People receive hundreds of email messages every single day. So how can you make your emails stand out to encourage them to open your messages and engage with your brand? This is where email personalization comes in.

A personalized email improves click rates by 14% and conversions by 10%. This means that if you aren’t personalizing your email messages, you’re likely missing out on new leads and customers. In this article, we’ll look at why email personalization is so important, as well as different tips for creating personalized email messages.

• What is Email Personalization?
• Why is Email Personalization Important?
• How do you Personalize Email Sales?
• How can you Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing?
• What are Some Tips for Email Personalization?
• How do you Boost Sales Using Email Marketing?
• How do I Personalize an Email to a Prospect?
• What Elements in an Email can you Personalize?
• Do Personalized Emails Perform Better?
• Is Personalized Email Marketing Effective?
• Why is Personalization Important in Email Marketing?
• What is Personalized Email Marketing?
• What are the 4 Types of Email Marketing?
• What are the 5 Proven Email Practices to Drive Revenue?
• How do you Optimize Email Campaigns?
• How do I Personalize my Prospecting?
• How do you Customize a Cold Email?
• How do you Send a Personalized Email?
• How do I Personalize Emails in Gmail?
• Does Personalization Increase Engagement?
• How to Use Content Personalization in Your Strategy

What is Email Personalization?

Personalized email marketing is when you use information you already know about a specific subscriber and use that information to tailor the email specifically for that individual. Examples of information you could use to personalize the email include name, age, geo-information, the last page visited, last product purchased, and more!

Why is Email Personalization Important?

With email marketing, you can connect directly with your target audience. But sending emails is only half the battle.

Read Also: 10 Key Benefits of Using Cost-effective Digital Marketing Methods

You want recipients to open and interact with your email messages, and personalization can help. Personalization is extremely important if you want to encourage interaction with your emails. In fact, 74% of marketers say personalized messages increase customer engagement.

With personalized email marketing, you can:

• Increase the chance that people will open and click your emails
• Tailor your communication to recipients’ individual needs
• Improve customer experience and earn more conversions

Ultimately, email personalization allows you to earn more opens and clicks, and it increases the chance that people will purchase your products. Okay, you get it. Email personalization is important.

How do you Personalize Email Sales?

When it comes to prospecting emails, the importance of that first outreach cannot be underestimated. 

How do you stick out from the crowd enough to a) avoid immediate deletion, b) score an open, and c) evoke a meaningful response?

While it’s true that not every cold prospecting email can be personalized to that degree, they can at least be made less impersonal by following a few simple guidelines.

1. Get rid of any spammy content

Would you open an email with the subject line, “Guess what we have in store for you!!” from an unknown sender?

Yeah, we wouldn’t either. 

Getting rid of spammy content doesn’t just apply to subject lines, though. It also means avoiding:

1. Pictures
2. Hyperlinks
3. Exclamation points
4. All caps

To keep your emails as short, crisp, and clean as possible, avoid these inflammatory signifiers and stick to the basics: a simple introduction.

2. Use email cleaning and verification services

Running a cold email campaign without taking the time to clean and verify your list can be a recipe for disaster. It could potentially damage your email sender’s reputation — which creates even bigger problems in the long run. 

Email cleaning and verification tools can be integrated into your cold emailing process. This can be done in several ways:

1. Bulk cleaning your lists
2. Verifying emails at the point of entry in your forms
3. Syncing email cleaning with your CRM platforms and marketing automation tools 

Going a step further to ensure email verification improves the accuracy of personalization in your cold email campaigns. 

3. Meaningful CTAs > Booking a meeting

While booking a meeting is the end goal, it may be jumping the gun. Instead of asking for time on a prospect’s calendar too early, consider substituting it for a meaningful Call to Action.

CTAs that might pique your prospect’s interest could include:

• Registering for a relevant webinar
• Downloading a persona-based piece of content (like an ebook, blog post, or podcast episode)
• Visiting a landing page on your company’s website

If you provide your prospect with something of value upfront, you give them the chance to 1) explore your product or service on their own and 2) establish rapport before taking that next step in the sales cycle.

4. Take advantage of your company name

If someone opted into your company’s emails, they will most likely have a more positive affiliation with your brand than an unknown sender. For this reason, keep the domain name the same in your marketing emails. Take advantage of the brand and reputation your company has built and use it to stick out in your prospect’s inbox.

5. Use as many variables as possible

The more information you can learn about your prospects, the more you can personalize your outreach. Consider asking the following questions:

• Geography: Where is your prospect located?
• Industry: What industry are they in?
• Size: How big is their company? What about their department?
• Revenue: How much money does the company make yearly?
• Technology: What technology does your prospect use?

If you can find out specific details about your prospect–a process that can be streamlined and scaled with B2B intelligence tools – you can incorporate them into your initial outreach, distinguishing your cold but a personalized email from all the other impersonal ones in their inbox.

6. Stick to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

The best response rate comes from reaching out to the best prospects, which is why it’s essential to not just adhere to your Ideal Customer Profile but to maintain it.

Using filters like the ones mentioned above–plus more complex factors like OrgCharts–can help you build out your ICP

How can you Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing?

If you want to start personalizing your email marketing, here we have outlined 5 email personalization techniques using which your business can start doing it effectively.

1. Segment your audience

Segmentation is, hands down, one of the biggest things to happen to email marketing since it was invented.

Breaking down your email lists allows you to produce relevant, targeted, and personalized emails.

Do this well and you will  find  that you are receiving:

• Increased open rates
• Increased clicks
• Decrease in unsubscribers

Improving the above ultimately leads to higher conversions.

When you think of segmenting, you think of the basics of age, gender, geography and buyer persona. But there are actually a ton of ways you can segment your email list that are creative , innovative and most importantly, will increase your email marketing metrics. Delve deeper into your customers’ buyer behaviour and segment based on buying frequency, purchase cycle, change in content engagement level and customers who refer to your business.

A study of Mailchimp’s users showed that campaigns using segmented data received a 14.37% increase in open rates and a massive 67.48% increase in clicks.

Segmenting your customer base increases pretty much every single major email marketing metric you could possibly track such as opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribe rates.

2. Personalize Your Sender Details

This is a great way of putting some personality behind your emails. When you personalize your emails, such as addressing the recipient by name, your emails sound less generic and boring and are received by people more positively.

By making this simple change, you are giving your company a face and a personality that subscribers can relate to. With people’s inboxes being inundated with marketing and newsletters from companies, emails that are from a real person — not ‘Marketing Team’ — are more likely to be trusted (and therefore opened) as opposed to emails sent without a personalized sender.

HubSpot has found this technique to work very well. They found that their open and click-through rates increased when they included both the name of the sender as well as their company.

For example, instead of having your sender name as ‘Marketing Team’ and sending it from the ‘marketing@company.com’ email, address it from ‘Joe Bloggs’ and send it from ‘joeb@company.com’.

