How to personalize your email marketing

This personal interaction became a lost art in the digital age. As companies began to conduct more business online, people became impersonal ‘users’ instead of human beings. That is starting to change.

Companies now realize the importance of building individual relationships with their customers and email personalization is helping them achieve it. In fact, 72% of consumers say that they will only engage with personalized messaging!

Here’s how you can add a personal touch to your email marketing.

Email personalization is when marketers use subscriber data, such as name, location or recent purchases, in their email content. When done right, personalized emails can make each subscriber feel like you are speaking directly to them.Your email content will feel much more relevant, which is the best way to gain trust and build a relationship.

There are lots of ways you can personalize your emails. For example, you can insert the subscribers’ names into the subject line, send a birthday email on each subscriber’s actual birthday, or share special offers that are happening in your subscribers’ local area (we’ll talk more about this later).

Take a look at this email campaign from Bethany Hamilton, an American professional surfer. By personalizing the subject line and the opening message, she instantly makes the email content more relevant and directed to the individual subscriber.

If you were on a busy street, and someone shouted your name, you’d turn around instantly, right? They’d have your attention straight away.

It’s exactly the same with email marketing. When people are scanning their crowded inboxes, your personalized email will stick out like a sore thumb (in a good way)!

If you still aren’t convinced, then here are 5 stats to think about:

1. You get higher open rates: 71% of subscribers agree that they would be more likely to open a personalized email.

2. Say hello to more sales: You get 6x higher transaction rates with personalized emails.

3. Personalization creates a tailored experience: 70% of millennials feel annoyed by irrelevant marketing emails.

4. You can get better engagement: 72% of shoppers agree that they would only engage with personalized messages.

5. Your customers want to be treated like people: 84% of people agree that they would be more likely to give their business to brands that treat them like people, rather than numbers (helloooo, higher conversion rates).

Yup, it’s time to do more email personalization. If you want to catch your subscribers’ attention, increase conversions, or grow sales—personalized messages should be your new favorite marketing strategy.

Surprisingly, the best personalization has little to do with knowing your subscribers’ names or interests. They start by understanding your brand and yourself.

It’s not enough that you know someone’s name, where they live or their favorite hobbies. For a relationship to form, they need to know something about you. You need to come across as a relatable human, not a faceless business.

Whether you are an individual or a large company, there are several personalization tactics to show your human side in your email marketing campaigns.

A subscriber relationship built around trust and loyalty starts with you sharing your personality. When people know they are talking to an actual human, the dynamic changes and they are more willing to engage.

The next step is to add elements of personalization to your email. MailerLite’s custom fields feature enables you to insert specific details about your subscribers like their names, their company and where they live.

MailerLite automatically collects the subscriber data captured from your signup forms, such as their name and email. You can then insert that data directly into your messages to make it personal.

Instead of sending out an email with a generic salutation like “Hi there,” you can simply write “Hi {$name}” and every email will be populated with the actual person’s name (as long as you have the subscribers’ names in your custom fields).

Here are a few more ideas to leverage your custom fields feature. You can do all of these things using MailerLite!

1. Personalize the subject line

You can insert the recipient’s name in the subject line, which is a smart way to stand out in a cluttered inbox. As they skim their new emails, seeing their name will pique interest. Check out our ultimate guide to writing email subject lines to learn more.

2. Personalize the ‘from’ address

When the email comes from a real person instead of a disembodied company, it adds a human touch that is harder to ignore.

3. Personalize the preheader text

Also known as “the second subject line,” email preheaders are very important for mobile devices. Preheader text takes up more space than the subject line, giving you another opportunity to personalize.

4. Personalize the postscript

The “P.S.” at the end of your email is often read more than the actual content. Make the text count. Maybe add another personal detail like their company name or their city.

5. Personalize an image

Get creative by adding personal information to dynamic images. You can use a tool like Sirv to create and tag your image.

6. Personalize who receives it

Interest groups (or tags) allow you to add special labels to your subscribers, and group them based on their behaviors or interests. For example, if you run a health and wellness page, you could group your subscribers based on those who are more interested in yoga, and those who prefer cardio. With subscriber management and segmenting, your email campaigns will be much more targeted and personal.

7. Personalize the content

Our dynamic email content blocks allow you to show/hide certain parts of your newsletter, depending on the demographics of your subscriber. So you can send an email to all your subscribers but one section will only be seen by a targeted group. It’s like adding a secret message to the people who need the info.

8. Personalize the delivery time

With MailerLite, you can deliver emails by timezone, so that no one wakes up to one of those 3AM marketing emails!

