t it?
This is also a helpful strategy and alternative to cart abandonment emails. It’s a clever way to rejig their memories and point out the items they’ve not quite followed through on purchasing. It also reduces the click-through rate by catching their eye with guaranteed items of interest.
4. Email Type
More personal email types include content like birthday messages. These are an extra step more individualized than general friendly correspondence like holiday well wishes.
To personalize holidays, you could survey new email subscribers to learn which occasions they celebrate. Get creative with the email types you send.
5. Discounts
Sending discounts shouldn’t be a blanket operation. Why? Because different people need different motivators at other times. It’s not one size fits all.
A brilliant example of this is with protein powder. If you know how long it takes an average customer to use a bag of powder, schedule discount emails accordingly. A well-timed prompt when their bag is nearly empty with 40% (or an equivalent figure) off will work a treat. You know what they’ve bought when they need targeting, and you provide the discount tactically.
Balancing Personalization and Bulk Sending
As we mentioned before, it’s a myth that you must sacrifice personalization for bulk sending or vice versa. Many high-quality software feature in-built personalization tools. You could be adding names to your emails or sending automated birthday wishes.
The best way to balance these two useful approaches is through your choice of software. When researching email marketing software, always check for available features. These products can cost as little as $20 a month on a rolling subscription basis. But they provide excellent control over your campaign and personalized content creation.
With the right software, you can embrace the duality of sending hundreds of individualized emails with just one click. It’s a great approach that will see your conversion rates soar.
How To Make a Personalized Email: 3 Steps To Take
You know everything there is to know about why you should use this strategy and the different approaches to take. So, the next stage is to learn how to make a personalized email. No matter which plan you take, these are the three steps to take.
Decide How To Personalize
Pick a method of personalization. This could involve any of the variations we covered above. For instance:
- Use of recipient names.
- Specific timings.
- Individualized email types, like birthday marketing.
Plan How To Collect Necessary Details
Once you know how you’ll personalize your correspondence, decide how you’ll collect the necessary information. In an ideal world, you’d already have everything you need. But in reality, this often isn’t the case.
How you collect the details will vary depending on how you’ve chosen to personalize your email. Names are one of the easiest details to collect. However, you might need to get savvy with birthdays and invite customers to share dates. Similarly, analytical-style information, like optimal engagement times, is built over time.
Be mindful that you may need to invest in long-term strategies to facilitate more individual approaches in your email marketing.
Automate the Email/s
Lastly, it’s time to create and automate the email or emails. You might organize birthday messages to send to your entire database, scheduled to abide by their individual dates. Or you could schedule emails according to each recipient’s timezone.
Remember that just because you are personalizing your messages doesn’t mean you have to send them manually. Certain software offers personalization options. It’s just all the more reason to take your research seriously when software shopping.
What’s the Cost?
Sending personalized emails doesn’t actually cost that much. Budget around $20 a month for email marketing software that can automate personalized content. This allows you to automate messages (like birthday emails) and set each of your bulk emails to show individual names.
The only other significant cost to factor in is how you’ll actually get these details to begin with. You’ll already have demographic insights and general information about purchase patterns to send relevant content. But getting specific details like birth dates and names for your email list is a bit trickier.
You could launch a loyalty program, send out an email with a feedback form, or pay for third-party contacts. However, we suggest setting up a captive portal system instead.
If you have guest WiFi, you can purchase captive portal software for just $20 a month. We’ll explain how it works in more detail later. But for now, just know that it collects valuable customer details in exchange for giving customers WiFi access.
All in all, to send personalized emails and collect personal details in the first place, budget around $40 a month.
FAQ
Before you go, are you positive that you remember everything we’ve just covered? Email marketing is always a reasonably information-dense subject. It’s fantastic that you’re so dedicated to learning about the personalization aspect of emails, so let’s quickly consolidate your understanding.
These are the common questions people have about personalizing emails.
What can businesses do to personalize their emails to customers?
There are so many ways to personalize your emails to customers. You could send more personal messages, like birthday emails, or you could adjust your approach within the content. For instance, you could include the recipient’s name in the email to give it a more intimate feel.
Personalizing content doesn’t have to cost the world, and many email marketing automation software programs offer personalization features. You can capitalize on personalizing content without sacrificing much time or money.
Why is personalizing emails effective?
Personalizing emails is incredibly effective because it creates a feeling of rapport and connection in business-to-customer relationships. Psychologically, it encourages customers to respond and engage. And with an increase in open rates and engagement, it directly correlates with more profit.
Taking this approach fosters better customer connections, improves their experience, and boosts your business’ performance.
Beambox: How Captive Portals Work
Since we’ve established that data collection is something to factor into your budget, let’s look at how captive portals work.
When customers click to join your WiFi in their mobile settings, it usually takes them straight to a password page. Or, if you haven’t secured your network, it just joins them immediately. Instead, with a captive portal, it transports them to a webpage. This webpage has a form that you, as a business owner, can customize to request specific information.
Once the customer inputs these details, voila! They get full WiFi access. But the best thing is that you also get these valuable details to utilize in your marketing campaigns. It’s a mutually beneficial swap.
If you sync the captive portal to compatible software, you can automate the storage of customer information. This way, you passively collect everything you need for your campaigns later. That could be anything from phone numbers for SMS marketing or addresses for email marketing. It could also include demographic or individual details such as birthday emails and personalization.
At Beambox, captive portal marketing is our specialty. We understand how difficult it can be to start the ball rolling with customer data collection.
Start your Beambox free trial today and invest in data collection to support your new email personalization strategy!