3. Product Recommendations

Though this might sound like a very simple form of email personalization, when done right, it is highly effective.  However, when done wrong, your email marketing can go pear-shaped. If your ads are constantly popping up, customers may feel irritated and stalked. The best way to combat this is by sending highly targeted emails to engage and convert through targeting ads based on their buyer behaviour and preferences shown.

By using your audience’s visitor data and buying behavior to recommend products, you are more likely to drive customers to make a purchase.

Amazon has been at the forefront of product recommendations since 2000.  At one point, it was reported that up to one-third of Amazon’s turnover was generated through email personalization techniques.  

You don’t have to be Amazon to make product recommendations work though.  Figures from Intelliverse show that 56% of shoppers are more likely to revisit websites that provide them with personalized product recommendations.

4. Special Offers

A well-targeted, personalized special offer can improve click-through rates by 14%. Using segmented data, marketers can produce a series of offers aimed at particular customer profiles.

For example, you can send an offer on children’s clothes to those subscribers who have previously bought children’s clothes or toys in the last 6 months. Or you could target a men’s clothing discount to only the men on your list.  

Special offers can be used for any purpose such as to re-engage with inactive users or can be sent to people who have abandoned their cart halfway through the buying process. Whatever the reason, it is effective. And as you are probably well aware, making efforts to retain your current customers is far more economical than trying to attract new ones, which on average costs 5 times as much.

You can be as creative as you want with your data. Continuous testing will soon identify where you can improve and which sections of your list respond the best.

5. Behavioral Triggering

The more sophisticated email marketers are using behavioral triggering to great effect. Though it may sound complicated, it boils down to automated email reactions based on how people are interacting with your products.

Behavioral triggering goes beyond the welcome emails and allows you to re-engage with customers and upsell products.

Why not try out a form builder that integrates with messaging apps to allow automated responses? For example, when visitors make a purchase on your site, a trigger automatically sends them an order confirmation and receipt.

MarketingSherpa found that 39% of email marketers found that this was their most effective strategy.

What are Some Tips for Email Personalization?

A personalized email improves click rates by 14% and conversions by 10%. This means that if you aren’t personalizing your email messages, you’re likely missing out on new leads and customers.

Here are nine of the top email personalization tips to help you connect and engage more subscribers.

1. Ask questions in your sign-up forms

Before we dive into some specific tips for personalizing your emails, we need to look at where the information comes from that we use to personalize. You want to gather the right information from prospects to begin personalizing emails, and including questions in your sign-up forms is a great place to start. Now, it’s important that you don’t overwhelm visitors with multiple, in-depth questions.

This can scare them away before they even submit the form and join your email list. However, you can include simple questions in your email sign-up forms that will give more insight into your new leads’ interests and needs. For example, if you’re a digital marketing company, you can ask people to select the services they are interested in, as well as their monthly budget.

Then, you can begin personalizing emails for your clients that have information related to the service and price range that best fits their needs.

2. Send surveys

While you want to avoid bombarding subscribers with surveys immediately after they sign up for your emails, you can use surveys sparingly to gather new data from your subscribers. For example, you can include a survey as the final step of a welcome email sequence. In the survey, you can ask recipients information about the kind of content they want to see in your newsletters and what time of day they want to receive your messages.

This will allow you to segment your email subscribers and send personalized emails they want to read.

3. Analyze previous email data

Examining previous email campaigns can also help you gather important information for personalizing your emails. For example, you can identify the types of content your subscribers like best — do they like informational content, promotional content, or something in between? You can also look at the most popular send times for your campaigns.

This will allow you to create personalized emails that resonate with subscribers and specific customer segments.

4. Address recipients by their names

In the words of Destiny’s Child, “Say my name, say my name.” This tip is the most basic rule of email personalization, and it should go without saying. Instead of starting your email messages with a generic “Hey there,” you can address your recipients by their names. Email platforms like EmailMarketingFX make it extremely easy for you to personalize your emails by adding recipients’ names.

Just make sure that you always add a fallback value and test your emails to avoid the awkward blunder of calling someone by the wrong name. While it’s important to personalize your emails with the recipient’s name, there are many other personalization strategies that go beyond first name personalization.

5. Schedule emails to send in recipient’s time zones

Scheduling your emails to send in a recipient’s time zone is another powerful and extremely simple way to personalize your emails. If your company is based in New York City but you send emails to clients in London, you could schedule your emails to send at 7 p.m. your time.

But this means that they would arrive in your clients’ inboxes at midnight. To personalize your messages, you can schedule them to send in your recipients’ time zones. Email platforms like EmailMarketingFX make offer time zone sending features to help you personalize your emails, boost your open rates, and ultimately get more from your email strategy.

6. Use dynamic content

With dynamic content, you can personalize blocks of your email content to resonate with individual recipients. In other words, it allows you to display different content to different people who view your emails.

You don’t have to create multiple campaigns to use dynamic content. EmailMarketingFX allows you to create a single campaign that uses dynamic content to show different messages to subscribers.

7. Link to personalized landing pages

This brings us to the next point. You’ll also want to link your email campaigns to personalized landing pages. When you click the link in an email to “See Philadelphia Fares,” you expect to see a landing page that highlights flights from Philly.

If the button said, “See Minneapolis Fares,” recipients could land on a page detailing flights from Minneapolis. Just like you want to personalize content in your emails, you will also need to connect your emails with personalized landing pages so that when recipients click the CTAs and links in your email, they will arrive on landing pages that are tailored specifically to their needs. This can encourage people to purchase and help you boost conversion rates.

8. Integrate your email with other key platforms

Connecting your email platform with other sources of data like your CRM and e-commerce platform allows you to create rich subscriber profiles and send more personalized emails. For example, integrating your email with other platforms will help you access demographic data and purchase history so that you can create personalized messages based on demographics and past behavior on your site. You can even use purchase behavior data to send emails with related product recommendations.

9. Automate your email strategy

With automated emails, you can send the right emails to the right people at the right times. You can set your automated emails to trigger when recipients take a certain action or your site, reach new milestones with your rewards program, renew services with your company, and more. Automated emails are a great form of personalization that allows you to send recipients information that is highly targeted and most relevant to them.

This helps you better engage customers and provide them with the information to purchase or re-purchase if they are an existing customer.

How do you Boost Sales Using Email Marketing?

When surveyed, 91% of marketers said email was the most crucial channel they use to reach their audience. That figure may have something to do with the fact that email marketing campaigns generally see an engagement rate of 22.86%. Compare that figure to the average social media engagement rate of 0.6 percent, and it’s easy to see why many business owners use email to reach their target audience.

If you’re struggling to generate leads and build trust with your followers, the tips below can help.

1. Gather organic leads

Before you see your sales skyrocket, you need to build a list of subscribers who are interested in what you’re offering. The best way to grow your email list is by creating customer personas based on your target audience, and then marketing to those individuals.

There are various pieces of information you’ll need to know if you want to create a useful image of your ideal customer. Start by considering the pain points and goals of your audience, and start thinking about how you can solve their problems. Next, think about the personalities of the people you hope to reach.

