5 Email Personalization Tips to Increase Customer Engagement

FLOW LAUNCH | HEATH WEAVER • NOVEMBER 4, 2023 • 13 MINUTE READ

As subscribers get fatigued by the increasing volume of emails in their inbox, email personalization is no longer a choice for your marketing emails. Nowadays, customers are expecting relevant, tailored, and useful email marketing which leads to a strong long-term relationship with brands. Here are our top 5 email personalization tips to increase customer engagement.

1. Start by Using Customer’s First Name

This is the first step of personalization. We like it when someone addresses us by our name because we feel valued.

While the exact syntax varies, most Email Service Providers (ESPs) allow you to automatically show a subscriber’s first name. You can use the first name field in several places in your emails:

• As a part of the intro in the email, such as “Hello FIRSTNAME! We’ve missed you!”
• In the email recipient TO: field, such as “TO: Jess <[email protected]>”
• Or including the subscriber’s first name in the subject line.

Using the first name and personalized subject line is not enough. It should be a starting point, but it is important to incorporate the succeeding methods as well.

2. Use Dynamic Content for Effective Email Personalization

Nowadays, subscribers have low tolerance for irrelevant emails in their inboxes. If you keep sending them emails with products they are not interested in, you risk losing a perfect lead.

Dynamic content is a type of content that helps companies send different emails according to the interests or the past behavior of the clients. It also helps companies save time by sending relevant emails at once to their subscribers.

For example, a global brand could offer promoted products in the nearest local shop to the subscriber’s location. A brand that offers clothes could have images and text that change depending on the subscriber’s gender – emails with different content will be sent to men and women.

As your customers learn that your emails are always relevant to them, your click-through rate and ROI will improve and increase.

3. Recommend Products Your Customers Will Love

It would be great if customers bought anything we recommend to them. But, in reality, they only buy recommended products that are similar to previously purchased ones, or relevant to their preferences.

With the help of ESPs you can integrate recent purchases or the browsing history of your customers into your email marketing. By increasing the relevance of your emails, you will see your sales up-scale.

Here is a good visual example of recommended products:

4. Personalize Cart Abandonment Emails

People lose $4 trillion of revenue every year through cart abandonment. The good news is that you can recapture 65% of the customers that left the shopping cart within 24 hours, and the emails sent within only 60 minutes since cart abandonment have the highest open rate of 40%.

By personalizing your cart abandonment emails your customers receive the most relevant content and experience. There can be different issues that caused the customer to abandon their shopping cart. Offer a discount on the items in the cart, offer free shipping, or suggest helping them with the process.

This way you will optimize the message to the highest effectiveness, and motivate your customers to recover their carts (your lost sales).

5. Generate Creative Personalized Re-Engagement Emails

It is your duty to identify the inactive subscribers and then remind them how great you are in a brief and effective way. Here is your chance to deliver relevant content, accompanied with a personalized offer/incentive to inspire them to re-engage with your brand. Personalized re-engagement emails increase customer retention and it certainly outstrips the basic engaging messages. Therefore, pick attractive subject lines and send captivating content with a CTA button, and lead your subscribers to an action again.

Here are several companies that nailed at re-engagement emails:

Email personalization is not a new concept and it can have a tremendous impact on brand loyalty, revenue, and customer acquisition and retention. The catch is to provide a sense of personal touch with delivering exclusive relevant information that makes it hard to be ignored.

Start applying these tips today and watch your marketing efforts begin to flourish.

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Heath Weaver
Managing Director, Principal
Heath Weaver has almost two decades of eCommerce digital marketing experience. He has run multiple agencies, headed up Search Engine Marketing for the consumer electronics division of Sony, and served as a Vice President at Trilogy Software. He enjoys working day-to-day with clients to level up their retention marketing game.
Xiaohui "X" Wang
Founder, Principal
Xiaohui "X" Wang is a veteran of the email marketing industry. In the last decade, he has led the strategic and tactic retention marketing efforts for over 300 ecommerce brands ranging from small mom & pops to IR500 retailers. He's passionate about all things eCommerce, email, and SMS.