Personalisation tools are now not only widely available but commonly used. Knowing how to use these tools to your advantage is tricky, particularly if you’re starting from scratch, however, when used well they can have a significant impact on your conversion rates.
Skip the introductions
HubSpot as well as many other mail providers now offer personalisation tags as standard. It’s easier than ever to include personal information as part of the body, or even the subject line of the email.
Many marketers take advantage of this by including the first name of a contact in a greeting. Statistics have shown that using personalised and friendly greetings can capture your customer’s attention and make them more likely to convert.
But if you’ve ever received an email from a brand that you’ve previously had very little contact with which opens: ‘Howdy [your first name]’, you know how potentially creepy it can be. Some customers also get genuinely insulted by it, especially those of the older generation and those in more traditional professions.
Also, this type of personalisation is becoming more and more common, meaning that your customers won’t even register it when they open their email, never mind be impressed by it.
After your initial introductory emails, cut the introductions altogether. Getting straight to the point will bring your customers right in, won’t risk offending anyone and will differentiate you from the rest of their inbox.
Segment email lists by lead scoring
Sending relevant emails to the relevant people at the right time is rule number one for successful email personalisation. Usually, this involves segmenting your lists by their demographic or behavioural data so that emails can be accurately targeted at interest groups.
But if you segment your list purely on either demographic or behavioural information, you’re doing it at exclusion of the other. Instead, consider segmenting your list by lead score, that way you’ll be including both demographic and behavioural information when you divide up your customers and be able to target them based directly on their level of interest.
By using this style of segmentation, you’ll be more certain to hit your target audience right in the face and be more likely to win them around.
Ask the right questions
It doesn’t have to be all work on your side to hack out the best email personalisations, asking what your audience want is an easy and effective way to segment your audience for personalisation.
Why did they visit your website/ blog/ email list? This information can provide you with incredible detail about your customers’ needs and give you insight into how you can potentially solve their problems
All of your customers may be visiting the site regularly, but it’s very unlikely that they’ll be doing this for the same reasons. Just having a pop-up that asks them ‘why did you visit today’ will provide you with more insight and help you to tailor your emails towards them more accurately.
There’s no point sending customers email content that they don’t care about and asking them is going to be the fastest way of finding out if they care or not.
Trigger emails by behaviour
Again, instead of focusing on sending emails based on demographic information, get emails to trigger-send based on how your contacts behave. If they look at the pricing page for example, trigger of series of emails that will deliver a range of MOFU or BOFU content that is appropriate for a customer considering your pricing.
This means that rather than letting your emails hang around to go stale, they’re being sent in real time based on real life actions by the customer. Not only does this mean that you’re providing a highly personalised service, but doing so automatically and without much effort on your part.
Match up emails with landing pages
So you’ve figured out the formula to a great email, you have unbelievable click rates through to your landing pages, and yet your form submissions are down. Checking the landing page that your customers will be clicking through to and keeping its copy and design consistent with that of the email will mean that customers aren’t disturbed during their conversion journey.
For example, if the title of an offer in an email is different from that on the linked landing page then customers will become confused as to what the offer involves and be put off clicking.
Also, using smart content functions to adjust the copy dependent on which email the visitors arrive from will mean that personalisation of the customer’s journey is extended and not disrupted. For example, if a member of list Persona A is sent a particular email, then they will see different landing page copy to someone from list Persona B. The copy will be adjusted to suit each persona seperately and therefore more likely to increase conversion.