Personalization in Email Campaigns: Tips to Boost Open Rates

Shashank Jain

Introduction

One of the best tools to effectively communicate with your audience is email marketing. It is a challenge to get people to open their emails when they have an over flooded inbox. To stand out requires personalisation, it can boost engagement and build strong relationships.

Things You’ll Learn

1.    What is email personalization?
2.    How to increase open rates in email marketing?
3.    How to use personalization in email marketing?
4.    What are good open rates for email campaigns?
5.    How does segmentation improve email marketing engagement?
6.    Conclusion

What is email personalization?

Email personalisation helps the brand address the recipient's needs and interests. The goal of personalisation is to make the recipients feel important, doesn’t matter whether it’s through personalised recommendations, dynamic content or email triggered based on users behaviours. The main purpose of personalisation is to increase response rates and engagement.

According to hubspot, the transaction rate is six times higher when the email is personalized compared to the non-personalised ones. One example of personalisation can be of a shop sending tailored product recommendations to the consumers based on what they have viewed and purchased before. Personalised emails feel like conversation instead of generating bulk messages.

How to increase open rates in email marketing?

The main objective of email campaigns is to increase open rates. Mentioned below are certain strategies that can help you improve them.

1.    Great subject line: The first thing ever noticed by the recipient in the email is the subject line. Personalisation in email can make it more appealing.
2.    Optimise sending time: you need to know when your audience is most active. Test different timings of the day or week to find out the same. Personalised email timing makes sure that it reaches the recipient when they’re online.
3.    Segmentation: The email needs to be divided on a certain basis, for example, on the basis of behaviour, interest, location and demographics. The targeted emails are more relevant and have a higher probability of being opened.
4.    Test and refine: You can use A/B testing to understand what works best. Try different subject lines, content, and timing. The right combination will help in increasing the open rates.

Campaign Monitor has published a case study in which the adjustment of the subject line and tests of email formats boosted open rates by 30% within three months for a retailing company.

How to use personalization in email marketing?

The meaning of email personalisation is using data to create email that matches with customers' needs and wants. Let’s together learn how to use personalisation to its full potential

1. Dynamic content: You need to know when to change the content of the email based on what people have done and preferred before.
For example, if someone buys something frequently and then showing them the similar products increases the probability of them making the purchase. Tools like Mailchimp can help create adaptable emails.

2. Behavioural triggers : Send out automated email triggered by specific actions, for example a reminder of empty cart or discounts the person can avail at the products he/she wants to buy. This can help them complete their purchase.

3. Location based content: Many different businesses have stores in many different locations. They can send personalized email about the offers and discounts to the customers of each specific location. One clothing brand used this same strategy which led to 40% more clicks on the email. Similarly certain brands like puma, use location data to send personalised email about different offers during different big sports events in different cities and locations.

By collecting and analyzing data, you can craft email campaigns that speak directly to each recipient’s needs, leading to higher engagement and better results.

What are good open rates for email campaigns?

In general the open rate of email falls between 15-20% and this can vary from industry to industry and also on the type of campaign.

At times the open rate is even lower than the given percentage but you don’t have to worry about it. We need to focus on the things that’ll help us increase the open rate like subject line, segmentation and location. Over time you’ll see the improvements.

You can use email authentication tools like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC that will ensure that your email does not end up in spam.

Open rates are not the only thing that you have to keep a track of, you need to check the click through rates also. If there is a higher open rate but not click through rates then you might improve the content or Call to action.

How does segmentation improve email marketing engagement?

To make your emails more relevant to each group you can use segmentation. It allows us to divide the email in smaller and more specific groups. When the content is tailored and personalised it increases the rate of engagement and interest of the audience.

For example a beauty brand can break down its email based on the customer’s previous purchase history, gender and also through browsing history. When the person is an old customer and wants to buy something you can notify them with all the discounts the person can avail. If someone Is looking for winter coats you can suggest similar products. This makes emails more personalised.

Research done by Mailchimp shows that the segmented campings have 14.31% higher open rate and 10.95% higher click through rates. Segmentation helps the content align with the audience's interests.

Conclusion

Email personalisation can make it easier to target your audience. By tailoring the content and segmenting it can boost open rates and audience engagement.

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