To meet that demand, marketers are striving to leverage personalization options in their email communications to make the leap from mass messaging to 1-to-1 experiences that not only meet, but exceed their consumers' expectations and differentiate them from the competition.
So it's not surprising that, when asked to name the most important attribute for marketing in the future, 33% of marketers respond, "personalization." Within this universe, 74% say that driving personalized experiences increases customer engagement and boosts sales by nearly 20%.
Marketers' quest to achieve their personalization goals and objectives benefits greatly from the use of dynamic content and data derived from the way consumers relate to your brand. This is especially true when using technologies such as MasterBase®.
What is email marketing personalization?
Personalization, in the context of email marketing, is the act of targeting an email campaign to a specific subscriber by leveraging the information you have about them. This can be data such as their name, the last product they purchased, where they live, the number of times they log in to your application, to name just a few of a wide variety of data that can be collected at various touch points.
This is a broad concept in meaning, which can vary in levels of sophistication. Basic email marketing personalization includes tactics such as using a subscriber's name in the subject line, while more elaborate tactics may change the content of the message based on gender, geographic location, age or other subscriber characteristics.
Personalizing your email marketing campaigns is a proven way to increase your open and click-through rates, and its impact can be measured in terms of ROI and revenue. In fact, studies have shown that messages with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened than those with generic, impersonal subject lines, and Rich Relevance concluded that revenue from messages that employ personalization is 5.7 times higher.
This is because a message that appeals to the individual is more relevant to subscribers. Instead of receiving a campaign with one-size-fits-all offers and generic messages, the consumer receives a message that appeals to him directly, that includes his name and shows him offers, products or promotions, which are of real interest to him.
Think about your own preferences and actions. Wouldn't you be more likely to respond to a message that makes sense to you, that aims to solve an expressed need or desire of yours, rather than a sample offer that has evidently been sent to hundreds or thousands of people?
What can be customized?
By using professional-grade tools such as MasterBase®, almost every aspect of your email marketing campaigns can be customized, from the simplest to the most advanced tactics.
We will now review some of these tactics so that you can get an idea of the wide range of possibilities offered, specifically, by the following tactics static filters.
Keep in mind that it is possible to start simple and work your way up to more sophisticated tactics as you go along. The key is to personalize on a small and large scale to add value to your customers' experience.
Static filters allow the permanent segmentation of the records in your contact base -without considering conditions in the fields- and group them, in order to send them a message.
In other words, and as derived from their name, these filters are characterized by being static, i.e., they are fed by the information available at the time they are applied and are not automatically updated when that information changes.
One of the factors that enhances personalization through static filters is the interaction of your contacts with your messages.
The way customers react to the messages you send them is also a possible segmentation criterion in MasterBase®. If you opt for this way, when configuring the static filter you must select a sent message and set as a condition that the filter is applied:
- To all contacts: The result of applying the filter will be identical to the base to which you have sent the selected message.
- Based on openings: It will select only those who opened the message or only those who did not open the message.
- Based on click tracking: The filter will be applied to those who clicked on any link contained in the message, or, if you want to be more specific, on a particular link.
- On a rebound basis: That is to say, you will select the email addresses that bounced when sending that message or, on the contrary, those that did not generate bounces.
The ability of static filters to segment based on the behavior of your contacts helps you to personalize the messages you send them, providing them with immediate value. It is the customers who dictate, through their actions, which messages they want to receive, unlike traditional campaigns, where it is the marketer who defines which messages to send.
It is a strategy that broadens the scope of the dialogue with your audience and ultimately allows customers to determine when, where and how often they are willing to receive your communications.
The primary advantage of behavioral personalization is that it allows you to respond to your customers at key moments and provide them with highly contextualized value for a better experience.
Using static filters to their full potential will mark a turning point in the success curve of your email marketing campaigns.
