Personalised email marketing content

Modern marketers are often told of the importance of personalising email content in order to meet the expectations of increasingly savvy subscribers, as well as keep up with the competition.

But why is it so important to do this? And in what ways can we personalise email content?

Creating a seamless experience

We've written before about how important this is. Personalised content isn't just about showing what you can do, it's about improving your relationship with your customer by treating them as an individual.

Picture your business as a bricks and mortar store, or if you have one, look at how you engage with those customers. If a new customer walks through your doors, you welcome them warmly and offer them assistance. Once they make a purchase, or express an interest in a product, you retain this information for the future, allowing you to provide them with more personalised service when they return.

You should be doing the same with email.

Everyone's tastes are different and it's certainly not safe to assume that every piece of content you put out is going to be well received across the board. With the volume of marketing communications your customers receive on a daily basis, sending generic, irrelevant content is simply not going to cut it.

To increase the likelihood of conversion, you need to recognise that there's a human behind the email address.

Collect valuable data and use it wisely

We're in an age where data is at our fingertips, and where users are becoming more used to handing it over.

When your users sign up to your mailing list, you can take the opportunity to get a little more information from them that just their email address. Using a preference centre, or adding a few extra fields to a contact or competition entry form can provide you with enough information to send targeted campaigns with relevant content.

• Name: There are mixed opinions about using the subscribers name in your campaign subject line. On one hand, the subscriber sees that you recognise who they are, a very personal touch. But on the other if the reader is not expecting it, it can come across a little creepy and even spammy.Our advice? As with the customer in your bricks and mortar shop, use this feature once you've built a relationship with them - that's when you'll be on a first name basis.
• ‍Birth date: Another piece of information that many will be happy to provide, knowing your customer's birth date will also present you with the opportunity to send them a personal birthday message with an added incentive to convert.
• ‍Exclusive offers: These can be used for a variety of actions, dependent on what it is you want to achieve. You may want to target subscribers that have become inactive, shoppers that haven't purchased in a long time, or even reward your most loyal customers for their continued support.
• ‍Interests: Whether you use a preference centre to collect this information or more complex methods of cross-channel data capture, building profiles of your subscribers' interests and behaviour will mean the end of blanket emails being sent to entire databases, with content instead being targeted toward the individual.

To see email personalisation at its finest, take a look at this guide from Jimmy Daly at VeroIn taking steps to build a clearer picture of your customers, you provide them with a personalised experience that uses targeted, relevant content. Emails like this show thought, care and professionalism, the traits that keep customers coming back.

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*Source: EmailExpert