3 Ways Personalization Positively Affects Your Email Campaigns

Using personalization in email marketing campaigns is a great way to build relationships with customers, increase your open and clickthrough rates, and suggest content that your customers will actually care about. Personalization enables brands to generate more customer loyalty and ultimately higher return on investment.

To assess how small to midsized businesses and enterprise retailers are incorporating personalization into their email marketing campaigns, SimpleRelevance reviewed emails from 329 U.S. online retailers. The study found that a majority of the retailers failed to offer their customers a personalized email experience. Just 7 percent were personalizing the subject line, a proven driver of email opens and conversions. Leveraging data is a key factor in targeting customers on a one-to-one level, and thus creating a successful email campaign.

Are you still unsure about the importance of targeted email messages? Here are three key reasons why personalization is important in all email marketing:

1. It builds strong relationships. According to a study released by Accenture, 73 percent of consumers like to buy from brands/companies that use personal information to deliver a more efficient shopping experience. Leveraging this information, brands can ensure their emails resonate with customers by offering relevant content to each individual. Meeting customer expectations for product offers and recommendations is pertinent in keeping customers engaged in your email program, while essentially eliminating unsubscribes. A happy customer is a loyal customer.

2. It helps increase open rates. According to Experian Marketing Services, when consumers see a subject line with their name included in it, the chance of them opening the email increases by 26 percent. That's a significant increase for such a simple step. Other subject line personalization options include mentioning the customer's past product purchase, a deal similar to one they've acted on before, or location-specific details. Using A/B testing or a predictive personalization engine can enable you to test the item attributes each of your customers care most about. Just personalizing a subject line can generate more opens and potentially more purchases.

3. It gives you insight. Technology enables deeper insight than most retailers are aware. It can help brands see if customers are opening on a mobile device or desktop, where they're located, or what their gender, age and family composition is. With all of this information, brands that don't leverage data are missing the boat on a huge personalization (and revenue) opportunity. With real-time data, brands have up-to-date information on what customers want when they want it. There's no need for guesswork because machine learning is based on hard data and fine-tuned algorithms.

Email campaigns are a great way to re-engage lapsed customers, appeal to current customers and get the attention of new customers. By personalizing your emails, you're appealing to the many sides of your audience. Everyone wants to feel like they connect with brands; that's why creating a personal experience is so important.

Erik Severinghaus is the founder and CEO of SimpleRelevance, an email optimization platform.