Boost Conversion Rate Through Email Personalization
Online communication is becoming more and more personal. This is especially true for e-mail marketing. This marketing channel is ideal for getting in direct contact with the target group, developing a relationship with it and sustaining it permanently.
The challenge: Every email recipient has their own interests, needs, habits and goals, which in turn are limited in time. Only those who understand and can handle these individual peculiarities will be successful in e-mail marketing.
Whether newsletters, reminders or offer e-mails - studies show that personalized emails lead to higher click through and conversion rates than messages without personalized content.
The reason: The recipients feel individually addressed and receive content that they consider relevant.
The requirements of email personalization
One thing in advance: An individually tailored email to each person is not possible and not effective. The personalized e-mail is not about writing a unique text for each individual user. Rather, recipient groups are defined, the individualized content (this can be the salutation, the products that are offered, etc.) are entered into a fixed newsletter framework and sent to the appropriate target group at a specific time.
By defining different groups of recipients, you can minimize wastage, increase conversion rates, and ultimately increase your revenue. However, you need data to be able to send subscribers customized newsletters.
The good news: For e-mail marketers, access to relevant data is no longer a problem today. Various tools and tracking system allow a detailed picture of the user. Targeting can identify interests, needs, desires, etc., and use the results for your email campaigns.
Applications of personalized e-mail
Personalized emails are used in different areas. Possible areas of application are presented below.
Autoresponder
Autoresponders allow you to send automated notifications to your users. In addition to the classic out of office emails, you can also use such messages for your newsletter campaign. For example, you can set up a multi-tiered welcome series. In this, the new newsletter subscriber will receive further e-mails in addition to the regular newsletter after registration in a specified period.
How you arrange the content of such email campaigns is of course up to you. Possible contents include, for example, a survey, an exclusive offer especially for new subscribers or a detailed presentation of your company and its goals.
Exclusive offers
The e-mail is an excellent medium to present to your newsletter subscribers offers that other users and customers do not receive. This approach gives your subscribers a sense of exclusivity, which positively contributes to customer loyalty. To increase the click and conversion rate, you can prepare various offers for your subscribers.
Offer products suitable to the interests of the users
Modern tracking systems capture, among other things, the products viewed by the website visitors as well as shopping cart contents. Based on this information, you can offer
users similar products via e-mail. For this function to be used, the user must be logged in while surfing and filling shopping cart.
Cart Reminder
It often happens that users put goods into the shopping cart, but instead of buying then they leave the online shop. In order to encourage the users to buy, it is advisable to send a reminder e-mail. This retargeting measure promises a high sales potential, as these users already know you and are already well advanced in the purchasing process.
There are numerous reasons for a purchase cancellation. Not always the cancelled purchase means that the product is not convincing or the purchase process (payment method, payment details, shipping options, etc.) is too complicated. In addition to the loss of interest, this may be, for example, an interrupted Internet connection, other
technical disruption or a distraction by friends or family. Of course, to identify the reasons for the drop you should analyse the cancellation behaviour.
Congratulations
When making a purchase, customers usually have to provide additional personal information such as the date of birth in addition to the name. You can use this information to send subscribers a special birthday e-mail for their birthday, for example with personalized birthday offers.
How to personalize your emails
After you have analysed and defined possible fields of application of personalized e-mails, the next step is operational implementation.
Use data analysis systems
In order to be able to send a personalized e-mail to your recipients, you need data as already mentioned. Many e-mail delivery providers offer statistics on this. You can
also use other web analysis tools. Of course, you should pay attention to data protection when collecting data and evaluating it.
Personal address
The personalized approach can already be seen as standard in email marketing. But there is a downer here: The automatic personalization of the name in e-mails is no longer a secret and hardly lures anyone out from behind the stove - but do not leave it out either. Therefore, if possible, you should make additional customizations in your email campaigns.
Pay attention to the language style of your target group
If you use e-mail marketing, then you need to address your leads, customers, etc. accurately. If you do not have a homogeneous target group due to your business, but address different user groups, then each target group needs its own approach.
A tailor-made approach does not just affect the language style. In addition to the interests, this must also match age and origin. The 40-year-old family man with house in the country has a different way of speaking than a 23-year-old student in the big city. The 40-year-old family man with a house in the country has a different way of speaking than a 23-year-old student in the big city.
Align content to the audience
Of course, if you've defined different recipient audiences to receive separate emails, you'll need to create individual content. In addition to the text, this also includes graphics and images. Especially the visual design of the newsletter has a big influence on its overall performance. Different age groups, genders and interest groups feel differently addressed by the visual preparation of the content.
Have enough content creation staff
To send various personalized e-mails, you need enough manpower to be able to create the appropriate content. Do not underestimate the workload. Therefore, during the strategy
phase, conduct an audit and decide which employees you can use to create your e-mail campaigns.
Use professional e-mail marketing software
In order to be able to personalize your e-mail campaigns as far as possible, you need software that can assign the individual personalization elements to a previously defined
recipient list. The software you use must be able to process complex conditions and play the "right" content to the "right" recipient.
Stumbling traps in personalization
Personalizing your newsletter and other email campaigns can have a positive effect on your business. However, there are pitfalls that you should know and avoid.
When choosing an e-mail marketing tool, make sure that it can handle the selected language correctly. For international email campaigns, it may therefore be necessary to use different providers.
If you offer individualized texts, then you will work with placeholders in various places. These are also a source of embarrassing mistakes. If you use wildcards, then you should pay close attention to the correct spelling of the technical commands. A forgotten parenthesis can have serious consequences here. Instead of the name, the user can be addressed, for example, with the technical wildcard command.
Please note the privacy policy
Never before has it been so easy to collect, analyse and re-use sensitive data about the target group than it is today. However, many of these practices are contrary to data protection law. Violations can be expensive for you. When collecting and using data, make sure that this is compliant with data protection. Especially with American providers, you should exercise particular caution. Get professional support if necessary.