For example, you can get away with sending a funny message to your audience if you’re a marketer, but someone in the pharmaceutical niche would require a more formal approach. Use this information to build your brand voice and style.

Below is a sample customer persona sheet so you can see other vital data worth considering during this phase of the marketing cycle.

The more information you have about the people you hope to influence with your marketing campaign, the more success you’ll have across all campaigns.

There are plenty of places you can look for more data on your ideal customers. We suggest that you add Google Analytics to WordPress and monitor relevant social media groups so you can track objective data and learn about how your audience thinks.

2. Maximize on-site email captures

Now that you know more about the people coming to your website, it’s time to start gathering leads. The more interested consumers you have on your email list, the more potential sales you can obtain through your email marketing campaign.

The best way to generate leads that are genuinely interested in your product is by offering a lead magnet that solves a problem for consumers. Generally, lead magnets are ebooks, checklists, or comprehensive guides that your audience can use to resolve a pain point related to your business.

For example, a pet store owner may offer guides for cat and dog owners, since they’re the most popular pets. A majority of on-site visitors will find this information useful, and they’ll likely exchange their email addresses for your guide.

Business owners can capture leads on-site using various tactics. For example, OptinMonster is the best way to generate leads for your email marketing campaign because it allows you to make custom pop-ups that target customers depending on their behavior on-site.

3. Segment your lead list

Segmenting your lead list is an excellent way to increase your sales and open rate. The process of segmenting leads involves taking another look at your Google Analytics information and current email subscriber statistics. The goal is to divide your list of subscribers into various groups based on their needs and interests.

Let’s go back to the pet store example mentioned in the previous tip. If you owned the business in question, you might want to separate your leads into at least three groups. Specifically, you’ll create a list with cat owners, one with dog owners, and one for all pet owners.

Using the analytic data, you’ll determine where subscribers are segmented based on their behavior on your website, or the data they entered on the user registration form they completed when signing up.

You should then create various content based on your products and your segmented lead lists. The owner of the pet website may make a list of tips for new dog owners as a lead magnet, and cat owners may see an offer that features a discount on all cat-related products. Learning more about your potential customers can help you develop relevant lead magnets for your industry.

4. Ensure email deliverability

If your emails are not getting delivered, there’s a good chance that your email marketing campaign could fail. When your email doesn’t make it to the user, you may not even get a notification that it failed, which can result in skewed sales numbers.

There are several reasons why your messages are not making it through to your subscribers. WordPress users are frequently plagued with this issue due to the default PHP protocol used to send messages. PHP uses Sendmail to deliver emails directly to the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) server of your subscribers. If your message is not coming via SMTP, there is a conflict between the email provider and your server, which could cause an email to get lost in limbo.

Luckily, WP Mail SMTP allows business owners to send their email using SMTP instead of PHP, which results in increased email deliverability. Ensuring that your emails reach their destination can drastically increase your sales, depending on the number of messages that failed.

How do I Personalize an Email to a Prospect?

Your prospect wants, needs, and deserves that you know who they are before establishing contact with them. This will only bring improve the quality of your business connections and save a heck of a lot of time during the first steps once the contract is signed. And as time is the most valuable currency today, it’s your job to make sure that your prospect doesn’t spend even a minute vaguely reading a dry template email. 

Below are some tips that can help you.

1. Personalize the Subject Line

It’s amazing what a huge impact this one little line at the top of the email has on email marketing. The subject line directly influences your domain’s trustworthiness, your marketing campaign’s success, and, of course, your open rate. Campaign Monitor states that emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Just imagine that a quarter of all the emails you ever sent are all lost opportunities. 

But subject lines are tricky to personalize. You’ll have to make your own A/B testing to find out the best way to do so for your clients. In some cases, simply adding a name won’t make a huge difference, but adding a name and the city where the prospect is from is already much better.

2. Use a Compliment as a Conversation Opener

The best way to start a conversation with anyone (either online or offline) is to admit something you sincerely like about them. All your prospects are just ordinary people, even ones from the top 10 Silicon Valley IT companies (OK, maybe these are half-humans, half-gods).

If you see something interesting about your prospect that you really like (a cool hat on the profile picture or a recent post of their cat on Facebook), don’t be shy. Comment about it! Worst-case scenario, your email will never be read by anyone; best-case scenario, you’ll make someone a little happier and maybe even get the client. 

3. Emphasize Commonalities with the Prospect 

The fastest way to get somebody’s attention is to point out the things you have in common. This also works with email personalization. People simply tend to trust others with whom they share a common ground—you like the same music band, maybe you’ve attended the same school, or you both choose to vacation in the Hamptons. Whatever the similarities, use them. 

4. Celebrate the New Achievements Together 

Just like hearing a personal compliment, recognizing someone’s business achievements is music to the prospect’s ears. Even if they understand that this is just a sales trick, you’ll still get some credit for doing this. But avoid using generalizations.

You need to say something more than “You are such a cool company!” Be specific about exactly what wows you. Google (or search on LinkedIn) the prospect’s a company and learn about the latest changes, winnings, and awards, and then use this with sincere praise

5. Improvise with the “About” Section on LinkedIn  

LinkedIn is a great source of information for email personalization. Even if you checked everything about your prospect and you found no common things to talk about, no company updates, and nothing interesting to emphasize, check out the About section. Usually, this is the place where people state things they are most proud of and happy to share. 

6. Mention Other Company Names You Work With

Most likely, you have a few big company names in your client’s list that you are proud of. If you did a good job for them, it is totally worth mentioning this to other potential clients. Seeing that someone huge and important has already worked with you will only increase your credibility in the prospect’s eyes and maybe even become a crucial factor in hiring you.

If you mention a prospect’s competitor’s name, it’s totally fine. This might stimulate even more attention and interest to you. The easiest way to do so without triggering the prospect is to make some comparisons between them and point out the competitor’s weak spots.

7. Refer to Your Prospect’s Main Goals

Finding out what your prospect truly needs and dreams about can help create a highly personalized email. Indeed, every business is facing different problems. Still, usually issues can be resolved by achieving five general goals: make more money, get more clients, reduce expenses, grow their business, and look great to their boss. 

Figure out which of these five key goals are most common to your clients and use it to create your best email personalization practices. 

8. Write a Post Scriptum Line and Make Use of It  

There is no better place for personalization than the P.S. line at the end of the email. The thing is, when prospects receive emails, they don’t really read them from top to bottom. First, they check the subject line, glance at the beginning, skim through to the very end to see who the sender is, and then, if they find something interesting, go back to the beginning and read the body of the email. 

If, during this process, the prospect doesn’t find anything to catch their attention, they simply close the email or delete it forever. That’s it. Therefore, the P.S. line can be your last opportunity to make your client actually read your email. Don’t lose it!

What Elements in an Email can you Personalize?

