Email personalization: Best practices to upgrade your campaigns
72% of customers are willing to pay more for a personalized customer experience. Why? Because it makes them feel seen and valued by brands. It also prioritizes their time, so customers don’t waste hours reading irrelevant emails or searching through unrelated products.
Updated on 15 Aug 2024
Table of Contents
- What is email personalization?
- Why should you use email personalization for your marketing campaigns?
- 4 steps to creating personalized emails
- Email personalization best practices and strategies in 2024
- Why is Insider the #1 email personalization software choice for global brands?
- Email personalization FAQs
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From SMS to App to onsite experiences, personalization can boost your revenue by approximately 15%.—and at the heart of your personalization strategy should be email.
Powering your email campaigns with customer data increases your open rate by 29% and your click-through rate by 41%. Brands worldwide benefit from the impact of email personalization; when Samsung launched its Galaxy Note 9, its personalized emails and notifications saw a 275% increase in conversion rates compared to previous product launches.
In 2024, personalization is a non-negotiable. In this blog post, we will explore what email personalization is, why you should use it, and the best practices and strategies to excel in email personalization this year before comparing email personalization software.
What is email personalization?
Email personalization refers to tailoring email content to the recipient rather than sending generic, mass-marketing messages. The approach involves leveraging data insights to deliver targeted messages, such as using a recipient’s name, past interactions, behaviors, and preferences.
It often involves dynamic content, product recommendations, and personalized subject lines, enhancing engagement by creating a more personalized and relevant experience for the user. With over $347 billion emails sent every day, email personalization is a way to amplify the impact of each email, increasing open rates and driving higher conversions.
Why should you use email personalization for your marketing campaigns?
- It drives engagement and click-through rates
Generic, one-size-fits-all emails are easily ignored in crowded inboxes. Personalized emails, on the other hand, capture attention. By tailoring content to the recipient’s interests, behavior, and purchase history, you significantly increase the chances of engagement and click-through rates.
- It increases customer engagement and retention
Personalized emails are more likely to capture subscribers’ attention and drive them to take action. You build a lasting relationship by consistently delivering content that resonates with your audience. This keeps your brand at the forefront of their minds and reduces the likelihood of them unsubscribing.
- It puts you ahead in a competitive market
When consumers are bombarded with marketing messages, standing out is crucial. Email personalization sets you apart from competitors who still rely on generic campaigns. It demonstrates your commitment to understanding and meeting your audience’s needs by acting on them.
- It boosts customer loyalty
When customers receive content that resonates with their preferences, you are more likely to develop brand loyalty with your customers. This loyalty can translate into repeat purchases, brand advocacy, and long-term relationships. Many successful brands benefit from the power of personalized experiences in cultivating strong relationships with their customers.
For instance, consider the success stories of companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify. These industry leaders have leveraged email personalization to provide tailored product recommendations and movie suggestions. As a result, their customers feel valued and understood, fostering a sense of loyalty that keeps them returning for more.
4 steps to creating personalized emails
Ready to personalize your emails and drive loyalty and conversions? Here’s how to get started
- Invest in email personalization software
Email personalization doesn’t need extra time and resources—we know marketers don’t have much of either. Instead, you need to invest in email personalization software that empowers you to streamline and automate email personalization. From AI-powered triggers to workflow automation and journey orchestration, building a personalized email experience shouldn’t take weeks to launch.
- Establish your objectives
Clearly outline your goals for email marketing. Whether you focus on boosting sales, nurturing leads, or driving website traffic, defining clear objectives will shape your overall strategy for personalization and help with the next steps.
- Use the power of segmentation
Your email personalization software should enable you to segment your audience based on data. An email personalization software like Insider enables marketers to build segmented campaigns from user engagement, attributes, events, and predictive behavior.
You can also hyper-target by personalizing the content within the segments, so your emails tap into purchase and visit history, predictive actions, and shopping patterns. Insider’s 120+ microsegments are the key to segmented, highly personalized email campaigns for maximum impact.
- Adapt and refine your campaigns
Make the most of your email personalization software’s features and solutions for refinement. From AI-powered workflow automation to data, a successful email personalization campaign should be constantly refined.
- Use predictive analytics to increase engagement: Leverage Insider’s predictive analytics to anticipate how your audience interacts with your emails. Understand their preferences, timing, and engagement patterns, and make the most of AI-powered features like Send Time Optimization, which adapts send times based on when your audience is most likely to engage.
- A/B test for optimization: Implement A/B testing to experiment with different elements of your emails, from subject lines to visuals. Use the results to refine your approach, adopting the most effective strategies for maximizing engagement and conversions. Insider’s A/B testing autowinner automatically prioritizes the winning email, without manual effort, so you can optimize your workflow for success.
