No matter how much email marketing has evolved over the years, nothing beats personalized messages because of their authenticity. Automation is good to an extent, but it shouldn’t be used all the time. Keep in mind, nothing can ever replace the element of human experience, especially in this digital age.
The goal is for your email marketing campaign to reach your customers’ hearts and not just their inboxes. How do you do that? You’ll need to learn how to scale your personalized email marketing campaign.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a segment of internet marketing that uses email in promoting products and services while also building relationships with potential clients or customers. In essence, it’s direct mail marketing but it’s done electronically and not through the postal service.
Aside from sales promotions and exclusive deals for customers, email marketing can also include newsletters with announcements and updates from the company. These types of emails are significant in informing and engaging at the same time.
Recommended reading: 10 Email marketing Strategies
Personalized Email Marketing 101
Personalized email marketing is more than just adding the recipient’s name at the beginning of the message. It encompasses relevant content and provides a unique experience to your customers. You don’t simply offer or introduce a product; you craft a message that speaks to your audience.
Personalized email marketing can be highly beneficial, but it’s also a strategy that consumes a lot of time and effort. When done correctly and effectively, though, it’s one of the most interactive and engaging approaches you can use to increase your sales and digital presence.
Here are some ways on how to scale your personalized email marketing campaign:
1. Utilize The Data You Have
The power of data can’t be underestimated when it comes to personalizing your email marketing campaign. Data refers to the information you have about your customers. It includes their first name, geographical location, purchase history, and past behavior on your product or site.
Personalizing your customers’ experience will depend heavily on your marketing goals as well as your business model and type of product or service. You need to gather as much information
as possible from your clients, so you can easily tailor your email marketing campaign accordingly.
2. Segment Your Email List
After collecting data from your customers, you’ll need to start segmenting your email list. Segmentation means grouping or labeling your customers based on similar attributes. For example, you can segment your email list according to browsing history, gender, or location. Doing this will help you determine the right audience to target for your campaign.
Reaching your target audience is essential in email marketing. Even when you’re able to engage a lot of people, it doesn’t resonate with anything if they’re not the right people for your brand.
Segmentation highly impacts your personalization levels. You can use your list in creating content that’s relevant to a group of customers, eliminating the need to tailor each email you send out.
Recommend Reading: Market Segmentation: What is is and why is it important in marketing
3. Make Dynamic And Relevant Content
Dynamic email content allows you to personalize and change your message according to the interests, preferences, and behavior of your customers. It greatly helps in targeting specific subscribers in a way that you can tailor specific details or components such as images, texts, recommendations, or calls to action.
For instance, you’re in the clothing industry and your marketing goal is to increase digital customer engagement for retail. With dynamic content, you can personalize according to the data you have about your subscribers. Your emails can include recommendations of apparel based on gender and shopping behavior.
Instead of writing different messages to communicate with your customers, advocates, and leads, dynamic email content allows you to create one email and easily switch content, depending on a specific segment you want to reach.
4. Utilize The Power Of Imagery
Apart from texts, you can also include images in your emails. You can dynamically change visuals in your personalized email marketing campaign, so it can better attract your target audience.
One effective way of using imagery is to tailor the pictures according to geographical locations. If you have subscribers living in different countries, you can use images that are most likely to catch their attention instead of using a generic one.
If a specific group of your subscribers is from the United States, for example, you can use colors and pictures commonly associated with the culture and traditions of Americans. Try to contextualize your approach.
5. Use Videos To Connect Personally
Another good tool to utilize in a personalized email marketing campaign is videos and animations. People like to see colors and movements; and if they receive an email containing videos, they’d get attracted to read through the content and what it’s saying.
Use videos that are both entertaining and educational. It’s a good way to communicate with your customers interactively. It also gives them the impression you’re not a usual email marketer who sends endless walls of text in boring fonts.
6. Be Mobile-Ready
With the majority of people accessing emails and websites using their smartphones, it’s better to adapt to this trend in your personalized email campaign. Make sure your emails are readable even on mobile devices because if they can’t see anything because of small font or unloadable images, chances are they won’t open your emails again in the future.
What’s worse is when they decide to opt out or unsubscribe from your list because of their disappointment. Customers will most probably think you’re not equipped with enough email-crafting skills, and you don’t want that to happen. See to it that your emails are mobile-friendly.
7. Personalize Product Recommendations
Your loyal customers expect you to recognize their needs and preferences. It’s a great way of letting them know you pay attention to their shopping behavior and browsing habits. That being said, you shouldn’t just send them random product recommendations—personalize them instead.
They’re more likely to visit your website if they find the recommendations interesting and useful. Aside from this, you can also send them discount coupons and complementary products connected or similar to what they usually buy.
For example, if they recently bought a pair of tattered jeans, your next email can include styling tips that feature other items from your shop such as a top to go with the jeans or accessories they can pair with.
8. Stick To A Schedule
If you’re giving newsletters to your subscribers, it’s best to stick to a specific day of the week when sending them. Aside from making your company or brand seem professional, your
subscribers will get a grasp of when and what to expect from you. As always, consistency is key.
There’s no universal time when it comes to sending marketing emails, but you can still show you respect their privacy by not sending them irrelevant messages and content. Avoid crowding them with too many emails at a time because it’ll annoy your customers and it can ward off potential buyers as well.
9. Connect With Former Customers
The goal of email marketing isn’t only to establish engagement with existing subscribers but also to connect with former or lost customers. If they left because they decided to switch to another brand or service, check back with them and see how their current experience is.
A good approach would be to get in touch with them after six months or so. You can start with a simple email asking them how they’ve been. Include their name on the salutations and maybe remind them how long it’s been since their last purchase.
As a way of enticing them to do business again with you, you may offer them discount codes or special offer coupons they can use within the next 24 hours. It’ll prompt them to decide and take action. If you’re lucky, they’ll buy something and subscribe again to your mailing list.
Scale Up To Level Up
Email marketing continues to evolve through the years. Trends and strategies change but one thing remains the same—it’s effective and it helps in increasing sales. Still, as an email marketer who wants to always stay on top, you need to keep up with these innovations.
Use the data you have, create a segmented email list, and make your content dynamically attractive. Using images and videos also helps significantly in maintaining the appeal of your message.
Customers tend to stick with brands and companies that value their loyalty and pay attention to what they need. Use the information you have to your advantage, so you can make more personalized emails. Respect their privacy and don’t annoy them with spam emails that don’t convey any relevant message at all.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that email marketing involves several complex steps. To make it effective and successful, you should incorporate as many techniques as possible.
The tips above should give you a proper head start on how to scale your personalized email marketing campaign. As with any other type of marketing and customer engagement strategy, nothing beats having a personal touch.