What Is Email Personalization and Why You Should Use It?

Email personalization is critical for making your emails stand out. Your contacts' inbox, like your own, is overflowing with emails. Personalizing an emailing campaign improves its performance, but simply adding a first name is insufficient. Fortunately, email software designers have kept up with, and even influenced, developments in personalized email marketing. Advanced email personalization is made possible.

In advanced emailing solutions, you can insert fields and dynamic blocks (content sections that change depending on the recipient) in the email's header, body, and footer. Thus, the sender can personalize the first name, last name, civility, subject, content (text and images), and signature. The personalized fields pull data from the database and insert it into the email. As a result, you should enrich and clean your data on a regular basis. Customer data obsolescence is a common marketing phenomenon.

What Is Email Personalization?

Personalizing your emails entails using your contacts' personal and behavioral data to create an individualized message. Personalized email and cold emails, as opposed to mass emailing, considers the profile, history, and needs of contacts. As a result of being highlighted, the contact is more likely to click.

Email personalization is a type of on-the-fly marketing that uses your subscriber data to deliver personalized experiences to different groups or individuals. Marketing teams can use personalized emails to target specific subscribers with special offers, more relevant content, or important information.

When used correctly, personalized emails appear to have been written and specifically designed for the recipient. And, on occasion, it is! However, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are frequently used in the creation of these one-of-a-kind messages.

Email personalization aims to provide a more personalized user experience. The inbox is a personal space for each individual. When inviting brands, you want to give an impression that they're friends with whom you can confide. Because the last thing your audience wants is another boring advertisement.

How Does Email Marketing Personalization work?

Email personalization, also known as "direct mail," is a popular variant of email marketing, at least since it has been demonstrated that personalized messages outperform anonymous addressing.

Personalization entails interacting with subscribers across multiple channels. This is the only method for creating personalized newsletters based on recipient behavior, trigger emails, and data. It is best to include a home address in the subject line, especially for contacts with a long customer relationship. In this case, your recipients prefer to read their own name rather than "Dear reader." Aside from a specific topic, the following content elements help to personalize a mailing:

Language and content appropriate for the recipient's age
Individual element design, such as images or calls to action
Personal product suggestions
Changing shopping habits ("You might also like this").
Trigger mailings for birthdays and holidays
Individual themed newsletters based on content click behavior

Why Should You Personalize Your Email?

The verbiage of an e-mail address enables you to get a first impression of an unknown interlocutor. It's a kind of digital business card, so why not personalize it instead of advertising to the big players on the web... You stand to gain nothing!

Here are two statistics that explain why personalize your emails:

Personalization boosts your revenue by 40% (McKinsey and Company).
78% of marketers (including your competitors) communicate using personalized email (Statista).

Email personalization benefits both the sender and the recipient. On the one hand, email marketing campaigns become more effective (more revenue, conversion, leads, engagement, and so on), while the customer experience improves.

Transactional emails clearly show this mutual benefit. Personalization works well with this type of email marketing. Matter of fact, personalized notifications (confirmations, updates, wishes, etc.) stand out in a crowded field; their benefit is twofold: they generate personal satisfaction (a sense of importance) in the contact and encourage engagement (more revenue for the brand).

Advantages of Personalized Marketing

We want to demonstrate how critical it is to build a relationship with your customers before selling them a product or service. Personalized email marketing, in particular, is one of the best strategies to implement, especially if it is tailored to the target audience. Email personalization can be the foundation of a winning strategy in today's increasingly competitive environment for a variety of reasons.

Enhanced targeting

One of the most important pieces of the puzzle when making plans and launching your email campaign is your email list, which includes your target demographic. Sending your email advertising to each and every possible address you can find is not a wise or cost-effective business decision. It is critical to identify your target demographic so that you know who will respond best to your campaign. This is made easier by personalized email, which allows you to see precisely what your recipients are searching for. This data can be used to vastly improve your overall ROI.

Enhanced customer experience

Marketers may collect customer information in order to personalize direct mail advertisements. Personalization contributes to a better customer experience by providing customers with precisely what they are looking for relying on previous searches. Personalization reduces the amount of irrelevant information that customers must sift through; instead, it provides them with exactly what they want so that they can act immediately. You will provide a positive customer experience and see a higher response rate to your personalized marketing campaign if you take the time to personalize your email campaigns.

Conversion rates get increased

Prospects are more likely to make a purchase after opening and reading personalized emails because they are filled with useful and relevant content. Personalization increases conversion rates for 93% of businesses, according to Econsultancy. According to research, personalized emails have a 10% higher conversion rate than non-personalized emails.

Companies that personalize their email communication earn more money.

Personalized email campaigns can increase revenue by up to 760% over non-personalized email campaigns.

Personalized emails account for more than half of all email revenue generated by online retailers.

Customers value customization

One of the most basic reasons for personalizing your mailing campaigns is that customers value the effort; they want to receive something unique to them. Because a person's name is important to them, they are much more likely to listen to you when you mention it during a conversation. A personalized direct mail campaign will help you build a stronger connection and increase the likelihood of receiving a response.

Personalization raises relevance.

On a daily basis, we are overloaded with so much information that our brain has begun to filter out unnecessary data in order to prevent bombarding our senses. Our brain retains and pays attention to relevant information while filtering out noise. If you see your name on an envelope, for example, your attention is instantly drawn to it. Simply including your customer's name can pique their interest long enough for them to skim through the mail and remember the message. Personalizing your emails is the most effective way to ensure that they remain highly relevant and are not simply filtered and discarded.

It makes your customers loyal to your brand.

