When using email marketing to reach customers, you want to do everything in your power to make sure that they open the email, read what’s inside and respond to it. One of the easiest ways you can do this is through email personalisation, and it usually costs nothing to execute. Research shows that when you personalise your emails, you have an increased open rate of almost a third, and in addition if you personalise a subject line, this can further increase your open rate by 26%. What other personalisation tactics can you use during your next email marketing campaign?

1. Segment your lists

Even if you sell a single product or service, your target customers won’t all be the same. How can you segment your audience so that your approach to each group is the most appropriate? The best way to do so is to ask as many relevant questions as possible when getting their email address in the first place. You can then look for patterns or differentiate each group by age, gender, profession or income. Knowing this can help you personalise the content of an email in many ways. For example, you might emphasise the speed of your service when addressing one segment of your audience and then emphasise its convenience when speaking to another.

2. Set up triggers

Using an email marketing service provider such as ActiveCampaign or Campaign Monitor can ensure that triggered relevant emails are sent to customers automatically when they undertake certain actions or after a set time period. An example of this could be an introductory email offering them a welcome discount, or a gentle reminder that they’ve placed an item in an online shopping cart but haven’t checked out yet, or a follow up after an appointment or purchase to see what they thought about that.

3. Make it obvious

This principle isn’t strictly related to personalisation but will ensure that any personalisation email sent is more likely to work. The design and wording of your email needs to be clear, simple and tell the reader exactly what they need to do next such as click a link, make a payment or browse an online catalogue.

There are dozens of ways you can personalise an email (use of dynamic images too, not just dynamic text), and it’s less challenging than you think. Genuinely caring about customers, who they are and what they want will not only improve your sales but also ensure you keep serving them to standard they deserve.