The Power of Email Personalization [+ Examples]

Simple at the core, marketing emails have evolved into interactive, highly personalized messages that can effectively drive sales, including direct sales within the email. Bland, impersonal emails no longer work – you need a visually appealing story that resonates with the recipient’s needs and their stage in the marketing funnel.

Read on to unlock personalized email marketing for your business.

Strategic Benefits of Personalized Email Marketing

Did you know the average ROI for personalized email marketing is $36 for every dollar spent, with 89% of marketers naming emails their top lead generation channel? On the same note, 79% of marketers place email within their top three marketing channels, while nearly 60% of email subscribers are influenced by email personalization in their purchasing decisions.

Here are the strategic benefits of email personalization:

Increase brand awareness	Utilize email personalization to share subscriber-focused updates and news, reinforcing your brand identity and maintaining visibility.
Generate website traffic	Share snippets of recent articles and include compelling calls to action in emails to direct readers to your blog and sales pages, increasing website traffic.
Personalize communication	Segment your audience and tailor content to individual preferences, fostering engagement and loyalty by making customers feel valued.
Collect business data	Leverage email personalization to gather customer insights through analytics and feedback forms, informing business strategies and enhancing offerings.
Boost sales	Showcase products and services, utilize promotions, and employ upselling strategies to increase sales and revenue through personalized email marketing.
Maintain engagement	Keep customers intrigued with varied email content, ensuring consistent engagement to stay top of mind.
Amplify marketing efforts	Integrate email with other marketing channels to amplify efforts, directing traffic to social media, blogs, and events for increased engagement and interaction.

Take a product tour to explore how Phonexa can unlock the full potential of personalized email marketing.

What Is Email Personalization?

“Personalisation – it is not about first/last name. It’s about relevant content.” — Dan Jak

Personalization in email marketing is all about delivering upon the subscriber’s expectations based on what you know about them: demographics, history of interactions, stage in your marketing funnel, and personal details like their name and current interests. As a result, you tailor your message to the recipient rather than sending generic, mass-marketing content.

Did you know that personalization reduces lead acquisition costs by up to 50%, improves marketing efficiency by 10-30%, and increases revenues by 5-15%? You can do it by addressing recipients by name, tailoring subject lines and content to their taste, and timing your outreach.

Here are some email personalization benefits:

Improved open rates	Personalized subject lines stand out in crowded inboxes, making emails 50% more likely to be opened when they include the recipient’s name, job title, or other pertinent personal details.
Enhanced engagement	Emails tailored to recipients’ preferences are likelier to be engaged with, including direct purchases
Data-driven insights	Personalized emails help collect actionable marketing data that can inform future strategies, helping you better understand and meet your audience’s needs
Improved conversion rates	Personalized email messages prompt more action, as subscribers are more likely to respond to offers tailored specifically to them
Increased ROI	At the end of the day, email personalization costs little to implement and yields substantial returns.

Speaking of the value of personalization, consumers for whom email content is personalized are ten times more likely to be high-value customers, making 15 or more transactions annually, and 80% of shoppers are more likely to shop with brands that personalize their experience.

Here’s what business buyers say about personalized email marketing:

Personalized Email Marketing Best Practices

“From” name	Sending an email from a real business or a real person makes communication more meaningful, so it makes lots of sense to use genuine info in the “From” line.
Subject line	Personalizing the subject line with the subscriber’s name makes an email feel personal and increases open rates.
Email content	Personalizing the email body using subscriber information shows you care about their interests. For instance, as a pet food brand, Sundays personalizes emails based on the subscriber’s pet.
Imagery	People love images, and even more so, they love personalized images. Airbnb, for example, uses recent booking data to tailor email headers, enhancing engagement.
Dynamic content	Including real-time information like countdown timers or stock updates can be motivational. For example, Ask and Embla personalize countdown clocks based on each subscriber’s time zone, ensuring accurate information.

On top of content personalization, you can also run trigger email campaigns based on user behavior. For example, you can send a reminder email after the cart is abandoned or a loyalty email to a VIP customer.

Personalized Subject Lines

Subject lines in emails are your first shot at grabbing attention. Personalize them with the recipient’s name, relevant offers, or calls to action so they feel more appropriate and appealing to the recipient. For example, use “Get Your Exclusive Deal Now” instead of a generic “Click Here.”

