10 Brilliant Ideas for Personalized Email Marketing

This article was last updated on September 1, 2020

Personalized email marketing refers to any form of alteration of the email copy or design tailored specifically to meet one or more characteristics of the recipient. Personalized email marketing is not always easy to achieve and requires a bit more effort than simply sending a generic email to your whole list of subscribers. However, personalized email marketing in most cases leads to higher conversion rates, which is practically the goal of every marketer, isn’t it?

Increased chances of conversion are certainly worth all the extra efforts. If you are lacking ideas of how to personalize the emails you are sending, well, we have good news for you. In today’s post, we’ve gathered some brilliant ideas for personalized email marketing that worked for other brands and maybe you should give them a shot, too. Let’s begin!

1. Name

Using the recipient’s name is probably the first thing to come to mind when someone thinks of personalized email marketing.

“Hello, Mike” undeniably sounds more personalized than “Hey there” but how exactly to use the name is an issue bringing a few more questions to the table. Should you use it in your email subject line or in the copy perhaps? Should you use the recipient’s first name or should you call them by their last name? Experimenting with A/B testing will surely give you the answers.

2. Conversational tone and utterance

Usually, the level of formality of your brand determines the conversational tone when sending emails to leads and clients. However, different generations often speak “different” languages, as well as people of different professional ranks would require you to adjust the level of formality of your utterance.

3. Gender

Personalizing emails by gender is exceptionally useful when you are selling men’s and women’s products, such as clothing and cosmetics. Instead of creating one email campaign that would cover both men’s and women’s products, segment your subscribers’ list by gender and create two different campaigns – one that’s targetting women and therefore offering women’s products, and the other – targetting men and offering men’s products.

4. Location and time

Depending on your business, you can segment your audience based on location, as well. This is a great way to advertise local shops, events or contests happening nearby, etc.

In regards to timing, have in mind that if you are sending internationally, it’s better to adjust to the recipient’s time zone. Depending on the ESP you are using, you may even be able to let the ESP choose the best time at which the recipients are most likely to open the email.

5. Account creation date

When you have the account creation date for each subscriber, it’s easy to craft a happy birthday email that will automatically get triggered when this day comes. Such practice provides an extremely personalized experience for the recipient.

6. Frequency of purchase

Based on how the customers behave on your website, you can create a few different customer personas to whom to send personalized email offers. For example, based on the frequency of purchase your subscribers could fall into 3 different groups:

• subscribers who have never purchased from you – strive to send enticing offers which prompt these users to make their first order;
• subscribers who haven’t purchased from you in a while – send reactivation campaigns;
• regular customers – customer appreciation and loyalty programs.

7. Spending habits

Of course, you can segment your database of subscribers based on different behavior, e.g. the average amount they spend in one order. Such information can help you craft and send personalized email marketing offers to people who are willing to spend this kind of money. Here is an example of segmentation based on spending habits:

• people who spend less than $50
• people who spend between $50 and $250
• people who spend over $250

8. Personalized product recommendations

Be it upselling or cross-selling, recommendations based on previously purchased products, products saved as favorites, search history or browsing history on website, sending personalized email marketing offers including products people actually care about is quite promising. Not only do the chances of conversion increase, but the value of the order has also pretty high chances of increase, too.

9. Send the email from a real person

If the customers have ever interacted with someone on your team, sending emails on behalf of this person can really help you convey the feeling of one-to-one communication, especially if you also use the recipient’s name in the beginning of the email.

10. Personalize the landing page

Personalized email marketing undoubtedly requires personalized experience beyond the email. Don’t let your efforts for personalization go in vain once the person clicks through. Personalized landing pages are a must. They work like a natural sequence of your email. Think in terms of design- and copy-consistency.

How to get more ideas for personalized email marketing?

Easy. The more information you gather about your subscribers, the easier it will be for you to personalize your email marketing.

Asking the right questions right from the beginning will ensure you a database full of useful information. For example, if you are a retailer, you can ask if the subscriber is male or female when they subscribe. The same goes for gathering other demographical data or customer interests that will help you segment your list of subscribers later.

Don’t underestimate the power of behavior-triggered emails. Cart abandonment, inactivity for a given period of time, adding products to favorites – these actions and more can all be triggers for personalized email marketing campaigns based on the specific behavior of your prospects and clients.

To sum up,

There are indeed many ways to personalize your emails. The key is asking the right question to gather the right information, so you can send the right content to the right users. We believe these ideas will help you achieve more personalized email marketing. If you’d like to share your thoughts, feel free to do so in the comments below.