Using professional-grade email marketing tools, almost every part of your email marketing campaigns can be personalized, using tactics that range from the simple to the more advanced. We’ll cover each of these tactics so you can understand the realm of possibilities.

It’s entirely possible to start simple and then work your way toward more advanced tactics as you go along. The key is to use personalization in big and small ways to add value to your customers’ experiences.

Do Personalized Emails Perform Better?

Personalization is crucial to email marketing practices because, as we mentioned earlier, people want to be seen as individuals. Sending personalized emails and following up on past messages can:

• Help you stand out within your audience’s inbox with highly targeted and tailored content
• Make your emails more likely to be opened and clicked on, hence boosting engagement to your site and increasing sales
• Strengthen customer experience with your brand or business by sending the right content to the right people at the right time
• Build trust, especially if you are selling a high-priced product or service

Several studies have found that emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened than those without. Other studies have shown that click-through rates are 14 percent higher and conversion rates are 10 percent higher when personalization is part of the general email content.

Looking at those impressive numbers, it’s obvious that personalized emails are key. Why? Because instead of your subscribers receiving an email campaign with generic offers and messages, they will receive emails that are targeted directly at them These emails include their names and provide offers, such as products and promotions, that are relevant to their interests.

Beyond that, by sending follow-up emails, you have a 21% chance of getting a response to your second email if you didn’t get a reply to your first one. Following up with your subscribers also shows that you care about their experiences with your products or services and can help establish a closer relationship with your email audience.

How can you Personalize Your Email Campaigns?

1. Use personalization tags

When collecting subscriber information from your opt-in form, make sure to gather important information like the user’s name, email, location, etc. Collecting and using other data can help personalize your emails even further. There are many technologies out there that can tell you which products or service pages a user was on and then you can cater product-based emails directly to those users.

2. Segment your email lists

Customers have varied interests, tastes and preferences. So, there’s no way you can expect them to be happy with a one-size-fits-all approach. This is why you need to divide your audience into groups based on their demographics and interests. You can then use these segments to distribute more relevant and tailored content to each group.

3. Leverage dynamic content

Dynamic content allows you to show different blocks of content within an email to different segments or lists for a particular campaign. For instance, you can create multiple versions of the same email that are personalized based on the information you have about them (like whether they are male or female, purchase history, etc.) Gone are the days of shotgun emails where you send out a bulk email and pray for results.

4. Use automation to boost relevancy and timeliness

Automated content delivery is all about sending the right information to the right people at the right time. Emails can be triggered after a subscriber takes a specific action or hit a milestone. This can be when they purchase a certain number of products, it can be or their birthday, or when they renew their membership.

5.  Follow up!

If you haven’t received a response after sending an email, you can send two to three follow-up emails to increase your reply rate by as much as 21% compared to the initial email. Just make sure to craft your follow-up emails so they will get a response. The last thing you want to do is to appear spammy or desperate.

What are Some Follow-up Emails That Generate More Sales?

By this point, you’re likely sold on the idea of email personalization and follow-up emails. Here’s a quick list of email ideas that will generate sales and build brand loyalty.

1. Welcome email

As soon as the potential customer has signed up for your email you can send them a welcome email that explains who you are and what you do. Think of it as a quick elevator pitch that will be in their inbox for when they’ve left your website.

2. Catered content

Whether you’re selling a product or service, now is the time to capitalize on educating your potential customer by sending relevant content that can both build trust and highlight your brand or product. A good example would be Springwell Water’s email that explains the difference between a salt-based water softener and a salt-free softener. They then follow up with an email that pushes potential customers to some of their best reviews.

3. Act now emails

An act now email is one that will push for the sale. Include a coupon code or an urgent call to action to get the potential customer to pull the trigger.

Now that you have an idea of the value that email personalization and follow-ups can add to your business, all that’s left to do is to start creating your personalized email campaigns to see which tactic works best for your audience. And don’t forget to follow up on your email messages (only if you do not get a response on your initial email after a specified time).

Is Personalized Email Marketing Effective?

Personalization is when marketers use subscriber data within their email content to make the content feel tailor-made for the individual. It is proven to increase open rates and drive revenue by as much as 760% because it helps marketers give subscribers more relevant, individualized content.

By gathering subscriber data (like a first name) and segmenting subscribers into more detailed lists, marketers are using this tactic to step away from mass messaging and to instead make their subscribers feel like VIPs.

Imagine this: you have the ability to reach each and every one of your subscribers as though they’re someone you know, like a trusted friend. You call your subscribers by name, provide them with messages they adore, and deliver content that’s perfectly tailored to their needs. As a result, your subscribers look forward to receiving emails from your brand.

Why is Personalization Important in Email Marketing?

Personalization is essential to marketing practices because people want to be seen as individuals. How can you do that when marketing to hundreds of people?

Personalized emails

• Personalized emails stand out within the inbox as highly relevant, tailor-made material.
• Personalized emails make an email more likely to be opened and clicked on.
• Personalized emails strengthen customer experiences by sending the right content to the right people at the right time.

Here are some numbers that might interest you.

No matter how you slice it, personalization is helping boost the success of email marketing strategies across a wide array of industries.

1. 66% of marketers are working toward securing internal resources to execute personalized marketing programs.
2. When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most important to marketing in the future, 33% of marketers answered: “personalization.”
3. 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement.
4. Only 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email.
5. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.  
6. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.
7. 53% of marketers say ongoing, personalized communication with existing customers results in moderate to significant revenue impact.
8. 94% of customer insights and marketing professionals across multiple industries said personalization is “important,” “very important,” or “extremely important” for meeting their current email marketing objectives.
9. Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue.
10.  Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns.

What is Personalized Email Marketing?

Email personalization is a digital marketing tactic that typically involves the use of subscriber data to create a custom experience for different groups and individuals. Personalized emails give marketers the ability to target specific subscribers with special offers, relevant content, and important information.

When done well, personalized emails feel as if the message was written and designed just for the subscriber. And in some cases it actually was! But automation and artificial intelligence (AI) often play a role in creating that unique message.

The goal of email personalization is to create a more personal email experience. The inbox is a private, personal place. When your brand’s emails arrive, you want people to feel like they’re hearing from a trusted friend. Because the last thing anyone needs is another advertisement.

Seth Godin laid down a foundation for email marketers in his groundbreaking 1999 book, Permission Marketing. In it, he explains three factors that will lead to a successful email marketing strategy. 

Email marketing should be:

1. Anticipated: “People look forward to hearing from you.”
2. Relevant: “The marketing is about something the prospect is interested in.”
3. Personal: “The messages are directly related to the individual.”

A strong email personalization strategy will have people anticipating your emails, and it can certainly make emails more relevant. However, keep in mind that using personalization doesn’t necessarily make emails feel personal – especially in a world full of savvy consumers.

What are the 4 Types of Email Marketing?

Below, we’ve outlined the four types of popular email marketing campaigns and how you can use them to help your business grow.

