Email marketing personalization techniques

For some time now, email marketers have viewed personalization as one of the best ways to generate strong engagement from your audience. As 2022 begins and email volumes are larger than ever, implementing personalization isn’t even an option anymore for the serious marketer—it’s a necessity for nurturing and engaging leads and contacts. So today we’re going to take a closer look at some of the tried-and-tested techniques for successful email marketing that will maximize your email marketing engagement in 2022 and beyond.

However, before you start thinking about personalization tactics, make sure you have enough data to customize your email campaigns. If you don’t, the easiest way to get consented data is by attaching a poll or survey to your email campaign. In addition, new website visitors and their data can be fetched via signup forms on your web pages, blogs, etc. This data will be necessary to send out the most relevant, personalized campaigns.

Topic Management 

Help your audience choose their topics of interest so you can send them emails that they want to receive. You can assign topics to each contact in your account. These topics of interest might include newsletters, webinars, product updates, and events, to name a few. For example, people who are only interested in receiving newsletters from your brand will be grouped under the topic ‘Newsletters.’ They’re more likely to remain loyal to your brand since they won’t be receiving any unwanted promotional stuff from you.

Segmentation 

One of the most important personalization steps you can take is segmenting your audience based on their interests and preferences. This will help you tailor your email content based on what they expect to receive from you. A few segmentation categories that you could try include:

• Geographic segmentation – If you’re going to host an event in a particular region, you can send emails only to audiences from that specific region. This is easy if you’ve already segmented your contacts accordingly.

• Content-specific segmentation – As we already know, preferences differ from person to person. Some might be interested in receiving helpful blogs, tips, etc., whereas others might love to get behind-the-scenes content, news, updates, etc. Initially, you can conduct a poll/survey among your audience and create a segment so that you can send relevant emails.

• Demographic segmentation – If your business is going to organize a deal or offer for a particular gender or age group, you could send email campaigns to that particular group if you’ve already got a corresponding segment.

• Behavior-specific segmentation – Analyze your audiences’ behavior when they’re scrolling through your web pages, placing an order, etc. This will help you plan and trigger emails that are helpful for them to carry out their future actions.

Merge tags  

“Name” is the first thing that you need to know about the recipient when you’re planning to personalize emails. So, make sure you have the name of your contacts in your database—then start adding merge tags with recipient name as the provided criteria, which will fetch the requisite field. There are a wide variety of merge tags that could be used to pull names, email addresses, company details, etc. of your recipients. A few sections where merge tags could be of use include:

• Signup form confirmation pages – Merge tags like first name, company name, list name, list description, recipient email address, etc. can be added to your “Welcome,” “Thank you,” and “Re-subscription” pages. This will help you build a personal relationship with your subscribers right from the beginning.

• Subject line – Address your audience in your email subject line in order to give a powerful first impression. Create custom tags or use already existing tags like first name, last name, etc. that are commonly used.

• Email footer – Essential details of your company can be mentioned in the email footer as merge tags. This will make your subscribers feel closer to your brand as you’ll provide them much-needed transparency and gain their trust. You could add your company address, vCards, unsubscribe links, and much more.

• Email content – Referral code, coupons, first name, etc. can be added in your email content as merge tags to make sure that you are personalizing your emails and building long-lasting bonds with your audience.

Dynamic content 

Once you’ve created email content focusing on your contacts’ expectations as gauged from your already existing segments, you can use dynamic content to incorporate this information in one email with different variations. This helps you send all emails in one go where each recipient receives only what they prefer based on the criteria that you’ve set. A few ways to use dynamic content in your emails include:

• Text – Cater to each customers’ needs by sending relevant text messages that create an emotional connection with them.

• Image – Visuals like gifs, images, etc. will make your emails visually attractive. So, make sure to add dynamic elements that will make your emails resonate well with your audience.

• Button – Grab your audiences’ attention by including a call-to-action (CTA) button based on their needs and preferences. This will help boost your click-through rate and revenue.

Automation 

You’ve read how to send the right messages to the right people up until this point, now the challenge is when to send them. This is made possible with the help of automation features like autoresponders and workflows.

Not every process in email marketing can be done manually, as it’s a channel that requires a lot of time and energy. That’s why automation in email marketing is of great help to email marketers. It allows them to set timed triggers to send recipients emails based on their actions. What you see in the below screenshot is how Zylker, a fictional company, used automation in Campaigns to send welcome emails and a series of other emails to visitors who were signing up for their newsletters via their website.

Hopefully you’re well on your way to kickstarting sending personalized email campaigns. If you think you’d need more help, remember that’s why we’re here 🙂 Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us—we’d be happy to guide you throughout your email marketing journey. 

Regards,

Team Zoho Campaigns