The Power of Personalization: How to Create Highly Targeted Email Campaigns

Email is an exceptionally powerful channel. With a low production cost and a 15.22% click-through-based conversion rate, email marketing offers an almost unmatched ROI and is one of the best ways to reach and engage your audience.

But when it comes to making email work best for your business, there's one thing you must remember. Acquiring first-rate results necessitates some degree of optimization.

According to HubSpot, the following three email marketing strategies delivered the best effects in 2022:

• Subscriber segmentation brought success to 78% of marketers.
• Message personalization worked for 72% of brands. And;
• Email automation was effective for 71% of those surveyed.

So, if you're ready to embrace the power of personalization and create highly effective, targeted email campaigns, here's how to do it right.

Define Your Audience

The number of spam emails sent daily in the US alone is a mind-boggling 8 billion. And, thanks to advanced spam filters and consumers' ever-increasing understanding of cybersecurity threats, most of these messages never get opened.

But here's the thing. Even when branded emails reach their target audience's inbox, only 21.5% get opened. Yet, even then, subscribers rarely spend over 10 seconds reading brand emails.

With this data in mind, it's evident that the one prerequisite for creating highly targeted email campaigns relevant to your subscribers (that won't end up in their Spam or Trash folders) is having a crystal clear idea of who your audience is.

By identifying your brand's ideal customers, you will be equipped with the information necessary to create email campaigns that resonate with your future (and existing) customers. So don't hesitate to do some in-depth audience research. Analyze what has worked for your brand on other channels (social media, Google Ads, and blog posts are all excellent places to start). And do your best to always approach your email marketing efforts to deliver unique value to your subscribers' inboxes.

Collect Subscriber Data

Your email subscription form is one of the most commonly overlooked tools for creating highly targeted email campaigns.

Think about it. If you can naturally collect subscriber data, you'll gain access to precious information about your potential customers. By intelligently using this data to personalize email campaigns, you'll have the power to create messages that deliver precisely what your subscribers want to see in their inbox.

A great way to achieve this is to ask for significant subscriber information you know people won't mind giving away — their names and locations. These fields are super common on sign-up forms — check out how seamlessly AMI Paris asks for subscribers' location. Yet these instances of subscriber data represent the first step towards unlocking the full potential of email personalization.

Get more details on the challenges of email personalization and their solutions.

Another superb strategy for collecting relevant subscriber data is to ask about your audience's interests. For instance, if you check out the Bershka website, you'll notice that the email subscription element specifically asks web visitors whether they want to receive emails regarding the brand's women's or men's collections.

Finally, don't underestimate the potential of interactive lead capture elements. For instance, on its Free Quote page, Bay Alarm Medical uses a 4-question survey to ensure its future email campaigns deliver the type of information potential customers want instead of sending generic promotional messages.

However, remember that populating your lead-gen elements with too many questions may deter people from signing up for your newsletters. According to Unbounce, conversion rates drop significantly for forms with more than three fields. So, while having more info about your prospects unlocks magnificent opportunities for email campaign personalization, don't make the mistake of sacrificing lead generation for an incremental bump in open, click-through, or conversion rates.

Segment Subscribers

Once you've collected subscriber data, it's time to segment your email list based on demographic information, interests, web browsing, and purchase behavior.

By taking this step (and continually updating lists with newly acquired info), you'll ensure that you can present subscribers with relevant messages tailored to their interests and needs in their current stage of the buyer's journey.

For example, a brand like Golf Cart Tire Supply uses email marketing to capture leads it can nurture into customers. That's why the brand employs subscription incentives on its homepage. However, understanding that not all first-time web visitors will be ready to purchase after a single touch, the brand segments new subscribers based on whether they've used their welcome discount code to make a purchase. By segmenting new subscribers in such a way (and utilizing automation), Golf Cart Tire Supply ensures that all new subscribers who haven't bought a product within 48 hours of signing up for its newsletter receive a reminder email about their discount code. Quite smartly, the email includes some social proof to make the buying decision easy for consumers still on the fence about investing in the brand's products.

You can also do something similar to Writer and create onboarding email campaigns that are automatically sent to new leads.

Doing this allows you to get a head start at presenting new clients with an exceptional customer experience. Plus, by combining promotional messages with educational content, you can also ensure that your prospects get the most out of their purchase and boost their likelihood of interacting with your products and remaining loyal to your brand.

Finally, don't forget that segmenting subscribers based on how long they've been your customer also unlocks the opportunity to use your email campaigns as a way to improve customer experience and nurture loyalty. For instance, Aura uses this strategy to collect users who have been using the software for a while.

Analyze Website Behavior

Another great strategy for personalizing email campaigns and presenting subscribers with targeted content is to analyze your subscriber's behavior on your website and employ triggered email campaigns. According to research, campaigns based on behavioral data have a click-through rate that's 152% higher than traditional emails. Abandoned cart emails are the most basic example of this tactic in action. After all, knowing that 70.19% of consumers abandon their shopping carts without converting, it's only natural that you should send these messages to encourage higher conversion rates on your site. They can be as simple as the example from Digestive Warrior below.

