In a world with countless social media channels and no shortage of exciting new marketing methods, email marketing might sound hopelessly outdated. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Email marketing is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to reach your clients. And you can make your emails even more potent by personalizing them to perfectly suit your client’s interests.
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What is personalized email marketing and why is it important?
Personalized email marketing is tailoring your emails to perfectly align with what really matters to your clients. This means that instead of sending out a single message to all of your subscribers, you send out different messages with content that aligns with individual client preferences.
This customization is carried out using so-called ‘segments’ in your client database. These segments can be based on the client’s location, demographics, purchasing amounts, and more. These are just a few examples — there are plenty of other ways to personalize emails, and more often than not you can use data that you already have at your disposal, all saved neatly in your ERP. By adjusting content based on relevant variables, you can create emails that really resonate with your subscriber base.
And yes, we mean really resonate. According to Capterra, targeted emails generate 18 times more revenue. But that isn’t the only benefit of personalized email marketing.
Personalized email marketing has a great ROI
$38 for every dollar spent.
That’s right. According to Email on Acid, personalized emails offer an incredible return on investment, surpassing online search, display, and social media marketing. This gives personalized email marketing a commanding presence over other marketing strategies.
And as an added bonus, there are no advertising rates, printing costs or postage fees.
Personalized emails have higher click-through rates
As you and your inbox probably know, there’s no shortage of promotional emails. With so much competition for readers’ attention, you need to do everything you can to make your email as interesting as possible, or you run the risk of being lost among hundreds of other messages.
And how do you make your email interesting? By making it relevant.
Your subscribers don’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant and unsolicited information. It can make them feel overwhelmed and out of control of the incoming email flow, making them less likely to respond positively to your messages. However, by personalizing your emails, you can give your subscribers a sense of control over their inbox.
That’s why personalized emails have a click-through rate of 8%, as opposed to just 3% for non-targeted emails.
Email personalization improves brand awareness
Providing marketing content tailored to your clients’ interests and needs won’t just make your emails stand out. Personalized emails encourage your subscribers to lower the defenses that have built up after receiving commercial spam for years and trust your message.
This is a great foundation for growing brand loyalty and fostering repeat business, and maybe even for drawing in new clients. That’s because if your clients trust your message, they will want to share it with peers who share their interests; and according to Hubspot, targeted emails are 90% more likely to be forwarded.
Prove and improve your success with measurable results
The foundation of email personalization is data: information about your subscribers stored in a database like your ERP or CRM system. So it won’t come as a surprise that each personalized email also generates a lot of useful data that can prove your success and help you make your emails even better.
For instance, you can see whether your personalization was successful by analyzing the links recipients clicked. If one segment was more interested in the email’s more general information than the targeted content, then maybe your content wasn’t a good fit for that particular segment. On the contrary, if you notice an above-average click-through rate for certain emails, you know that you’re on to a winner.
Meanwhile, your subscriber retention rate paints a more general picture of your email marketing success: do people want to keep receiving your emails? An uptick in unsubscribers is a sure sign that you need to reevaluate and adjust your approach.
These are just a few of the metrics that can help you hone your personalized email marketing. Paying close attention to your results can help you phase out tactics that aren’t successful and double-down on your biggest hits.