Sender’s Name

Emails from a real person, like “Anna@company.com,” feel more personal and thus are more likely to encourage recipients to engage with your email.

Recommendations

Use user data from various marketing channels to create detailed customer profiles and tailor your messages and offers to a specific subscriber. For example, if a customer buys solar panels, recommend accessories like portable chargers to enhance their experience.

Behavioral Triggers

Send personalized emails based on common user behavior patterns, like creating an account with your company, making a purchase, abandoning a cart, etc. Timely interactions reinforce a positive connection with your brand. 

Likewise, you can celebrate important events like birthdays, anniversaries, or your company’s founding day, and ensure your emails reach recipients at the best times for maximum impact. Use analytics to find the optimal sending times.

Dynamic & Localized Content

Incorporate real-time updates in your emails, like countdown timers for deals or live shipment tracking. Tailor your emails to your audience’s cultural and regional preferences. Localize content, mention local events, use local currency, etc.

5 Great Examples of Personalized Email Campaigns

1. Product Recommendations

Below is a classic product recommendation email based on the customer’s viewing and cart abandonment history, offering free shipping to encourage them to check the availability of the offer:

Source: Brooklinen

2. Personalized Welcome Emails

Welcome emails are crucial for making a positive first impression by using the subscriber’s first name, sending emails immediately after sign-up, and enhancing the copy with custom fields or dynamic content tags.

Source: Wix

3. Personalized Content

Sending personalized recommendations from favorite reads or your latest blogs is highly effective for boosting blog traffic or engagement. You can also create an automated email newsletter by leveraging your audience’s online behavior.

In the example below, PayPal features a unique offer and a ‘Become a Pro’ option, encouraging users to explore different financial options tailored to their preferences. 

Source: PayPal

4. Birthdays and Anniversaries

Personalized birthday or anniversary emails can strengthen customer relationships, making them feel valued on their special day. You can enhance these emails with special offers based on the customer’s preferences or shopping history. 

Consider this email personalization example from BodyMindLife:

Source: BodyMindLife

6. Reactivation Emails

Reactivation emails target inactive subscribers who may have forgotten about your brand. Scheduling these emails can bring back old customers and help maintain a clean email list.

Here’s an email reactivation example:

This reactivation email effectively rekindles the interest, and the personal note provides a reassuring touch. Contextual CTAs and appealing imagery further engage the reader, piquing interest in the brand’s offerings.

Test & Improve Email Personalization with Phonexa

For any business relying on emails, it’s crucial to have all email campaigns streamlined and synergized with other marketing avenues. This is exactly what Phonexa’s eight-in-one performance marketing software offers – a comprehensive performance & affiliate marketing ecosystem that covers marketing through and through.

For email marketing campaigns, we offer a proprietary email marketing platform, E-Delivery, which ensures 100% email deliverability, granular subscription distribution, A/B testing, advanced automation, and integrations with seven other Phonexa’s solutions and popular CRM and lead management systems.

 

With E-Delivery, all your emails hit the right subscribers at the right time while you unlock valuable insights on subscriber engagement and beyond-the-email interactions pulled from other Phonexa’s tools. As a result, you get more clicks, conversions, and sales.

Build your plan now, or book a demo to see how E-Delivery can grow your email marketing.

But then again, as good as E-Delivery is for email marketing campaigns, you’d want all your traffic channels to synergize within a comprehensive lead acquisition strategy. For this, you need more than just an email marketing solution – an all-encompassing ecosystem for web, call, and email leads. And this is exactly what Phonexa offers.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

 

Here are the eight state-of-the-art products you can unlock with Phonexa at a single price:

 

Build your plan now, or book a demo to harness the potential of Phonexa’s comprehensive platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is email personalization?

Personzalized emails tailor content to each recipient based on their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions. This includes using their name, recommending products they might like, and sending content that aligns with their interests.

How do I make my email more personalized?

To personalize your emails, use the recipient’s name, refer to their past purchases or interactions, and tailor content you know they are searching for. Additionally, you can implement dynamic content blocks to display information based on user data and behavior.

How do email segmentation and email personalization differ?

Email segmentation boils down to dividing your emails into subscriber groups by demographics or purchase history, while email personalization is about creating resonating content for each customer segment.