How to increase your email open rate with personalisation

What is email personalisation?

Personalisation in email marketing is targeting an email campaign to a specific subscriber by using the data and info you have about them. It could be information like their first name, the last product they bought, where they live or a number of other data points.

It is a broad term, and it can vary in some cases. Basic personalisation includes using a subscriber’s name in the subject line, while more advanced tactics can include changing the content of the email based on a subscriber’s gender, location, or other things about them.

Why personalise your email?

Studies in email marketing have shown that customers don’t want to be treated like a number, but instead as the individual that they are. So marketers should take the time to personalise subject, content and messages.

“Reader are 26% more likely to open emails with personalised subject lines.”

This is what a personalised subject looks like. These types of subject lines resonate better with your readers, so taking the time to add your customer’s first name to your subject lines is essential.

Underneath, we have two examples to show the difference:

– GOOD: “John, discover our new summer sale favourites”

– BAD: “You will not believe what we have in store for you this summer!!!”

Keep your subject line short and to the point.

A report by Retention Science has shown that subject lines with 6 to 10 words have the highest open rate. After analysing more than 260 million emails they found that short subject lines resulted in a 21 percent open rate.

All the science aside. If your subject is too long, it will get cut off. Resulting that your reader will not know what the email is about.

Use a recognisable sender name.

The sender name is one of the most prominently elements of your email when it arrives in your customer’s inbox.

On many email clients, this name has a larger and heavier font to help readers quickly identify who the email is coming from before the recipient opens it.

Dynamic content offers

Use demographic or geographic data to personalise the offers delivered to each costumer. You can dynamically change sections of the content within your email to make the entire campaign more relevant to your subscribers.

A common use case for this would be showing menswear to your male subscribers and showing womenswear to female subscribers.

Source: martech.org