1. Email Newsletters
One of the most common and popular email marketing campaigns are Email Newsletters. As a small business you can use an email newsletter to provide subscribers with helpful knowledge and tools. It is important to add value to your subscribers’ inboxes; to do so create engaging content, include thought leadership, how-tos, and announcements about new services/ products.  

To measure the effectiveness of your newsletter ask yourself if the content helps build a  relationship with subscribers, increases retention and engagement, and strengthens subscriber loyalty.

2. Acquisition Emails
Acquisition Emails can help your small business acquire customers who have opted to receive your emails but have not yet converted into customers.  By creating attractive offers and informative content you can show those in your email list the value of becoming an active customer.

Acquisition emails are a great way to move leads through the conversion funnel faster, grow your business and drive additional revenue, and target users who have expressed some interest in what your business has to offer.

3. Retention Emails
If you have some experience in email marketing campaigns, consider Retention Emails for your small business. By sending a message requesting feedback or an offer to subscribers who haven’t interacted with your business or emails campaigns lately, your small business can keep the lines of communication open. Retention Emails are a very useful email campaign strategy that can help you keep your hard-won customers.

4. Promotional Emails
Promotional Emails are a great way to drives sales, signups, and new product offerings for your small business.  Promotional emails include offers that entice and encourage your target to buy a new product/service. Use promotional emails to reward engaged subscribers with exclusive offers, drive new product or services to subscribers, and cross-sell products to your customer base.

What are the 5 Proven Email Practices to Drive Revenue?

Email marketing is gaining popularity among businesses for many good reasons like effective reach to target customers, low marketing cost etc.
 

While it has become one of the best sources of lead generation and earning profits in the market, there is more that you can do with email marketing. You can easily double your profits by adopting a few simple practices that will take your email marketing to unparalleled levels

If you’re like most marketers, you’re looking for proven ways to make more of a return on your email marketing efforts. Below is a list of 5 proven ways to drive revenue with email marketing.

• Gain email subscribers with mobile and social opt-in
• Improve deliverability
• Design for mobile devices
• Drive engagement through segmentation and integration
• Automate key activities like welcome programmes and cart abandonment campaigns

How do you Optimize Email Campaigns?

The success of email marketing depends on a particular series of events taking place. Someone must see your email and be enticed to open it. Then they must click through its links, land on your website, and ultimately complete a call to action. You’ll have a higher chance of this happening if you employ these eight email optimization strategies used by businesses.

1. Create eye-catching subject lines.

Your subject line is the first thing people see before accessing your email’s content. It needs to catch readers’ attentions and compel them to open the email for more information. This first step is key to setting your campaign up for success.

Optimized subject lines are relevant to your prospects’ needs. Use a subject line that delivers relief from readers’ concerns. Tailor subject lines with your recipient’s company name and show that you have solutions for their specific issues. Incorporate actionable language to encourage readers to open the email.

Craft and fabric retailer Jo-Ann Stores uses subject lines effectively in their email marketing. They create a sense of urgency with “Today Only” and use enticing wording to make readers wonder what the “Big Savings” could be.

2. Evaluate the sender name.

Pay attention to the name from which your emails are being sent. Like a subject line, a “From” name can influence whether a reader opens your email. Emails that appear to be coming from an untrustworthy source won’t be read.

If the sender is an instantly recognizable person, then it makes sense for their name to be in an email’s “From” field. Otherwise, it might be more effective to create exclusive campaign names, like the Home Depot Garden Club. They’re using their company name, but specify a subculture within their brand. This gives recipients a feeling of exclusivity.

Whether you choose to send emails from an individual or a company, remain consistent. This helps to earn your readers’ trust, and it builds recognition for future emails.

3. Develop personalized messaging.

One of the benefits of email marketing is that it enables you to customize content. Emails that include a customer’s first name in the subject line have a higher click-through rate than those that don’t. The more emails are opened, the more information you can learn about your audience. This allows you to discover their needs and helps to develop strong relationships.

Emails can also be personalized with demographic and behavioral information about your audience. Include details like their corporate title or products they’ve viewed on your site. LinkedIn uses this strategy in their emails. Messages recap recent user activity and remind readers about services they may be interested in, all while building customer loyalty.

4. Write compelling content.

Once you’ve convinced someone to open your email, the next critical piece of your campaign is content. Information should be concise, clear, and relevant. Explain what you have to offer and why your audience should be interested.

Avoid overwhelming readers with exhaustive copy. Break up lengthy text with short paragraphs, bullet points, and appealing graphics. Seventy-five percent of content marketers experience higher ROI when visuals appear in their content.

Barnes & Noble does a great job of this with their campaigns. They present a large amount of valuable information in manageable, bite-sized pieces. Bullet points make content clear and easy to read. Color blocks help separate information topics and graphic icons add visual interest.

5. Provide clear CTAs.

The ultimate goal of your email marketing campaign is to direct readers to your website and shift them from a click to a conversion. The way to do this is through your CTA. First, determine what you want to achieve with your readers. Then, create a prominent and colorful CTA button, banner, or link. Make them eye catching to draw attention. Helzberg Diamonds reported a 26% increase in clicks by incorporating an arrow icon in their CTA buttons.

Post a CTA on the top half of your message, where it’s sure to be seen. Then, post more CTA options throughout your email that all lead to the same site. This gives readers more opportunities to find their way to your landing page. Consider using action words like “Click here” to direct your readers and create a sense of urgency. CTAs are the gateway to conversions. Consider them carefully.

6. Offer a variety of shareable links.

Email is one of the simplest communications to share with others. With the click of a button, your current customers can do your promoting for you. Encourage your audience to share your emails with their contacts. This way, you’re broadening your reach and increasing your opportunity to generate new leads.

Make it easy for readers to share your information through a range of channels. The obvious choice is an email forward link, since more than half the world’s population uses email to communicate. You can also think outside the box by providing links to social media networks in all of your messages. Nearly 3 billion people are using social media across the world. These are great ways to expand your readership, and, even better, someone else is doing the legwork for you.

7. Design for mobile applications.

Email access is no longer limited to stationary locations. Mobile platforms are becoming more prevalent and a way for people to remain connected while on the go, so an important aspect of email optimization is ensuring your campaign is mobile friendly.

Domino’s Pizza excels at mobile optimization. They realize many people who purchase pizza are placing their orders while they’re out and about. Domino’s sends 31 emails each month, and they’re all mobile friendly.

Emails need to be adaptable to several applications. Be sure your content is formatted correctly and that all information is accessible, regardless of where it’s being accessed. Don’t miss out on a lead conversion opportunity simply because your message wasn’t formatted for an assortment of devices.

8. Provide an unsubscribe link.

Part of building credibility is not only providing valuable information to readers who are seeking it, but also offering your audience an opportunity to decline this information if it isn’t useful. The purpose of email marketing is to reach a targeted audience that values your messages. Continuing to communicate with people who aren’t interested in your information is only going to foster bad relationships and negative reviews.

