Optimizing Email through Email Personalization Strategies

Ever wondered why email marketing consistently results in a high ROI for organizations across industries? The key is developing email personalization strategies that take full advantage of all that email can offer. With personalized email, you can optimize your efforts to target specific audiences, boost conversions, and strengthen customer loyalty.

Our team’s Mailchimp-Certified expert—Collin Quinn Rice--recently explained that an effective email strategy is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Quite the opposite, your emails should respond to your audiences’ behavior and anticipate what they want next.

Collin's personalization advice:

It's so easy to hit that unsubscribe button, but what keeps people in your audience is feeling listened to and providing content specific to their needs.

Let’s Get Personal

Essentially, email personalization uses analytics, data, and content to make your customer (or member) feel special. Put another way, it’s about reaching the right person with the right message at the right time.

The results can be significant:

• HubSpot found that the open rate for emails with a personalized message is 17.6% compared to only 11.4% of emails without personalization.
• ​More than half (60%) of consumers say they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a retailer, according to Twilio's The State of Personalization 2021 Report. That’s an increase from 2017 of almost 20 percent.

Personalization goes beyond simply adding a recipient's first name to the greeting. To fully utilize the magic of email, it’s best to develop a complete email personalization strategy. Here’s an overview:

1. Define your audience and goals.

You can’t reach an audience you don’t know. Developing buyer or customer personas— semi-fictional representations of your current and potential customers—is essential in segmenting your emails and tailoring your messaging. Consider all aspects of your ideal customers, from geographic region and income level to social media habits and favorite hobbies.

​Customer personas also provide key insights into your goals for this email strategy. Are you hoping to increase the open rate for your emails? Improve the click-through rate? Defining your outcomes can clarify your approach, as well as how you’ll track and evaluate outcomes.

2. Create sign-up opportunities.

From creating a Facebook ad to creating a blog that readers can subscribe to, there are many ways to grow your email lists. This is important whether this is your first dive into email marketing, or you’re a seasoned veteran. Customers can always unsubscribe, so it’s important to continue to find ways to renew and build your email lists. 

​It’s okay to take your time—don’t get tempted into buying or renting email lists. It not only violates data protection rules, it violates your audience’s trust. The State of Personalization 2021 report by Twilio found that 7 out of 10 consumers say that personalization is appreciated—as long as they have directly shared their data with a business.

3. Craft your copy and choose your visuals.

Here’s the fun part (for some of us): From subject line to CTA (call to action), there are numerous opportunities to personalize your email to meet different customer needs. HubSpot offers some great tips for adding tailored experiences for different customers, including:

• Different subject lines matched to customer personas or stages along the customer journey.
• CTAs that link to where a customer is in their buying journey. For example, someone in the initial "awareness" phase might see a CTA to "Read Our Blog," whereas someone who has already purchased might see a CTA to "Write a Review."
• Use Mailchimp’s merge fields or HubSpot’s personalization tokens to address your customers by their first name
• Content tailored for different audiences or customer personas. One example of this could be an online event email with more detailed login instructions for first-time attendees vs. a simpler format for those who have joined in the past.

Visuals are just as important as wording. The overall design of an email can influence whether your target audience invests their attention on your message or says TLTR (too long to read). Some general visual and styling strategies to keep in mind are:

• Keep text concise to help with readers who are scanning for the main details of your message, including your CTA.
• Ensure your design matches your branding (e.g., colors, font, logos, and tone of language).
• Structure your layout with your reader in mind, making sure you're balancing white space with text, as well as words with visuals.
  
• Don't be afraid to use emojis in your subject lines; they've been shown to increase both open and click-through rates.

4. Bonus Step: Utilize segmentation and automation.

Although not exactly the same as personalization, taking bonus steps to utilize segmentation and automation can strengthen your email marketing even further:

• Segmentation is the process of dividing your full contact list into smaller segments by grouping them according to similar characteristics (e.g., geographic location, age range, purchase history, etc.). 
  • Segmentation is a tactic used for personalization, because email content can then be targeted to each group by their shared interest or defining feature.
  • This could mean you have different emails (or sets of emails) for different groups, which makes it more likely they are receiving "the right message at the right time" that we talked about earlier.
• ​Automation is the ability to have a single email (or series of emails) that will automatically send to contacts when a certain criteria is met.
  • Like segmentation, automation is a tactic that can be used for a personalized experience, because a prospect's actions will trigger an automatic response that is already tailored for them.
  • This could look like:
    • A welcome sequence of emails that are automatically sent when someone requests more information;
    • A thank-you form that automatically ends when someone has donated;
    • A follow-up email when someone has left something in their shopping cart without completing a purchase; etc.

This process can feel a little overwhelming at first, but Collin's advice is: 

Take your time! It might feel like you have to solve everything at once, but the last thing you want to do is scare your audience away with drastic changes. Personalization is key here—what is your audience already telling you? What do you need to ask them directly? Then, make some small changes: try something, take copious notes, review your metrics, and try again.

Ready to Try It?

As Mailchimp and HubSpot Solutions Partners, we have in-depth knowledge of audience personalization, segmentation and automation tactics for email marketing.

From crafting copy that speaks to the needs and wants of your customers, clients, or members, to tracking and distribution, we can help craft an email marketing strategy that builds relationships with your readers, no matter where they are on their sales journey.

Visit our Email Marketing Services page to learn more.

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Author

Lisa Applegate helps media outlets, non-profit organizations, and businesses uncover their most compelling narratives and provide distinctive content that consistently engages and inspires audiences. ​