Truth 24. Personalization

Incorporating personalization, or adding content that makes it appear as though the message was created specifically for an individual recipient, is a great way to connect with recipients, keep them engaged and, hopefully, drive results in the process. The types of personalization vary, but long gone are the days of blasting the same email message to your entire database. We all know better than that. And we know that customers and prospects expect tailored email communications. If you aren't giving them what they want, you might be missing out, too.

Regardless of the approach, personalization can be a win-win for both you and your subscribers. And assuming you have the right data handy, it can be relatively easy.

When you decide to begin, don't stress over the data you don't have. Instead, first take the approach of looking at existing data and metrics to determine where personalization might work well and move you closer to the end goal. You may be surprised at the many ways that what you already have in place can work for you. Later, once you see the value in adding personalization, you may want to consider capturing or reviewing additional types of data.

According to a survey by Responsys, 40 percent of marketers restrict personalization efforts to the salutation of email messages.¹ While this is a good place to start, there are many ways to personalize a message. Let's look at this approach and others.

Subject lines

Personalizing Subject lines is something marketers have done for some time and continue to do. However, over time, spammers also began to use first-name personalization in Subject lines to catch the eyes of recipients and persuade them to open messages. Of course, this diminished its effectiveness but is still worth testing to your recipients.

In addition to testing the person's first name in the Subject line, you should look for other ways to personalize the Subject line, which often is the key determining factor to getting an email read. For example, Amazon.com may send a promotional email offering a discounted rate on books, but it could personalize it for the recipient who has expressed an interest in history with a Subject line saying, “Special offer on our top-selling history reads.” Comb through your existing data and find a unique way to use Subject line personalization. I have also created a campaign for a major automotive interest where the Subject line has the make of the recipient's car in the Subject line. This gets people's attention, which is the first step in any email message.

Salutation

At this point, almost every marketer personalizes the salutation of messages. First name is a data field you most likely capture during the email subscription process, so if you aren't doing it now, put it to good use.

Although this is a simple way to personalize, make sure you test before you send to ensure personalization is working properly. I speak from experience. The first email message sent from EmailStatCenter.com went out with broken personalization. Instead of seeing the intended “Hi John,” each recipient saw “Hi <first name>.” The lesson was painfully learned after 800 email marketing professionals received the email. Even the most seasoned email marketing professionals make mistakes, but testing can help you avoid the same fate. It's worth noting that you may have some subscribers in your database who lack first names. Ensure that there is a default salutation (like friend or valued customer) for those folks.

Demographics

Chances are, you gather some type of demographic information on subscribers. These are fields like age, geographic location, gender, and so on, and these are ways that you can segment and personalize to help meet the goals relevant to your business.

For example, subscribers are likely providing a mailing address or state when signing up for email communications from you. This can make it easy to segment and personalize by geographic area. A travel agent could send offers for Caribbean cruise deals to subscribers in cold climates and something more appropriate to those living in warmer areas. Chances are, a travel agent would have better luck selling a Caribbean cruise to someone living in upstate New York in December than to someone living in Mexico. This is a great example of using demographic data at the right time of the year to increase the relevancy to the recipient.

Using demographics to personalize messages can seem simple, but try to think outside the box and beyond the basic data fields to identify unique ways to connect with recipients and, ultimately, meet your end goals.

Buying history

If your data goes deep enough to help identify targets and segments based on buying history, use it. This not only allows you to personalize offers, but it also gives you an opportunity to reward loyal customers and encourage repeat purchases. iTunes is a great example of using data to encourage additional purchases. It recommends music based on songs previously purchased to each user. Include this type of information combined with a discount in an email, and you've definitely increased your chances of making a sale.

Call to action

Personalize the viral call to action to entice your subscribers to market to their friends on your behalf. For example, if you're selling diamonds and send an email campaign to female subscribers, do something different than simply saying, “Forward to a friend.” It may be more effective to say, “Jane, wouldn't your husband want this email as a reminder for Valentine's Day? Forward it to him.”

Content

I'll talk about this more in the next Truth, but more in-depth segmenting allows you to personalize the overall content of your email messages in a variety of ways. For example, a major retailer sending an email about a new line of winter sweaters could send the women on the list only information on the women's line. It could also segment those women based on those who live in cold climates. Taking it a step further, the retailer could look at the women's buying history to incorporate similar items they might buy. The options for personalizing content are endless and can get pretty complicated, but doing it right can result in happy customers and increased sales.