Provide readers with an easy-to-find unsubscribe link. This can strengthen your quality lead email list and give you accurate open and click-through data. Write clever content for your unsubscribe page like BetaList: They use a lighthearted tone to keep things friendly and offer an opportunity for readers to change their minds.

How do I Personalize my Prospecting?

Prospecting is one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks that salespeople face. But, if done right, it can be an exciting experience that polishes your sales skills and allows you to find the potential customers who are the perfect fit for your offer.

1. Create an ideal prospect profile

There are many different types of people, industries and company sizes out there. How do you know where to start?

Take some time to find out what your ideal customer profile looks like and do some research in your own database. Who are your top five customers? Who are your worst five customers? Who are your most profitable customers? Which ones are the least profitable? Create profiles for each of these groups.

Don’t assume that just because a company is in your database that they fit your ideal customer profile. Ironically, new studies show that half of your prospects (50%) are not a good fit for what you want to sell.

It’s instrumental to also think in the “problem-solution way”, i.e. identify what pain points your ideal customers may have and how does your product solve them?

Once you have done this homework, you can use both the profile list and your existing company list to find other businesses which match these criteria. This tactic, also known as account-based marketing, will help you focus on the bigger fish in the sea.

2. Identify ways to meet your ideal prospects

Start by analyzing where you met your “best” customers. In most cases, your “best” customers are your most profitable customers. Was it at a trade show or a seminar? Or via a referral? This will help you single out your most “lucrative” places to hang out at.

Now think in terms of industry events or social organizations: what events or activities are your ideal prospects likely to attend or be active in?

Finally, think in terms of their digital presence: what social media channels, newsfeeds and other digital publications are they likely to use or visit?

For example, if you’re in B2B sales, chances are most of your potential customers are on LinkedIn. This means you need to establish a strong presence there too. LinkedIn allows you to not only find out almost everything about a prospect, but also to warm up your first approach through a mutual connection.

All this information will help you map out an action plan where to show up at the right places to meet your potential customers.

3. Actively work on your call lists

You’ve got the cold call list and the warm lead list, and even a lost lead list. Prioritize each list and then take some time each day to call the people on your lists.

First of all, don’t underestimate the power of a phone call! Research shows that 69% of buyers accepted a call from new salespeople and 27% of sellers admit that making phone calls to new contact is very/extremely effective.

Another tip is to write down a list of open-ended questions for all your prospect lists.

What you need is not a scripted sales pitch, but a dialogue during which you can learn about their pain points, needs and wishes, and most importantly – where they are in their decision process. If you can maintain an interesting conversation, qualifying leads becomes much easier.

What are they looking for? Do they have a specific solution to their problem in mind? Do they have enough information? Is there any information you can send them? Perhaps, you can invite them to a webinar or a seminar that you’re hosting.

Call to touch base again in 6 weeks or 6 months. In the end, it’s all about keeping in touch. By working the list consistently, you’ll be able to turn lukewarm leads into warmer leads and, finally, into hot leads.

4. Send personalized emails

Don’t think that email, as a sales tool, is dead. Quite the opposite – it’s alive and kicking, as 80% of buyers say they prefer to be contacted by sellers via email.

But there is one thing that’s dying out as we speak – mass or bulk emails. With a 26% higher open rate than mass emails, personalized emails now run the show!

First of all, make sure that the content is personalized to each prospect’s needs. Your task is to impress them with how much you know about their company or industry. Make sure the content is specific and addresses the needs of a particular prospect.

Second, in order for your leads to open and read your email, make sure that your email looks well on mobile devices, as more than half of all emails are read on-the-go. In fact, emails that are optimized for mobile devices generate 15% higher click through rates than those not optimized.

Finally, in order for your sales email to hit the mark, you need to know what to write and how.

5. Ask for referrals

Nothing is better than a happy customer, because happy customers spread the happy word.

So, it’s no surprise that 91% of B2B buyers are influenced by word-of-mouth when making their buying decision, while the referral-based sale closing ratio stands at 50% to 70%.

The power of referrals is truly incredible, as 73% of executives prefer to work with salespeople referred by someone they know.

This is a free-of-charge opportunity you simply can’t afford to miss – ask your customers for referrals!

And even though, the sales reps who actively seek out and exploit referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than those who don’t, still only 11% of salespeople ask for referrals.

The best time to ask for a referral is immediately after the sale is made because this is when the experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind. If the experience was positive, a massive 91% of customers would be happy to provide a referral!

It’s also important to keep in touch with your existing customers to ensure that they are still happy with your product/service and with your company.

Set up a sales meeting to just to say hello and see how things are going. Send them invitations to events, share whitepapers, and other content that you think would be valuable for their business – making sure you stay top of mind!

6. Become a know-it-all

But, in order to get those referrals coming in, you need to become more than a seller or a vendor. You need to be a trustworthy expert and a provider of solutions, as 79% of prospects want their sales reps to be trusted advisors.

This means that you need to know a lot about:

• The industry that you’re targeting. According to a research, 51% of top performing salespeople report being seen as “an expert in their field” and only 7% of top performers reported being seen as “a salesperson”.
• Your potential customers. Everyone likes attention and to be taken seriously. That’s why you need to know a lot not only about their needs and concerns, but also their victories and achievements. Research your leads like a true detective and use that knowledge to reinforce your value proposition.
• Your own product. Did you know that 54% of prospects want to find out how the product works on the first call? So, you need to be ready to discuss the key functionality of your product, answer any questions and give examples.

7. Build your social media presence

If you haven’t figured it out yet, social media is here to stay.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube are all channels that your potential buyers visit to find information. So, if you’re not there, somebody else will take your place!

Social selling works!

If you’re in doubt of where to start, start easy and take baby steps. Create a profile on one of the social media channels which you think are important in your work.

If you’re B2B, make sure you’re on LinkedIn (or Xing). Investing in your LinkedIn profile is very important, as 82% of buyers claim that they look up vendors on LinkedIn before replying to their outreach efforts and, 70% of sales reps prefer to use the channel to prospect and close sales leads.

Remember that a social media presence adds to your prospecting arsenal and doesn’t replace your other prospecting activities.

8. Send relevant content to prospects

While we all know that content helps salespeople to take prospects down the sales funnel quicker, what we may not know is what type of content to send and when.

To answer this question – think what you’re trying to achieve during the prospecting stage. You want your potential buyer either to pay attention and give you a chance to meet or move to the next stage, right?

This means that the content you send should address specific situations and pain points of that prospect. Because, let’s face it – nobody will listen to you if you aren’t going to talk about them. 

Sadly, way too often this is not the case! Much of the content produced by companies around the world focuses solely on their own products, features, and services – rather than focusing on their potential customers’ pain points.

With 69% of buyers craving for research data that is relevant to their area of business and 89% favoring the content “that made it easier to show ROI”, you have to give your prospects solutions and value through your content.

The Demand Gen’s B2B Buyer’s Survey Report gives the following ranking of a vendor’s content:

Show that you understand where they are in the buying process, what their challenges are and provide knowledge, ideas and insights that move them further in the buying process.

