5waystopersonalizeemail.pdf

a publication from

white paper:

5 Ways to Personalize Email Beyond the Subject Line


IntroductionWhile digital marketers are accelerating customer experience and

personalization initiatives on their websites, email, for the most part, is

being left behind.

Many marketers are still using batch and blast tactics for their emails and

are often limited in their personalization efforts to merging data fields, such

as name and company, that are available in their Customer Relationship

Managament (CRM) systems.

And that’s a missed opportunity.

Consider this: Less than 1% of customers say that a subject line that

includes their first name is the tactic that gets them to open a message.

And 66% contend that poorly personalized emails are annoying because

the marketer’s attempts are “superficial.”

But marketers who use implicitly provided information—such as customer

intent and behavioral histories—when sending emails are resonating with

customers and creating lifts in revenue. And these tactics work: 82% of

shoppers say they would buy more items from a brand if their emails were

more personalized, according to a Harris Interactive survey.

So, what are the email personalization secrets that are driving increased

revenue? What are marketers experiencing industry-leading growth doing

to outperform their email marketing colleagues?

The answer is simple: they’re taking email personalization beyond the

subject line.

82% of shoppers say they would buy more items from a brand if they received more personalized emails.

a monetate white paper | 3


1. Use Geo-Targeting to Meet Your Customers in Real TimeGeo-targeting your customers at the time they actually open an email adds

real-time context to your message. But if you’re only collecting customer

information online, you’re likely missing key data for localization efforts.

Solve that problem by capturing and using a customer’s IP address, wifi

location, or GPS coordinates at the time your customer opens your email.

True Religion Brand Jeans recently aced this tactic when it ran a regionalized

campaign to drive in-store traffic in specific markets and promote a new

line of jeans.

The luxury jeans brand used geo-targeted open-time email to promote a

discount for those customers who visited select stores and tried on a pair

of jeans. The result was a 1% lift in in-store conversion rate and thousands

of dollars in incremental revenure, figures True Religion Director of Global

Ecommerce Gary Penn called “really, really amazing.”



2. Create Connections by Signing EmailsUnless you’re emailing a bunch of machines, your customers are people

who respond to human interaction. Don’t send a completely personless

email that just asks someone to “click here.”

Instead, write your emails as if you were having a face-to-face conversation

with the customer.

That means being friendly, yes, but it also means sending emails from an

account manager’s email address (or a customer’s other point of contact

at your company) to strengthen the customer’s personal connection to

your brand. Use the information you know about your customer to make

the conversation more relevant.

At Monetate, our Content Marketing team uses a “thank you” email to further engage those who download our content

resources. We write the email in the first person and route all replies directly to our team members’ inboxes.



3. Optimize Your Emails for Inside and Outside the InboxMost conversions don’t happen within an email, and customers are likely

to best remember the last touchpoint they had with your brand.

Because of that, today’s email design needs to be as much about the initial

message as it is about the landing page. And both those items need to be

optimized for any device type.

Marketers who are creating a seamless experience—regardless of

device—are doing so by starting with the mobile experience first. From

there, they can tweak the experience depending on device and maintain

message consistency—or “scent trail”—throughout the website visit to

remind customers why they’re visiting and what you’re offering them.

Furniture store West Elm checked both these boxes in a recent campaign

that promoted a sale, and pushed customers to explore the company’s

“Design Lab” product. Though both sale call-to-actions drove customers

to the relevant product results page, the Design Lab product landing

page was different depending on the device: mobile users could explore

previously designed spaces, while desktop users could sign up for the

service.



If your landing page isn’t optimized for all device types, you’ll need to redirect users somewhere useful and relevant.

West Elm did just that, sending users to device-specific landing pages to maintain a good user experience.



4. Mine Customer History to Create Better ContextIf you’re planning to increase your email marketing efforts over the next

year, you’re likely focused on creating more content. But marketers who

send the most relevant emails place as much emphasis on context as they

do content.

Context requires a deeper level of customer understanding, forcing you to

pay attention to the many ways your customers interact with your brand.

The key is to ask the following questions:

• How has this customer interacted with us in the past?

• What are the customer’s interests?

• Is the customer at home or work? On a mobile, tablet or desktop?

This data is as equally powerful for marketers with high send rates as it is

for marketers with lower send rates.

J.Crew Factory, for example, illustrates how easy this can be by targeting

women and men with gender-specific models, clothes and accessories.

Join Our Mailing List!email

JOIN



These J.Crew Factory emails show the big impact a simple data set can have on personalization.

Changing the creative based on purchase history creates a more—dare we say—tailored experience.



5. Serve Dynamic, Open-Time Content to Stay RelevantIf you’re an email marketer, you know your email doesn’t necessarily get

read the moment you hit send. So how do you insulate yourself from

sending emails that will be out of date by the time your customers open it?

The key is to create a tactical plan around your recipient’s actions instead

of your own—and use dynamic, open-time content.

If you’re making a limited-time offer, make sure you have the ability to

dynamically change the content once the offer expires. Similarly, plan to

swap out images of promoted goods, just in case you sell out, or run low

on stock.

Having the ability to automate these dynamic changes will save you time

and eliminate what could otherwise be a poor customer experience.

And if you want to motivate your customers to book that trip they’ve been

considering—or you’ve been pushing—inspire them to do it by comparing

their dismal in-the-moment weather situation with the great weather

forecast of their destination location. Ever dream of a tropical vacation during a snowstore? Us, too.

The travel industry knows that, and its best marketers capitalize on it.



Personalize your abandonment emails with dynamic content.

Someone in rainy Seattle may still book that last-minute trip to the Grand Canyon if they know it’ll be sunny.

Open-time content can also be based on time of day.

This example, sent at night, reiterates that an agent is available to answer booking questions.



About MonetateThe Monetate Acceleration Cloud lets marketers understand their

customers’ situations, behaviors, and preferences, and act on those insights

with in-the-moment, relevant experiences, targeted to the right customer

at the right time. The Monetate Acceleration Cloud runs above traditional

infrastructure and is accessed through one seamless user interface.

Monetate generates billions of dollars of new revenue for businesses,

helping them grow 39% faster than the industry average. Brands such as

Best Buy, National Geographic, and Celebrity Cruises rely on Monetate to

put the customer first, creating stronger relationships that drive sustained

competitive advantage.


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5waystopersonalizeemail.pdf