While adding real names or other types of information within the text can be effective, it can also backfire if you don’t have the right information. Periodically review your lists to ensure the data is correct.

For more guidance on creating and implementing these types of personalization within MailerLite, you can watch our custom fields tutorial.

Inserting personal information in your emails is a cool feature, but it's only effective if the rest of the content is relevant to that individual. Check out this guide to find out more about crafting email content that people care about.

Amazon is considered the pioneer of personalized emails because they can use your shopping history to craft content that is unique and relevant to you. They often send abandoned shopping cart emails, or check in with you when they see you’ve been looking at a certain product (just like in this email below).

Amazon is a massive company with a sophisticated personalization operation, but the good news is that you have similar capabilities with MailerLite.

In the two previous chapters, we covered automation and list segmentation. These are the building blocks that help you create more relevant content.

Let’s say you set an automation trigger on a specific product on your website. You can configure MailerLite (using an e-commerce integration) to send that person a targeted email referencing the product and sharing similar products.

You are closer to one-to-one marketing than you think.

So we’ve covered why you should use personalization, along with some of the best email personalization strategies. Next up, let’s find out how you can gather data from your customers and subscribers...

1. Enhance email personalization with integrations

Companies that collect customer data across their different tools can use it to find new ways to personalize their marketing.

Traditionally, email marketers collected data by asking a lot of questions on a signup form.

When you ask for too much information, most people will never fill out the form. It’s much more important to get the subscriber first, then worry about collecting more data later. That is where integrations can come in handy.

If a customer is interacting with you, there is a chance that you already have information about them in a different system, such as a CRM, customer service software or e-commerce platform.

When you integrate your email with these other tools, you can match the subscriber names and create more in-depth profiles. These data points allow you to segment and personalize your messaging in a more targeted manner.

Here are 2 of our favorite MailerLite integrations that will enhance your personalization.

2. Gain extra insights with your subscribe forms

Forms are a crucial part of your digital marketing toolkit. When people sign up, it’s your golden opportunity to gather all the information you need.

Just by adding one or two extra fields, you can gain extra insights into who your subscribers are, and what will resonate with them.

The ‘go to’ fields are name and email address, but here are some further ideas that you could sprinkle in there:

• Birth date: So that you can send out an automated birthday email, or send tailored newsletters depending on their age demographic

• Country: So that you can give them relevant offers for their location and currency

• Interest groups: So that your subscribers can check boxes and decide which types of content they want to receive

The key is not to overdo it. If your form is too long, people won’t bother signing up. A general rule of thumb is to have no more than 3-4 fields, so choose your categories wisely!

3. Adopt analytics tools

Did you know that tools like Google Analytics can help you to analyze website behavior? This isn’t for stalking your audience—it’s just about getting to know them, so that you can start off your relationship with them on the right foot.

Here are some of the ways that analytics can help you to create personalized emails:

• Abandoned cart emails: Perhaps your subscribers forgot to check out, and a gentle nudge could be the final incentive for them to convert

• Product recommendations: You can share products in your email that resonate with your subscribers’ interests

• Specific discounts: Add a special offer on the products that your subscribers click on the most

Rather than getting a general, cookie-cutter marketing email, your subscribers will be glad to receive email content that is specific and personal to them.

It’s inspiration time! As these 4 examples will show, there’s more than one way to personalize your email…

#1 - Spotify's year in review

Now, the obvious choice might be to whack your subscriber’s name in the subject line, but Spotify went deeper in this personalized email. They dug into their customer data and delivered an end-of-year review of everyone’s listening history. Digital marketing at its finest!

#2 - The Body Shop's re-engagement email

In this personalized email, The Body Shop segmented their subscribers and targeted the ones with the lowest open rates - ‘Hi Megan, we noticed you haven’t opened anything from us in a while…’ The content is relevant to those who engage less with their emails, and offers them the chance to give their valuable feedback.

#3 - Google's 2020 timeline update

When people have their location history switched on, Google sends a yearly newsletter showing the places they visited and where they spent most of their time. A nice way for people to look back on how far they’ve come (literally)!

#4 - Revolut's personalized rewards campaign

This newsletter opens with the subject line: Megan, how does 40% off Uber Eats sound? 🍔

I’d say that sounds pretty great! Personalizing the subject line AND the email message is a nice touch, and it makes the email content feel extra special to the reader.

(P.S. For more stunning newsletter ideas, check out our email template gallery! 😍 )

At the end of the day, your subscribers are human—just like you! With these email personalization strategies, you can interact with them in meaningful ways, and show them how much you care. (Plus, email personalization can drive higher conversions, which is a nice bonus!)