Or, you can do something a bit more advanced and combine abandoned cart emails with relevant product recommendations. Take a look at how Carhartt did it.

For an even better personalization effect, use website behavior triggers to inform your campaigns. Check out Goodreads as an example. Knowing that users tend to read multiple works by the same authors, this platform sends monthly "New Books from Authors You Shelved" messages to encourage web visits and purchases.

This type of segmentation works just as well if you don't want to use precise (or intrusive) web-browsing triggers for your email campaigns. Audible's recommended picks emails are an excellent example of a similar (but slightly more privacy-oriented) segmentation strategy that works based on consumers' preferred product categories instead of past purchasing behavior.

You could even segment your email subscribers based on when they've bought products through your website to send timely replenishment emails reminding them to re-order consumable products.

Employ Email Interaction Triggers

As you endeavor to create highly targeted email campaigns, understand that the personalization journey doesn't end once you've hit send. In fact, by utilizing email automation features, you can track email interaction and use triggers that will present subscribers with highly personalized drip campaigns created for their specific buying journeys.

For example, you could do what Transparent Labs does.

This brand sends daily emails. However, instead of going with the "spray and pray" technique of filling subscriber's inboxes with promotional messages, the company tracks email interactions. By collecting this information, Transparent Labs uses automation to follow up on consumer actions and then segments its audience based on their interests. Finally, it sends hyper-personalized emails, which don't just mention products that have caught subscribers' attention but also work to nudge consumers further along their buyer's journey gently. These emails even offer recommendations for additional products they might like.

Utilize Custom Fields

According to research, people are 26% more likely to open emails with personalized subject lines. So, knowing how easily you can add this level of personalization to your campaigns, explore different ways to utilize custom fields when composing emails. One of the most impactful things you can do is to address your subscribers by their first name. Then, if you can, go further and mention some of the other information your prospects provided during the sign-up process. For example, note how Olaplex uses the email preview section to highlight that the personalized haircare routine they're sending over works best for breakage and damaged hair. By employing this tactic, you'll guarantee that your future customers feel seen and heard by your brand and perceive your organization as one that genuinely cares about solving their pain points.

Use Dynamic Content

Sometimes, the best way to ensure that your emails resonate is to create dynamic content that changes based on your subscribers' demographic info (like location or gender), behavior, or any other instance of relevant information.

There are, of course, many benefits to creating these types of personalized email campaigns. First and foremost, dynamic email content significantly boosts engagement rates. This is the precursor to higher open-, click-through-, and conversion rates.

But it's also worth noting that ensuring your email campaigns are highly targeted also contributes to a more streamlined customer experience, where your audience knows you understand their needs and has the proof to show you're willing to deliver.

One easy way to achieve this effect is to use your clients' locations to present them with relevant information. Check out how Spotify does it with its "Upcoming events near you" emails.

These updates use user locations to deliver event suggestions. But even more, they employ cross-segmentation so that subscribers get notified of their favorite artists' concerts instead of just receiving a generic list of events in one location that may have nothing in common with their listening preferences.

Another excellent way to use dynamic content to personalize your email campaigns is to provide buyers with order status updates, like the ones from Massimo Dutti below. This brand does a great job keeping buyers up-to-date with dynamic elements that change based on the parcel's delivery status. Thanks to this approach, buyers can see precisely where their orders are at a given moment, even having the option to track separate parcels at the same time without having to switch between emails.

A slightly less resource-intensive instance of dynamic content would be to use countdown timers or even FOMO-inducing sales messages, like in the example from WebStreet below. Note how the email was sent as a follow-up to an existing offer to qualify for the platform's early investor incentive. So, instead of letting the possibility of unopened emails prevent it from getting new leads, WebStreet sends this simple reminder to get subscribers to act as soon as possible.

Don't Go Overboard

Finally, as you work to employ personalization to create highly targeted email campaigns, remember not to go overboard.

Yes, consumers want personalized brand experiences. However, 86% of Americans still believe businesses collect more personal information than what's needed for good CX.

So, while using personalization strategies to make your campaigns more effective is a great idea, try to employ the tactics above by remaining mindful of your prospects' privacy. Remember, delivering highly targeted emails doesn't require you to know everything about your audience. Sometimes, even having a solid idea of their general interests is enough, as you can see in the example from eTraining below. Knowing that its B2B audience wants to receive periodical updates about workplace safety, this brand sends a monthly newsletter with a selection of pertinent articles and a few product updates.

Final Thoughts

Enhancing your emails with personalized content is always an excellent idea. And, if done right, personalization can genuinely transform your campaigns, helping you engage subscribers and convert new customers by presenting them with tailor-made messages relevant to their interests and position in the sales funnel.

Nonetheless, if you choose to create highly targeted email campaigns, remember that the best way to get them right is to do two things. Firstly, don't make the mistake of imposing upon your subscribers' privacy by asking for too much info. And secondly, keep a close eye on analytical data. That's the only way to ensure that all your hard work is paying off in the way you want it to.