9. Demonstrate your sales skills in video format

This is hands down the most trending tip for sales prospecting and something you may not yet tried!

The latest trends point to the rise of the video both as a marketing and sales outreach tool.

And I not talking about fancy corporate demo videos with unnaturally smiling customer service agents and model-looking businessmen shaking hands incessantly in each and every corner.

After all, people buy from people. So, show them the real you!

Videos in general are a powerful way to convey information in an enticing and informative way. Just look at these numbers:

• In 2022, 80% of the content consumed by buyers on the internet will be video.
• 8 out of 10 buyers have purchased a piece of software or app after having watched the brand’s video.
  • 96% of buyers turn to videos to learn more about a particular product and/or service.
  • 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.
  • 50.9% of B2B decision-makers use YouTube to research purchases.

Why not taking advantage of this trend?

And if your company’s marketing team creates videos, not using them in sales is a crime nowadays!

How about sending demo videos that effectively sum up how your product works and what benefits it gives during the awareness and interest stage, followed by more detailed how-to functional videos during the consideration and justification stages?

Want to improve your email marketing strategy? Videos can help you here too! Did you know that by adding a video in your email, you can increase open-to-reply rates by as much as 8X!

So, to appeal to an increasingly visual audience of buyers it’s time to go into full video mode.

10. Follow up, follow up, follow up

Finally, the fruits of your labor generally do not show up on the first contact. Moving a lead from lukewarm to hot requires work. This means sending follow up emails, making multiple phone calls, forwarding additional information, and other follow-up activities.

Timely follow-ups are reliable ways to build a relationship and demonstrate your determination and trustworthiness. In fact, 42% buyers admit that they were encouraged to make a purchase if the sales rep called back at an agreed-upon time.

Anything – from casual “just checking in” or a “thank you” note, to sending a draft proposal or product specs on time – goes a long way in increasing your chances of making a sale.

Research shows that if you haven’t heard back on your email in 24 hours, it’s vital to follow up, as “you have a 21% chance of getting a reply to your second email, if the first goes unanswered.”

However, managing follow-ups can be a challenge, that’s why using the capabilities inside your CRM system will help you stay on track.

How do you Customize a Cold Email?

Personalization is the action of adding a piece of text that is different per prospect. It’s not just about using the basic attributes like {{prospect.first_name}} and {{company.name}}.

It’s about writing completely personalized text designed to show your prospect that you’ve researched them and care about getting their attention. Yes, you read that right. You need to personalize every email you send in a unique way.

When done well, effective personalization can be the difference between a campaign that flops and one that is insanely successful.

1. Mention Where You Found Each Prospect

Want an easy way to write an effective introductory sentence? Mention where you found your prospect. It’s simple but shows you haven’t just scraped their email from a huge email database and added them to your outreach campaigns.

Example:

• “I read your article on B2B lead generation on QuickMail’s blog”
• “Saw that you’re speaking at Dreamforce in September”

2. Highlight Technologies They Use

As well as being an excellent way to find qualified prospects, knowing the technologies your recipient uses to run their business is a powerful way to break the ice — it shows you’ve done in-depth research about them. Tools like BuiltWith will show you any technology a company is using on their website.

For example:

• “Since you’re using HubSpot to capture leads on your website, wanted to get your take on this”
• “Saw you’re using Hotjar on your website— have you found any useful insights from it?”

3. Prove That You’ve Researched their Company

Is there something interesting about their company that you can mention in your email? Maybe they were featured in the news, or perhaps their startup just received a new round of funding.

It’s a simple but effective way to show you’ve researched their company and are confident they’re a good fit for your outreach.

For example:

• “Nice work on getting a five-star rating for {{company.name}} on Glassdoor!”
• “Awesome to see that you just closed a new round of funding— big plans for the next quarter?”

4. Let Them Know You Saw Them in the News

If your prospect or target company has received any news features, it’s a great opportunity to congratulate them.

Most people are happy to hear praise from other people about their successes, so it’s a good way to make a stellar first impression.

For example:

• “Saw {{company.name}} was just named Austin’s fastest-growing HR company by TechCrunch. Congrats!”
• “Read your interview in [local news website] discussing {{company.name}}’s plans for the next couple of years. Love the vision.”

5. Look Into Their Hiring Plans

If you’re looking to start conversations with fast-growing companies, mentioning the roles they’re currently hiring for can help— especially if you can help them solve their problem.

For example:

• “How’s the search for your {{prospect.custom.Job_Opening}} going? I have a few tips from building our team that I can share if you’re interested.”
• “Saw you’re hiring for three new {{prospect.custom.Job_Opening}}. Are you hiring locally for those?”

6. Bring Up Your Most Relevant Case Studies

If you’re using case studies in your cold emails (which is always a good idea), then you can use attributes to make sure the most relevant case study is shared with each prospect.

If your prospect runs a SaaS business with a marketing product, you could mention a similar company. If they work in the recruitment industry, then mention another where they’ll recognize the client name.

For example:

• “I work with companies like {{prospect.custom.Marketing_Case_Study}} and make weekly videos for their blog.”
• “I work with companies like {{prospect.custom.Recruitment_Case_Study}} and help them acquire customers through Facebook Ads”.

7. Mention Relevant Social Media Activity

Did your prospect like or share an article related to the conversation you want to start? If so, you can bring it up as a way to introduce the reason you’re emailing.

For example:

• “Since you liked the {{HubSpot}} post about cold email metrics, I wanted to reach out to ask you about [related topic].”
• “Saw you shared an article on LinkedIn about the difficulties of hiring developers. I can relate to that!”

8. Touch on Their Goals and Responsibilities

If you can mention a specific goal or responsibility that your prospect has mentioned on their LinkedIn profile, you can use this to explain how you can help make their work easier, less stressful, or more impactful.

For example:

• “I learned that you are in charge of increasing advertising ROI at {{company.name}}. Have you tested [tactic]? Happy to share my learnings if not”
• “Saw that you run marketing at {{company.name}}. Are you the right person to reach out to about your video marketing strategy?”

How do you Send a Personalized Email?

We strongly recommend using a professional email marketing software to help you send personalized emails – so you can benefit from advanced marketing tools like email segmentation and email design templates. 

Using mail merge Outlook is still a good option if you’re only interested in sending a few bulk messages.

Here are 5 simple steps you can use to send personalized mass emails in Outlook:

Step 1: Draft your message in Microsoft Word

Open Word and write out the body of the email message.

If you’ve included images or GIFs and want to know what they’ll look like in an email, select the View tab in the menu ribbon and switch to Web Layout.

Step 2: Start Mail Merge

With your email draft ready you can move on to the next step.

Click on the Mailings tab in the menu ribbon and select the Start Mail Merge option.

In the drop-down menu, choose E-mail Messages.

NB: You’ll see a box that highlights the E-mail Messages menu icon the next time you select Start Mail Merge to indicate that you’ve already toggled that option.

