How can you use email personalization to boost your marketing?

For B2B companies, where sales are more complex, and could take many months and/or years, lead nurturing and personalization means staying top-of-mind with your leads, and building relationships with them "at scale" by implementing lead nurturing can yield tremendous benefits. Here are a few stats on the value of lead nurturing: -Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research) - Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. (Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report) - Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (Source: DemandGen Report) Doing it well is the key!

Personalization helps your company grow faster and increase the likelihood that customers buy from your brand, come back and purchase again, and refer their friends and family to your brand. Faster Company Growth ??Companies that capture value from personalization grow 40% faster vs. other companies. More likely to purchase ??76% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that personalize their experiences. More likely to repeat purchase ??78% of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases from brands that personalize their experiences. More likely to refer your brand ??78% of consumers are more likely to refer friends & family to brands that personalize their experience.

First of all, you've got to have the ability to measure what happens beyond the initial click-through of the email, so you can attribute the results you want to achieve back to whether you email caused it directly. Be aware that increasing clickthrough rate, while interesting - if it doesn't lead to the type of conversion you want or the action you want to see, leaves you in the dark and guessing about how to improve your campaign.

When segmenting - do it in ways that allow you to provide value to the lead. We call this "Purpose Driven Data" -- for example, if a lead clicks through an email to a blog post about engaging leads more effectively, I know that's different from them viewing a blog post about email deliverability. Understanding this allows me to target follow-ups much more effectively, because I can zero in on their interest, and offer them a download, or additional tips on that subject. Based on what a lead does (their activity) and my ability to listen effectively to those actions - allows me to better understand (hence automate) the path of messages they will receive. Lead nurturing done well is a fluid process that can change as actions change.

For B2B marketers, be alert to not always asking your leads to buy or to opt in to a meeting. Consider their main challenges and issues that the specific segment deals with (and the BEST segmenting is Interest-based segmenting as illustrated above). Understanding this allows you to add value to your lead's challenges and issues, and build trust rather than always trying to get them to take an action they're not ready to take. Put yourselves in their shoes, and provide value that moves them in the direction they want to go -- and be patient. Build the relationship - and for those leads who are showing engagement, you'll start to understand when asking for a meeting is the right action. Remember: Trust takes time; Can be dashed fast.

For B2B, understand that while there are sophisticated tools out there - personalizing in valuable ways that engender trust and engagement, you don't need to make this overly complicated. If you are "listening" to what leads are telling you by their actions, and by their form submits, it can be easy to build well done nurturing at scale with a full featured marketing automation solution - that can provide the zero party and first-party data needed to add your expertise and insights relevant to each segment that will put you in favored status to gain their business.

For B2C, you should keep in mind that personalization is many things : - it can be a personalized subject line (more or less complex) - it can be the list of products you will display - it can be a block reminding the number of loyalty points you have - commercial pressure is also crucial in personalization. Receiving commercial emails 6 times a week does not make me feel that the program is personalized for me (even with my name on the subject line and selected product in the mail). So consider personalization tools as the last elements of your 1 to 1 strategy, not the first ones.

Personalization is not the objective (even if many brands tend to think so). Your brand will talk on different channels, with more or less personalized contents, but it must be with the idea of opening a conversation, not a monolog. Personalization is just a way to improve this conversation. So the questions are : How can I observe and understand my customers ? how can I open a conversation with every customer in my database? How can I listen ? What should I say next ?