Data Driven Devotion: Using Email Personalization for More Connection & Conversions

Marketing and email personalization go together like PB and J. Email marketing is still the highest return on investment (ROI) marketing activity with an average 3600% ROI, or bringing in $36 for every $1 spent.

And… people want email personalization: About 75% of people expect personalized marketing when they share information about themselves with companies, and 64% expect a more personalized shopping experience when they spend more than usual with a brand.

If you’re one of the 55% of marketers who say increasing email personalization is their leading priority in 2024, here’s exactly how to do that with no-code tools. Plus, email personalization examples to inspire you.

What is Email Personalization?

Email personalization is the practice of making highly relevant marketing emails by customizing them for each recipient, based on factors such as:

Name
Age range
Location
Gender identity
Interests
Purchase history
Account preferences
Shopping behaviors
And more…

Basically, any data point you use to differentiate leads or customers, you can use to personalize an email for that type of person.

The most common example is when an email starts with, “Hi, Michelle,” — or, you know, your actual name. This is the most basic type of email personalization. This article dives much deeper into advanced email personalization methods that really move the needle.

Benefits of Email Personalization

Gets People to Open It

To paraphrase a popular quote: if an email falls into a trash bin, is anybody around to read it? Nope. The first and most important job an email has is to get opened.

It doesn’t matter how good your offer inside is if no one gets to the point of actually reading it.

Personalized emails have a 2.5X higher open rate — up to a 70% open rate! — compared to non-personalized emails. Why? Because with the flurry of emails that start piling up in our inboxes at 4am, it takes something special to catch our attention.

Deepens Customer Relationships

You know when you go out for dinner with an old friend and they talk about themselves the entire night? What about dinner with your bestie where they can’t wait to hear about your latest trip?

Which dinner do you prefer?

The one with something in it for you, right? Same goes for emails. Every time a customer opens a personalized email from you, it’s like you’ve just asked them how the food was, or their favorite vacation landmark.

And that’s exactly what your customers want you to do.

In a survey about shopping for clothes, customers said they want retailers to personalize their shopping experience by knowing preferred sizes, styles, and price points, among other attributes:

Source: Statista

Personalized emails mean truly personalized for each recipient, thanks to conditional elements that retrieve the most relevant information for each person. (More on how to create emails like this easily with Dyspatch later!)

Boosts Sales

There’s a reason why 95% of marketers say their personalized campaigns are successful… because they are. Customers want you to sell them more by being more relevant. When asked, 8 out of 10 people said they like getting new product recommendations based on past purchases.

For 88% of customers, personalized online shopping experiences make them more likely to keep buying from a brand, and personalization results in higher sales for 80% of businesses that use it.

Email Personalization Tips (That Go Beyond First Name)

Automate Email Personalization

What if personalizing emails was as easy as creating one email template with conditional elements that change depending upon the person receiving it? No more making different email templates for each offer or segmented persona group.

Just create one email for everyone — with personalized sections that change automatically based on recipient data — export it, send it with any ESP, and done.

This is where Dyspatch’s Customer Profiles come in: easily pull in the data you need to create truly personalized emails, all without touching a line of code. (More on how Customer Profiles work in a bit!)

Give Customers What They Want

What kinds of personalized content does your audience want? A lot depends on your industry, but some of the most common things people wish were more personalized in emails are:

Special offers on their birthday
Product recommendations that complement past purchases
Abandoned cart emails, with the item shown in the email to remind them
Interest-specific emails

Source: Statista

Right off the bat, asking customers for their birthday is an easy thing to do. And easy to integrate into a personalized Dyspatch Email Builder template with Customer Profiles. You can create a “birthday” date variable in the visual profile builder in just a few clicks:

Other personalized features, like tailoring product recommendations, are possible by connecting data points to your e-commerce platform. Most offer cross-sell and related product up-sell features, which is the same logic that can be built into a personalized email campaign.

Start With the Subject Line

As mentioned earlier, getting your email opened is the first priority. Personalizing the subject line isn’t optional anymore with about 65% of marketers personalizing subject lines in more than half of their emails. Only 9% of marketers don’t ever personalize subject lines.

You can add the recipient’s name, or put the name of the product they left in their cart in the subject line for an abandoned cart email, for example.

Don’t forget about the email preheader text either: the one or two lines of copy underneath the subject line. This area is ripe for personalization.

In this email preheader, Domino’s uses my name and reminds me of my current rewards points level:

Switch Up Your Offers

Instead of relying on segmenting email subscribers into categories like repeat customers or those who haven’t bought yet, and then having to create separate emails to send to each group, use email personalization to speed this up.

Create and send one email campaign but switch up the offer inside depending on who’s opening it. Instead of segmenting customers into groups, your email personalizes itself based on who’s opening it.

One email template = infinite, automatic possibilities.

For example, send a 20% off loyalty bonus coupon to your existing customers, and a special “40% off your first order” coupon to those who haven’t purchased yet.

5 Awesome Email Personalization Examples

Personalized Travel Plans from WestJet

This is a great example of a service business’ “abandoned cart” email. Instead of showing the products in your cart, WestJet’s email reminds you of your last destination searched on their website.

Source: WestJet