Have you ever tried Googling your name and felt mighty kicked at the results – your name finds 6,64,000 mentions in 0.54 seconds!
Now have you tried opening Google search bar on your Birthday and greeted with a custom bar – How thrilling!
How many times have you received an email from a club or hotel you are a member of, greeting you with “Dear Mr So and So…” instead of the more impersonal “Dear Patron?” and felt valued as a customer?
As a marketer you may be afraid of breaching privacy laws with such personalised email marketing but don’t be.
72% of ecommerce customers now openly admit that they are willing to trade their personal information to an extent in lieu of personalised content, even over emails.
“According to our 2018 data personalised emails tend to increase click through rates up to 18% and conversion rates up to 5%. It goes without a saying that personalised emails are a force to be reckoned with for ecommerce success!” reports a blogger on Segmentify that deals in an ecommerce personalisation platform that claims to “help online retailers to optimize their conversion rates by enabling them to deliver a unique shopping experience for each visitor.”
There is sufficient reason and research available now to believe that personalisation works, even with an impersonal medium like email, where you are not physically present to interact with your customer.
Recommendation: 13 Tips for eye catching email subject lines
MarketingSherpa reports that BustedTees, a US-based online company that wares T-shirts with funny graphics could jack-up its email revenue by 8% when it changed its marketing tactic from mass email “blasts” to personalized email marketing based on data collected online through time zone and past buying behaviour analytics.
Another research by Experian, an Irish-domiciled consumer credit reporting company, indicates that personalized emails receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates — yet, surprisingly, 70% companies DON’T personalize their marketing emails.
Why Personalise Your Marketing Emails?
Segmentify cites a few powerful reasons for personalising your email campaigns:
- You get six times higher sales return than regular bulk email campaigns.
- Your unsubscribe rates are significantly lower
- Personalised emails don’t entail any additional, operational costs
- Your conversion rate from personalised emails could at least be four times higher than average.
For e-tailers, Segmentify offer 10 different personalised emails scenarios under three categories:
- Winback Scenariosto remind slipping-away customers about your online store
- Growth Scenariosto strengthen your customer relations individually
- Retention Scenariosto increase customer loyalty
Recommendation: Is email marketing dead?
How Do You Personalise Your Marketing Emails?
It’s simple. Start collecting IP addresses from your website. Demand base offers an account-based marketing platform to B2B clients to identity IP addresses and send personalised emails to those customers.
“Because of my IP address, they recognized that I work at Salesforce and personalize the message to me,” says one blogger.
Other ways to collect data is through leads that you buy from third party vendors, through website inquiry forms, surveys, research etc.
The main benefit of personalized marketing is the ability it gives you to reach specific audiences. By collecting user data from list segments, surveys, or studies you can create more effective email campaigns targeting audiences based on their interests or buying habits” says Syed Balkhi in 6 Reasons Why Personalization Makes Your Marketing Better
Another very legitimate way of collecting data for personalising your emails is with the help of User-Generated Content (UGC).
Make a contact list from Google My Business Reviews. That’s a wonderful storehouse of all authentic database. The customers who leave reviews for you on various social media or lead generation platforms have already interacted and experienced your brand. If you have made a good impression on them, many of these may already have converted into your loyal customers. What better way to making them your lifelong consumers, than by periodically greeting them by their first name on their birthdays, anniversaries etc., and sending them super targeted offers and deals, customised to their past buying behaviour.
Need more tips and ideas on personalised email marketing? Drop us your query on hi@localhost.