Personalised email marketing - from basic to brilliant

Personalisation. All those emails which open with 'Hi Bridget'. And some which start 'Hi {first_name}'. Oops!

But personalisation can be so much more than that.

Start with segmentation vs personalisation

Even if you don't mail-merge specific data into your emails, think about who you're sending them to. Customers? Prospects who've gone quiet? Businesses in a specific industry?

There are plenty of reasons not to send every email to everyone on your list.

• Writing for a specific segment means you can write more specific copy. You lift engagement.
• People don't get turned off by lots of irrelevant emails. You reduce unsubscribes.
• Platforms such as Gmail track your email marketing open rates. Your targeted emails will have higher open rates, which helps keep you out of the 'Promotions' tab and in the 'Primary' tab.

This is all segmentation. You collect data and sort your contacts into categories. Personalisation goes one step further - you have data about them as individuals. It's the difference between knowing your contact works in the construction space, or knowing the name of their company.

Personalised email marketing examples

There are two limits to personalisation - your imagination and your data. Let's start simple.

Address people by their name

One research project found that including the recipient's name in the subject line

• increased open rates by 6 - 23%
• increased clicks by 7 - 32%
• reduced unsubscribes by 11 - 17%

You can also include the first name as a greeting in the email body. This is probably the most common personalised email example of all. But does it work? Probably yes. And probably not as much as it used to, since more businesses are doing it.

You might make more impact by using the first name somewhere else in the body of your email. Listen to politicians in interviews. They use the interviewer's name a few times to make themselves appear friendlier.

More than just name-calling

One step up from this is to use your contact's name as a part of the text.

Let them imagine themselves in a particular situation or story. It drives engagement and interest to a new level.

The person I know who's best at this is Daniel Throssell. Here's an example from an email which combines personalisation and ChatGPT.

Now, Daniel has a way out-there style which may not suit you and your market. This more toned-down example of my own may help bridge the gap.

One thing to notice is that both examples use more than just the first name. Daniel's used a last name too. I've added in a last name and a company name. (I'm selling to businesses.) You can also see from my example that I've set up default values for each field just in case some data is missing.

Birthdays, anniversaries and beyond

Restaurants and cafes use this technique all the time to generate extra visits. E-commerce stores do the same thing. There's usually a 'gift' offer attached - a free bottle of wine, a discount voucher or so on.

Sometimes the birthday is less important than an anniversary of some kind. For example:

It's been a year [6 months / 3 years] since your last termite inspection [we serviced your vehicle / we installed your air conditioning]. Book in a time which suits you and we'll check everything's OK.

This model works for all kinds of services, both B2B and B2C and can really help increase the average value of a customer. Tips to get it buzzing

• Emails to actual clients and customers should use their names, so include it right at the beginning.
• Add an online booking link to make response easy and save you time.
• Don't just remind your reader, given them a reason to act. A termite inspection could save you thousands in damage. Servicing your car helps keep you and your loved ones safe. Clean air filters will make your aircon more efficient so you save on power bills.

Other 'different' ideas:

• Some industries have lots of customers who are buying gifts for other people. Florists. Jewellers. There are services out there which act as birthday reminders. If that's part of your business, can you try to own the customer instead of leaving it to them? Record gift recipients' names and birthdays (or anniversaries), then email the gift buyer a reminder next year with that information in it.I did this with one client. FYI it's a lot easier with a customisable CRM than with a standalone email platform.

• Use birthday data to identify contacts' star signs and send an email based on that.'Where did all your money go? Astrologers would guess that as a Pisces, you gave too much away to charity and forgot to look after yourself and your business first. But I'm not an astrologer, I'm a money expert. I'll look at you individually and give you the advice you need to get on top of your cashflow...'(This requires a certain brand style, of course! And I wouldn't recommend doing it too often. Maybe slot it in once a year around the silly season so it's more tongue-in-cheek?)

From merge fields to dynamic content

Dynamic content blocks sit right at the intersection of segmentation and personalisation. Instead of sending different emails to different segments, you send one email to everyone, but each contact only gets the content which is right for them.

What's the advantage

• You save time by setting up and sending one campaign only.
• Reporting covers your entire list so it's easier to see the big picture.

There are some scenarios where dynamic content blocks really come into their own.

1. Overlapping segments

For example, imagine you're a legal firm specialising in commercial law, employment law and intellectual property law. You send a monthly newsletter with updates in all three areas. Any individual contact might be interested in one of those areas, two of them, or all three. There are seven different potential combinations of interest areas.

Without dynamic content blocks, personalised email marketing would require up to seven different emails, one for each of those combinations.

With dynamic content blocks, you can send everyone exactly what they've asked for, all in just one email campaign.

2. Separate messaging for clients and prospects

Imagine you're a smaller business sending one email newsletter to both clients and prospects. You're raising prices, but you're going to give existing clients an extra 3 months at your current prices. (One of our tips for communicating price increases in a way which doesn't lose you clients.) You can use different dynamic content blocks to communicate in very different ways - saying thank you to existing clients, while pushing prospects to act now and lock in lower prices.)

That's exactly what we did at NoBull Marketing when we raised prices for the first time in 3 years.

Other scenarios where you might want to use dynamic content blocks:

• You're offering a special discount or added value to convert prospects into customers. You don't want existing clients to know that others could get a better deal.
• You're asking existing customers to give you a Google review. Include the block, but just for them.
• You're running a customer survey and you don't want non-customers to take it, but you don't want to overload clients with too many emails. (Or you've already sent a survey email but want to include a reminder in the newsletter.)
• You're planning interstate trips and you want to let prospects in each location know when you'll be there in case they'd like to catch up.
• You target different industries - for example, you're an event organiser working with charities and with corporates. You want to showcase your expertise with each prospect's own industry by including relevant case studies, testimonials, tips or news updates.

How to do personalised email marketing right

1. Get your data right

You can't segment or personalise without data. And if you segment or personalise with poor quality data, you'll get rubbish results.

2. Always include default values

Some records will have incomplete data. That's just the way life is.

Mailchimp uses the example 'Friend' as an option for when you don't know the first name. I prefer to use 'there' - this means the email starts 'Hi there', which suits my tone of voice. (If you have a more formal style, you could try 'Reader'.)

The greeting is relatively simple. If you're using other fields, or using names in the text itself, you may have to be more creative. This screenshot shows the default values for that example from the NoBull Marketing newsletter.

3. Test properly

In most email marketing platforms, a test email doesn't actually perform the merge action of personalisation. Instead, you'll need to send a 'real' email to a group of test accounts. Adjust the data in these records manually. Send the email. Repeat till you get the results you expect and want.

4. Don't overdo it

If someone addresses you by name every other sentence, it feels like they're trying too hard. Don't personalise every paragraph. Maybe not even every email.

Most of all, beware of using data your contacts don't know you've collected. That can make you look like a stalker, and that's not the impression you want to make!