There is no doubt a personalized email marketing campaign increases conversion rates faster and more effectively than any other way of interacting with customers. Regardless of your industry, customers love a personalized email service and they’ll reward you for your effort with a median ROI of 122%.
Don’t be alarmed – email personalization doesn’t mean laboriously writing to each customer individually. Instead, segmentation of your market and a variety of targeted content will allow you to automate your personalized email marketing.
Here’s how to get started on the road to improving your email marketing campaigns.
Remember the Four ‘Rs’ of Email Personalization
By leveraging your customer data and available technology, you can create individualized messages and relevant product data for a number of customer segments. In simple terms, categorize your customers and use it to create a number of personalized email marketing messages and promotions for each.
Recognize – Know who your customers are: their gender, age group, location, income, interests, and purchasing triggers. Create customer profiles for these demographics.
Remember – Recall customer history, especially their behavior shown by what they browse and then buy.
Reach – Deliver your message or promotion to groups based on their actions, preferences, and interests.
Relevance – With personalization, it is all about being relevant to the person you are reaching out to. Deliver your email content based on who your customers are, their digital experiences, their geographic location, and even the time of year (season/holidays).
Define Your Ideal Customers
Most businesses have more than one type of customer. By knowing exactly who they are, you can create messages that will resonate with them. Additionally, this will help them to identify with your brand and products to then convert them into loyal consumers. Segmented and targeted messages receive over 100% more clicks than non-segmented email marketing campaigns.
Look into past customer information, find out what makes them tick, what’s important to them, and what their “pain points” are. Once you know who you are trying to reach it becomes much easier to create a personalized email campaign.
The Elements of a Personalized Email
Now that you know who you are personalizing emails for, you can move onto the various elements of the message that can and should be personalized.
Subject Lines – Personalized subject lines have a 26% higher open rate, making this a great place to start. Using the customer’s name, location, or point in their purchasing journey are all pieces that you can use in crafting the subject line. Something like “Clare, the boots you were considering are on sale in our Oxford Street store!’ is one way to include all three.
Body Content – Content is another area ripe for email personalization. Weave customer’s details into the body of your email. Start with their name, then use the information in your database to include one of their pain points that your product or service relieves. For example, “Just like you we need to make the most of every minute each day; that’s why…”
Visuals– Images are an important area to personalize. If you are a clothing brand, send different imagery for men and women being targeted with your personalized email marketing. Campaign Monitor increased their click through rate by 29% using this method.
The Sky’s the Limit
Once you have the data for your personalized email marketing campaign, it is really up to you how far you go with it. Customer data is key to email personalization. Combining customized content with an email verification tool will serve to maximize your campaign’s efficacy and results. With these two elements plus a touch of imagination and creativity, the potential for your email campaign to increase conversions and boost ROI is endless.