Email personalization is a trick to engage with your audience.

With the proliferation of consumer data and rapidly evolving customer tastes, email personalization can feel like a daunting task. But, don’t fret! There are many easy ways to personalize an email, improving your connection and engaging with your subscriber on a one-to-one basis.

Consider the five tactics below to personalize and engage with your audience:

1. Incorporate Segmentation

Segmentation rounds up your subscribers into groups that are similar to one another. This enables your marketing team to customize their communications to each group accordingly, improving their engagement with them.

Good data coupled with your marketing automation engine allows you to build campaigns that best speak to each one of your segments.

2. Use image personalization

Add a personal touch by using images your targeted audience can relate to. For instance, if you are promoting a singles event for professionals, you can refer to your segmented groups from above and send images of age appropriate people networking to suit each subscriber in your target audience.

Another example is a travel company trying to push vacation packages. By knowing the age and recent life events of your customers, you can use images to visually connect with subscribers. For instance, you can have an image of a couple holding hands on the beach to send to a segment of “married without children”. Or you can change up the image to include a family building a sandcastle together at the beach to your known audience of “married couples with children”.

Make sure you have the data you need so that you can choose the right images so that you can connect with your audience.

3. Send email reminders

Email reminders are an excellent way to get an up-tick in your open rates. Sending your customers follow-up reminders that it’s time to renew or repeat a service lets them know you’re looking out for them.

For example, Go Daddy sends off email reminders when one of your domains is nearing its expiration date. Because most domains are usually prepaid 1-2 years in advance, customers tend to forget about renewing. A reminder is a great way to reconnect with an element of urgency to get your customers to take an action.

Another good example is an auto shop sending a reminder to a customer when they’re due for an oil change. You can also check in on them if they haven’t frequented your shop in a while, to gain customer feedback (for example, if the customer had a bad experience which has caused them to stay away). This also opens the door for the company to step in and fix the problem and shore up the relationship.

4. Important dates and milestones

Sending an email to recognize your customer’s birthday, or even half birthdays is a fun way to engage with your customers and show appreciation. You can also celebrate milestones such as subscriber anniversaries (two years since they’ve become a subscriber, etc.) or behavioral milestones.

Loyalty programs provide for many opportunities for crafting such emails. You can send an email to customers when they are $20 away from their next reward to encourage them to take action and meet their next milestone. Kohl’s often sends email promotions to remind customers of their progress towards earning additional Kohl’s cash.

5. Communications from the source

Having the human touch gains trust from your subscribers. Getting an email from the person who just sold you a product is far more effective than one from the company name.

Bonobos does a great job of tying the in-store experience with the digital experience by sending emails from the specific associate that worked with the customer at point of sale. This method boosts engagement as the email feels much more like a continuation to their conversation rather than an automated message.

These are just a few of the tips that can help your company engage with your audience at a greater rate through email personalization.

TowerData can help your company gain more insight about your subscribers so that you can best fine-tune and personalize your campaigns. Reach out to us to get a free match report on your data, so that you can start getting enhanced email engagement.

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