8 Tips How to Personalize Your Emails

Have you ever wondered how to make your emails distinct and easy to notice?

Personalized emails are crucial to make your emails stand out. The recipient feels like you've sent a message just for them and becomes more engaged with your letter.

Sending personalized emails also helps to improve your open rates and click-through rates. It can also drive traffic to your website and boost your sales.

Here are a few more reasons to start personalizing your emails:

• 71% of consumers say a personalized experience would influence their decision to open and read brand emails (Dynamic Yield)
• 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business (Salesforce)
• 90% of consumers are willing to share personal behavioral data with companies in exchange for a cheaper and easier experience (SmarterHQ)

Keep on reading to learn 8 effective email personalization practices.

1. Segment email lists

By dividing your email lists into smaller groups, i.e. segments, you can start to send carefully targeted and personalized email campaigns.

Ask your subscribers relevant questions in sign-up forms and use this valuable information for segmenting. You can ask about location, birthday or the type of service the person is especially interested in, for example.

There are many ways you can start segmenting your contacts. Choose the ones that suit your goals the best.

Here are some ideas you can segment your clients based on:

• Geography
• Interests in certain products
• Participation in your events
• Content download
• How often they want to receive your letters
• Position on the customer path
• Time and type of last purchase
• Pages they visit
• Typical amount of money spent on your products

Makeup company Fitcover uses their email preferences update form for segmenting.

2. Talk to them with their name

When thinking about personalizing emails, the first thing that typically comes to mind is talking to the recipient with their name. This adds a nice touch to your newsletter and is an easy way to start personalizing your emails.

However, it's good to find a balance and not use the name too often – it can give a bit of a creepy impression. Using people’s names in emails is also quite a common method used by many senders nowadays, so standing out from the crowd can be challenging. 

To assure that your letter makes a lasting impression, we recommend combining multiple personalizing techniques in your letter.

3. Send behavior triggers

Sending emails based on a customer’s action ensures that you keep track of their position on the customer’s journey. Behavior triggers are also a good way to re-engage clients who have fallen off the map.

Behavioral emails help you to understand your customer’s needs in different stages of the customer path. They also help you to stay in the receiver’s mind as they get emails regularly from you.

You can send behavioral emails when, for example:

• You want to welcome a new customer and give them user tips
• A person downloads your content or signs up for your event
• You want to give the customer a report of their account activity
• A customer hasn’t used your services for a while

Having an agile marketing automation platform helps to identify behavior patterns of customers and deliver the right content in time.

Writing app Grammarly sends regular user reports for customers to motivate and engage them – and to make additional sales.

4. Create standouts

Looking for a memorable way to reach out to a customer? Show your clients that you know them with a creative personalized message.

Here are some ideas for such emails:

• Send happy customership anniversary greetings
• Give a special benefit for your top clients
• Send birthday greetings with a discount coupon

Teashop DAVIDsTEA sent an anniversary newsletter that offered fun statistics about the customership and analyzed which tea type the customer is.

5. Give them tips and tricks to better use the products they purchased

Provide the opportunity to take the most out of your product or service. Tell about the features a client hasn’t used yet or hasn’t been aware of.

Customers don’t want to be constantly sold to. Instead, ensuring that they can constantly learn something new will increase their loyalty and satisfaction.

Just make sure that the learning process doesn't get too hard. Use explanative images and videos about the features and add links to feature pages to be able to keep the newsletter copy lighter.

Health device company Withings sends an email presenting important features to the customer who has acquired a new scale.

6. Reach out at the right time

Value their time: deliver your message when a customer is ready to read it. Make sure you know the best time for your emails to be opened.

With an email marketing platform, you can easily track the time and date your messages were read. Having this data at hand allows you to send your messages at the appropriate time.

Remember also to take different time zones and culture-specific holidays into account.

Try out different timeslots for sending your emails and see what time performs best in terms of open rates. This way, you will find out the best delivery times for your target audience.

7. Suggest relevant products

Direct a client towards purchase by offering them only relevant products. Keep track of their purchasing history to provide recommendations based on their previous choice.

The customer who bought a tent from you probably doesn’t need a new one right away, but instead, they might be interested in sleeping bags or camping food.

If the recommendations are well thought through and the receiver is happy with the previous purchases, product suggestion emails are usually well welcomed.

Digital music service Spotify sends personalized suggestions about upcoming gigs based on the customer’s location and taste of music.

8. Link to the relevant content on the webpage

An important part of email marketing is where you direct a reader. Link to the content which supports a newsletter's story and a client's interests.

For instance, when you send an email promoting 15% off the jewelry in your online store, personalize the link in a CTA button depending on which jewelry items a particular client has browsed before.

Pay attention that your email and the landing page speak the same language to add continuity to the experience. The visuals and copy should be with the same style, and CTA should aim for the same goal in both. This way the reader can easily keep following the path to conversion.

Want to learn more about effective email marketing techniques? Check this content:

• How to create an effective email marketing strategy? (Step-By-Step Guide)
• 8 Ways To Grow Your Email List [video]
• 6 Steps Towards Better Email Marketing – A Guide for Advanced Email Marketers