Step 3: Select your email recipients

Under the Mailings tab, choose Select Recipients. 

You’ll see a drop-down list of three options that include:

• Type a New List
• Use an Existing List
• Choose from Outlook Contacts

Here’s how each option works:

Type a New List: Lets you manually key in the contact details of your new email list.

Use an Existing List: Import contacts from a separate file. For this option, you’ll have to organize your contact data in a spreadsheet (.cvs file) or a database with at least three columns (First Name, Last Name, Email Address). 

Choose from Outlook Contacts: Select your email recipients from MS Outlook contact lists (aka your address book). This includes email addresses you’ve previously contacted via Outlook.

Add an “E-mail Address” column if you don’t have one by selecting Customize Columns.

Clean up your contact list by editing entries (double click on any column). You can also manually add or delete entries.

Click OK to save your new address list as a file on your computer. Any new address list will be stored under ‘…\Documents\My Data Sources’ by default.

Step 4: Personalize your message

Now that you’ve added your subscribers to your recipient list you can customize your message on a personal level.

Greeting Line: lets you customize your email by changing the formal address and naming convention of the first line of your email.

Go to the Mailings tab and select Greeting Line.

Once you’ve made changes that you’re happy with, click on OK.

Insert Merge Field: lets you add any column entry in your recipient list as a dynamic field in your email.

Go to the Mailings tab and select Insert Merge Field.

For example, a ‘Company’ column could stand-in for the name of the business your email recipient represents.

Arrange the new insert fields “«»” that have double angle quotes in areas where you feel they fit comfortably.

Step 5: Finish & Merge

With the personalization baked in, you’re all set to send your first mass mailing.Click Finish & Merge in the ribbon menu and then Send Email Messages.

Add the subject line and click OK tosend.

How do I Personalize Emails in Gmail?

One of the most popular and user friendly email providers, Gmail is a great tool for personal and business email users. In many cases you may need to send the same or very similar email to multiple recipients. For example, a thank you note for people who attended an event; or an invitation for a conference. This how-to will take you through the steps needed to quickly do this using google sheets and gmail.

1. You will need to create a spreadsheet, ideally in Google Sheets (Google’s version of Excel) using fields such as ‘FirstName’, ‘Surname’ etc.

If you’re using a list from Excel you can transfer it to Google Sheets. Google Contacts will allow you to send bulk messages using the cc or bc formatting, but to personalize it you will need to make a spreadsheet to import.

2. In Gmail, draft your email message. Give it a title.

To add personalization to the email, add the column title you wish to use in curly brackets, e.g.{{First Name}} directly in the subject line and/or in the email body. This will allow you to automatically add first name in your bulk emails, see example below.

Bear in mind that the word in the {{ —-}} must correspond to the fields in your import document.

3. When you’re done, close the message and it will saved to your drafts (or save to drafts if you’re being cautious).

4. Back in Sheets go to ‘Add Ons’. Go to ‘Get Add Ons’ and go for ‘YetAnotherMailMerge’. Sometimes it will ask for permissions. Read the t&c’s and if you’re happy click OK to add this to your Add Ons.

5. Go to Add Ons > YetAnotherMailMerge > Start Mail Merge.

6. If you’ve given your email a title/heading you should now see it as an option. Pick the right draft that you have saved.

Under the ‘Track Emails Opened’ check the box if you want to see who reads it (read receipts).

7. You can click on ‘Send Me a Test Message’ to see if everything is correct. Check in your Gmail inbox.

8. If it’s all good, go back to YetAnotherMailMerge and click ‘send emails. It will send email to all of your contacts that you have selected.

9. After that wait for some time and once the all emails are sent then it will show you a message that “All emails have been sent” and now you have sent the bulk personalized email to your Gmail contacts.

Does Personalization Increase Engagement?

Personalizing your interactions with your customers provides several important benefits. When you address your customer personally, you get their attention and speak to their needs. This increases their engagement with you, promoting more active adoption of your product. It’s important to make sure you’re tracking the proper metrics.

Personalized customer engagementfurther enables you to make maximum use of digital data. Your interactions with your customers yield vast amounts of data which reveal very granular information about customer segments and individual clients. Personalization helps you put this data to use to optimize your customer interactions for individual customers and groups of customers.

Read Also: Exploring Healthy Relationship In Your Business Growth

content personalization serves targeted, relevant content to consumers to increase their engagement levels and establish trust. This is more important than ever since people today expect personalization. They don’t want generic brand experiences, they want a unique journey that’s based on their own wants and needs. 

Brands that are able to do this can end up dramatically shortening the sales cycle and creating loyal customers that keep coming back for more. 

In fact, one survey revealed that half of the brands that personalize their marketing content see a 300% ROI over the course of their relationship with a customer. So, not only does content personalization provide an excellent and memorable customer experience, but it also increases revenue and loyalty. 

How to Use Content Personalization in Your Strategy

Now you know why content personalization is important and the different ways you can segment your audience, let’s look at how you can incorporate this tactic into your overall marketing strategy to increase engagement and deliver better experiences. 

1. Collect Customer Data

The first step is to collect as much customer data as you can. You can tap into sources like: 

• Website analytics
• Social media data
• Email marketing data 
• Customer support tickets

Bring all this information together in a CRM where you can manage it and tag customers to create niche segments based on their behavior and interests. This is also the stage where you can collect zero-party data to bulk out customer profiles and hone in even more on their unique wants and needs. 

2. Create Content for Different Customer Segments

You’ll start to see patterns and similarities between your customers once you start digging into data. For example, you might notice that there are a lot of customers who are stuck at the bottom of the sales cycle because they have objections about your high-ticket product. This is the point where you can put together different types of content for the different segments you have created. Content here might include: 

• Ad campaigns for customers at different stages of the sales cycle 
• Whitepapers for enterprise prospects
• Blog posts for customers at the top of the funnel 
• Product comparisons and cases studies based on the job roles your customers fall under
• Product-related email marketing campaigns based on customer on-site behavior 

Having the content readily available means you can automatically serve it to the right customers at the right time with the help of a robust CRM. 

This is also a good time to use a scoring model that includes data from product analytics tools, customer data platforms, and web analytics to analyze customers’ behavior and provide them with an interest score. This score will determine what content they see at each stage of the sales cycle. Breadcrumbs’ powerful features make this process really simple.  

3. Tweak and Optimize 

No strategy is complete without tracking, measuring, and tweaking. It’s unlikely you’ll get your content personalization strategy right the first time, but if you consistently measure the results you’re getting, like how customers are engaging with your content and their response to the content you serve, you can get a better understanding of their needs. 

Again, this can all be filtered into your CRM and added as another data point (a.k.a. another layer to segment customers). 

Think about tracking metrics like: 

• Time spent on site
• Email list signups 
• Email open and click-through rates
• Click through rates on retargeted ads

All of this information goes into understanding your prospects better which, at the end of the day, means you can create an even slicker customer experience that’s personalized from start to finish.