- Monitor key metrics: Dive into the analytics dashboard to track key performance indicators such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Identify patterns and trends to understand what’s working well and where improvements can be made.
Email personalization best practices and strategies in 2024
If you want to enhance your email personalization, you need to apply the following best practices.
Leverage the power of unified customer data
Unify the data of your email subscribers so that you can build campaigns from a 360-degree view of their behaviors, preferences, and actions across multiple channels. By powering your emails with a reliable customer data platform, you can build highly personalized, relevant campaigns that you know are relevant and contextual to more than just email.
Leading European retailer, NA-KD, used Insider’s omnichannel journey builder, Architect, to power personalized omnichannel campaigns at scale across Email, Web Push, and SMS. It powered the journeys with Insider’s customer data platform to build a seamless, relevant experience. Using email as part of a data-driven, personalized campaign achieved a 72X ROI and a 25% increase in CLTV.
Enhance engagement with AMP for email
AMP for email turns mundane, text-heavy emails into interactive experiences. Boost engagement by integrating elements such as quizzes, surveys, scratch cards, and click-through elements within your emails. Capture attention and prompt recipients to actively participate with immersive email experiences.
Make sure your design is mobile-first
47% of consumers view their email app on their phone. If your email is unresponsive and hard to navigate via mobile, your chances of converting fall by half. There’s no excuse to miss out on this portion of your audience—create engaging, responsive, mobile-first emails in record time with ready-made templates that ensure you perform on every device.
Always respect privacy
It’s vital that your company complies with data protection regulations and obtains proper consent before collecting and using personal data for emails. Demonstrating a commitment to respecting privacy keeps your brand in good legal standing and creates a sense of trust and transparency with your audience. An essential part of personalizing emails is keeping customer relationships and data strong and secure.
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“Insider’s email capabilities are comprehensive and user-friendly. It’s made it much easier for us to reach and engage our audience effectively— I highly recommend Insider for businesses looking to enhance their online presence and drive sales.”
- Marketing Manager on G2
Discover more email marketing best practices.
Why is Insider the #1 email personalization software choice for global brands?
Insider offers the most comprehensive email personalization solution on the market. With its AI-powered, intuitive platform, Insider helps brands deliver highly personalized and engaging email campaigns within minutes, making it the number one choice for marketers looking to upgrade their email marketing strategies.
Here’s what else marketers gain from Insider:
- Advanced AI-powered algorithms: Insider’s cutting-edge AI algorithms leverage predictive analytics and machine learning to understand and anticipate user behavior. This enables brands to deliver hyper-personalized content, recommendations, and offers, maximizing engagement and conversion rates.
- Intuitive platform for seamless campaign execution: The platform’s intuitive design ensures that marketers can navigate and implement strategies with ease. From creating highly targeted segments to crafting personalized content, the user-friendly interface streamlines the entire process, allowing marketers to launch effective campaigns within minutes.
- Efficiency and speed: Insider’s commitment to efficiency is reflected in its ability to facilitate rapid campaign execution. Marketers can capitalize on the platform’s capabilities to swiftly adapt to market trends and respond to customer behaviors in real time.
- Comprehensive personalization capabilities: Beyond just personalizing email content, Insider offers a comprehensive suite of personalization capabilities across 12+ channels. Marketers can tailor the email content and content across SMS, Web Push, App, Web and Mobile to ensure a consistent, cohesive brand experience.
- Global reach and scalability: Insider provides a scalable solution that caters to the diverse needs of global brands, ensuring consistency and efficacy in personalized email campaigns across various markets and regions.
- World-leading innovation: Insider’s 2023 release of a world-leading generative AI solution, Sirius AI™ demonstrated the brand’s commitment to staying at the forefront of the industry. Marketers benefit from access to the latest features and technologies, ensuring that their email personalization strategies remain cutting-edge and aligned with evolving market trends.
Email personalization FAQs
Personalizing email campaigns involves tailoring messages based on recipient preferences, behavior, and demographics through segmentation, dynamic content, and merge tags.
To send personalized mass emails, use email marketing software with personalization features, import segmented lists, and customize content with recipient-specific variables for increased engagement.
Email personalization can impact deliverability positively by reducing spam markings, but improper personalization or excessive merge tag use may trigger spam filters.
Absolutely, email personalization enhances customer loyalty by offering personalized content, recommendations, and exclusive deals based on individual preferences, fostering a stronger brand connection.
Yes, AI is a powrful tool for email personalization, leveraging algorithms to analyze data, provide personalized recommendations, and optimize various elements for improved engagement and conversion rates.
