Imagine receiving a promo for dog food when you haven’t owned a pet since high school, or getting a steakhouse coupon and you’re a vegan. No one wants to be treated like marketing fodder. So, how do you maintain that personal touch at scale? By using email campaign management to create specialized campaigns that are relevant to each segment, and showing your audience that your brand understands them - that’s how.

Let’s Get Personal - Why Targeted Email Campaigns Are So Effective

If you’re looking to level up your email campaign management game, these stats on personalized emails should be posted on the wall above your desk:

To create a personalized email, there are a few factors you need to consider:

  • Segmentation

  • Personalized subject lines

  • Personalized content

  • Recommended product sections

  • Behavior-based campaigns (more on these later)

Including personalization throughout your email marketing program is a pretty humongous aspect of email campaign management, and it just so happens to be something we at CodeCrew have many, many years of experience in.

Knowing Where (and When) Email Personalization Should Be Implemented

So, which aspects of your business’s email program need to be personalized? 

Well, are you addressing your customer by name in the subject line? Are you recommending products that they’re interested in? Most importantly, have you segmented your audience based on their behavior and interests to ensure you create a truly magical experience that speaks to their wants and needs?

If you answered no to any of the above, then an email marketing audit of your existing email program is the best place to start. An email marketing audit will reveal the current level of personalization, and which areas need to be optimized to increase ROI

Once these changes are implemented, your marketing becomes a lot more relevant to your audience - and a lot more impactful. Ka-pow.

Some Ideas To Get You Started

Anyone else would charge a hefty sum to divulge even half of the info below, but we’re not just anyone - we’re a bunch of marketing aficionados who love sharing what we know. 

So, here are some effective email customization strategies to help you dial your email personalization strategy up to eleven. 


Email Segmentation

The first step towards creating a truly personalized email program is segmenting your audience based on considerations like interest, industry, engagement, location, browsed products, age, and purchase history. The catch is, a lot of this information isn’t readily available. This is why you should consider sending surveys - or including surveys in your sign-up overlays - to learn relevant information about your audience. This will also help ensure that the segments you build are as accurate as possible. 

Once your segments are more detailed, you can send your audience more of what they’re interested in, which of course makes them more likely to place an order. See where we’re going with this?

Personally-Addressed Content

It may seem like a simple thing, but personally addressed content and subject lines can make a huge difference to your audience’s response. A simple “Hi, Joe…” immediately makes the email more meaningful and cuts through a big chunk of the clutter in your subscriber’s inbox. 

Think of it this way: If you were walking in a busy street, someone shouting “Hey!” wouldn’t grab your attention. Now imagine that person calling out your name. Yup, you’ll spin around faster than Taylor Swift twirling on a turntable. 

Automated Flows

Building automated emails that are triggered by a subscriber’s specific actions can help ensure a personalized experience as well. These ensure subscribers are met - and made to feel valued - at every point of their email marketing journey.  Here are a few that you should definitely include in your program.

  • Lead Nurture Flow
    Someone’s interested in your brand, but they’re still a bit dubious about making a purchase. Time to do the email mambo and invite them to take a closer look.

  • Cross-Sell Flow
    A customer likes X. X goes well with Y. You tell the customer about Y and soon you’ve sold both X and Y. Neat.

  • Post-Purchase Flow
    Just because a customer has made a purchase, doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. Nope, you follow up and recommend other products or ask them to leave a review. And don’t forget to say ‘thank you’. 

  • Referral Flow
    If a customer has made multiple purchases in the past, you can entice them to tell their friends about your brand in exchange for a voucher or special gift. 

Recommended Product Sections

Highlighting items based on a subscriber’s browsing or purchase history is a powerful way to showcase other products that will be relevant to them. Fun fact: You can add these to flows and campaigns for some extra razzle-dazzle. 

Send Emails From a Human

There are two ways to do this:

  1. Ensure that your ‘From Name’ contains the name of someone in your company.

  2. Create regular, personalized email campaigns written as though they’re from the CEO or founder.

Why add a name? Because most customers these days expect a CEO and their team to make time for their valued buyers. A senior person in the company sending a personalized email with a few anecdotes and thanking the customer for their business shows that the team understands each customer and is committed to building relationships, rather than just selling products. This is also a great way to increase customer lifetime value.

Wouldn’t you agree, [INSERT: <Reader Name>]?

A/B Testing

The best way to understand your audience’s likes and dislikes is by A/B testing all variables of your emails. 

Sometimes, the product and customer base will give an idea of what might work before you even start testing. For example, if you’re marketing baby products, it makes sense to keep emails short and sweet, since the customer (who is likely to be a parent) won’t have a lot of free time. Similarly, if you’re marketing legal services, the audience won’t be too impressed with fun emojis in the subject line. 

Some tests you can run to create a personalized experience are:

  • Send times: Are you speaking to a group of early birds or night owls?

  • Send days: Is Tuesday really the best day to send an email? Let’s find out.

  • Imagery: Does a picture say a thousand words, or should you rather just opt for a thousand words?

  • Subject lines: Given how important they are for open rates, we recommend spending a lot of time fine-tuning your one-liners.

  • Call-to-Action messaging: “Click Here” is fine, but let’s mix it up a bit.

The trick is to rely on verifiable data, not a hunch. With A/B testing you can get solid numbers to either back up or disprove your hypothesis. Turns out marketing can be an exact science!

Proof that Personalization Works

Our personalization strategy has helped numerous brands increase their ROI over the years. Here are a few examples of clients seeing great success through CodeCrew:

PetLab Co

Not only did PetLab Co offer a vast range of different products, but their audience was much more diverse and complex than simply being “dog lovers”. By building campaigns that targeted each specific segment and sending them content and discounts based on relevant products, we increased click rates by 53%. Plus, we achieved record revenue for a single product launch. Talk about paw-some results!

Petlab
Petlab

Hayden Girls

To help every girl and tween feel like their most confident selves, we used personalization to highlight each specific style category and split the audience into engaged and unengaged purchasers and subscribers. Soon, we were dominating the catwalk with a 189% increase in open rates.

Hayden
Hayden

99 Counties

A shift in 99 Counties' business model meant that a large chunk of customers who had previously placed orders would soon be outside of the brand’s new delivery zones. So, we immediately separated these from customers who would be able to continue ordering. By sending product-focused content to those in the delivery zone, and educational content to those outside, we were able to increase order revenue by 50% while still nailing the rebranding strategy.

99 Counties
99 Counties

Ready To Get Personal?

While email personalization is imperative to your brand’s e-commerce success, it’s also a huge undertaking - not only do you have to have the strategic know-how to personalize each campaign, but you also need to A/B test all aspects of personalization to see what works best.

Then, you need to analyze that data to implement it going forward. 

For the best chance of success, call the experts and let us skyrocket your ROI.