You likely enjoy going to a restaurant where the servant knows your name or a store where the sales manager recalls your previous purchase. Increased personalization fosters brand loyalty. You also generate more revenue by keeping the customers you've already satisfied rather than spending money on acquiring new ones.

Makes your company real and human to the people.

People do not connect with businesses, they connect with brands that are authentic to them. Addressing your audience directly and personalizing your marketing will make your company appear more human and relevant.

Improves your content

When you write for an anonymous, undefined audience, your writing and other forms of content will reflect this. Knowing your target audience better will allow you to create more specific, relevant, and engaging content that will pique their interest.

And there are way more advantages we can count. The importance of email personalization is undeniable.

Email Personalization Statistics

Personalization of emails allows you to stand out from the crowd. Whatever way you look at it, the statistics below should help you comprehend the power of email personalization:

Email personalization reduces unsubscription rates by 17% while increasing open rates by nearly 20%. (Stanford)
After a customized shopping experience with a retailer, 60% of consumers say they are likely to become repeat buyers. (Segment, The Personalization State 2021)
Email personalization is the most effective email marketing tactic for increasing engagement rates. (HubSpot)
Personalized emails can increase transaction rates by up to sixfold! (Experian)
Personalization is beneficial to customer relationships, according to 99% of marketers, and 78% believe it has a "strong" or "powerful" impact. (Evergage)
90% of consumers in the United States find personalized marketing content somewhat appealing. (Statista)
When brands provide personalized experiences, 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase. (Epsilon)

What Is The Difference Between Email Personalization and Mass Emailing?

Email personalization is the process of customizing and modifying emails based on the personal information of a contact. Email personalization strategies and cold email examples range from the most basic (such as using a customer's first name) to the most advanced (like changing email content based on location, gender, and language). where the individual is in the customer life cycle.

It's no surprise that 75% of consumers prefer retail brands that offer a personalized customer experience, and nearly half of US shoppers buy products online after receiving personalized recommendations from brands.

Personalization is effective, but it is not always simple. Almost one-third of marketers cite the difficulty of personalizing the customer experience without invading privacy.

It's no surprise, then, that most businesses avoid email personalization in favor of bulk emails with the same content for all contacts.

Excellent news! You don't have to choose between personalization and reaching out to a larger audience.

Ways to Personalize Your Email Campaigns

Consider personalizing your emails in two steps:

Gather information from your contacts and customers.
Send personalized emails using the information you have.

Gather information from your contacts and customers.

You must get to know your contacts if you want to personalize your marketing emails. The data they provide is the first step in segmenting and understanding what they want to receive in their inbox.

You can start with basic informations like:

name
last name
age
sex
job
the professional sector
geographic location

and many more…

This information is frequently obtained via a registration form, such as this:

Consider what form the person is starting to fill out and where they are in the customer lifecycle, with a focus on timing and relevance. If the person signs up for your newsletter, for instance, you may only need their email address.

However, if you want to immediately personalize your emails, you can add additional areas to your forms.

Email customization also includes tagging contacts with information like:

the client's situation
centers of interest
site tracking data (“tracking”)
past purchases (perfect for Shopify and WooCommerce users)
content engagement
the source

While this information is valuable, it is also underutilized.

The way you apply this knowledge will mean the difference between an effective email personalization technique and a total failure.

2. Send personalized emails using the information you have.

What should you do when you're ready to go beyond newsletters and mass emails and begin truly supporting your contacts and customers?

The most key point to remember is that email personalization, whether simple or advanced, works in tandem to create a one-of-a-kind customer experience.

Basic personalization

Here are the some infos you can get with basic personalization:

"To:" section: A contact's name can help to personalize an email.

Your name: Emails sent by a specific person within a company.

Where they reside: Geography-focused content can be extremely beneficial to local businesses.

Their sexual orientation: People who identify as female anticipate receiving offers that correspond to their gender identity. The same is true when shopping for children, for example.

After you've addressed this information, you can progress to a higher level of personalization.

Intermediate personalization

A higher level of personalization can help you deepen your customer relationship. This includes the following:

Conditional content: Specific contacts may be presented with different content in the same broadcast email based on specific tags.

Images: Like conditional content, can be personalized using basic personalization data. A good email personalization example would be to show a testimonial from someone with whom the contact most closely identifies.

Engagement: Has a contact previously attended a webinar? Or did he follow a series of links centered on a specific topic? If this is the case, you can personalize your emails to make them more relevant.

Site tracking: Following, or "tracking," a person on a website allows you to track the actions your contacts take on your site and applications.

Advanced personalization

70% of customers say a company's understanding of their unique needs influences their loyalty. How can we demonstrate to our contacts and customers that we understand their unique needs?

Answer is easy: predictive content

Imagine having data about your contacts and customers and being able to quickly drag and drop a section into your email that creates multiple targeted messages for each contact.

Predictive content uses natural language processing to take your already segmented emails and send a single email with five content variations. Your contacts will start receiving the emails they are most likely to click on based on what they have engaged with and continue to interact with.

Conclusion

Personalization marketing can boost open rates, click-through rates, sales and revenue, and the conversion of leads into customers. Personalized email marketing has a 10% higher conversion rate than non-personalized email marketing. By personalizing emails, you can reduce sales friction and simplify your sales cycle. This makes it easier to nurture your leads because it allows you to provide them with appropriate information which they will find useful.

It all starts with knowing a little bit more about your client than just their name. This data enables you to create personalized subject lines and copy titles, email body content, and the appropriate call to action. You can also direct your personalized emails to relevant landing pages. You need good email personalization and automation software for your campaigns now that you understand the importance of personalizing your marketing campaigns.