Personalization is one of the most important aspects of an effective email remarketing campaign. Personalized subject lines, body content, and calls to action are proven to increase open and click through rates. But what makes personalization so powerful?
Why is Email Personalization Important?
It Builds a Relationship
Marketing emails have a reputation for seeming dull and generic. Personalized messaging enhances your email campaigns and builds relationships, instead of just “blasting” users with cookie-cutter messaging.
It Humanizes Your Communications
Most people don’t particularly like automated experiences. Similarly, most people don’t respond well to emails that seem like they could have been written to anyone.
It Helps You Stand Out
Last year, the average email user received over 45,000 emails, over 1,000 more than the previous year. Without personalizing the content of your emails, you risk being ignored – or losing subscribers.
Email personalization techniques drive traffic to your site and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns, making it significantly more likely that they will open and engage with your communications.
How to Personalize Remarketing Emails
So, what’s the best way to go about creating effective, profitable email personalization? As with most things in ecommerce, personalization starts with data. Every user on your site generates customer data; you can use this data to create a unique experience catered toward each individual shopper.
1. Speak to Their Stage in the Consumer Journey
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone who abandoned your site told you why they were leaving? While we have general information about why users abandon, it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact reason.
Fortunately, their stage in the consumer journey can provide insight into why they left. Of course, in order to remarket to them, you’ll need to have their email information. That’s why lead capture strategies are so vital to building your email list.
Once you have their contact information, you can target them with trigger emails – targeted messages that are sent after abandonment at a particular stage. When used effectively, these quick messages can address the reasons they left and lead them back to purchase.
Product Page Abandonment
If a user abandons at the product stage, it’s likely that they weren’t sure about whether they wanted the product or not. They may tell themselves that they’re going to “consider” the item, but very few users will return to the product again without being prompted.
In this case, you’ll want to send emails with the item/items that they were looking at, reminding them what they viewed, and why it’s a worthwhile product.
This is also a great time to use social proof to reiterate the product’s value. Show the user what previous customers are saying about the product through reviews and social media. This will bolster your value props and strengthen the case for completing the purchase.
Cart Abandonment
Creating a cart demonstrates purchase intent, which means the user has a higher likelihood of returning to complete their purchase if prompted. Like with product page abandonment, cart abandonment is often the result of uncertainty. However, since these users have shown intent, this is an ideal time to leverage an incentive strategy. Even a small discount like 10% off can be enough to sway them towards conversion.
If you’d prefer not to utilize discount, reiteration tactics can be extremely effective as well. In simple terms, tell the user why they should order from you. Talk about guarantees/warranties. If you have a particularly good shipping/returns policy, this can be another great aspect to highlight.
Don’t be afraid to gush a bit. While short emails often perform best, you can still include several of your value propositions – just don’t write a novel about your money back guarantee.
This is also a good time to include support information. If the customer has a question or concern about ordering, make it as easy as possible for them to get the help they need.
Checkout Abandonment
When a customer gets cold feet at checkout, the most common reason is shipping charges. If you’re open to using an incentive strategy, simply offering to ship the order for free is often enough to recover the conversion.
Another helpful tactic is urgency. If an item is in short supply, make sure to let the user know. If the item is part of a sale, make sure to give the customer a time-frame to act within.
2. Get Local
Understanding local preferences maximizes the efficacy of campaigns. By adapting your content marketing to suit localized needs, you can set the stage for enhanced conversion rates and better relationship building.
Language
Language may seem like a simple preference to manage, but this form of email personalization can make a world of difference. Although many sites sort language preference by country, this is not always 100% effective.
While the official language of the U.S. is English, numerous others are spoken by many across the country. Nearly 40% of Los Angeles speaks Spanish as a first language, and many prefer to do business in Spanish.
Furthermore, some countries where English is commonly understood still prefer to do business in their local language. This underscores the importance of using a shopper’s preferred language in communications.
Time Zone
The ideal timing for email-sends is hotly debated. However, there are definitely sub-optimal times to send a remarketing email – such as the middle of the night. Conventional advice suggests emails sent in the morning or the early afternoon stand the best chance of being read.
Thus, it’s important to make sure that you’re sending emails when the individual receiving them will actually read them. Take the user’s location and time zone into account before sending them messages. If you don’t they may not even see them in the first place.
3. Include Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is information gathered from data, that’s used to add personalization to communications. Unlike most parts of an email, this information isn’t written by a copywriter. Rather, it’s generated automatically from previous behavior. Two of the most effective types of dynamic content are Cart Rebuilders and Product Recommendations.
Cart Rebuilders
Online users abandon approximately 70% of all the carts they create. For that reason, it can be hard for a user to remember exactly what they were previously interested in when they’re contacted about their cart.
Cart rebuilders allow you to recreate a user’s cart within an email. This gives them a visual reminder of what they were looking at. Recreating the cart actualizes the experience for the user, and is much more likely to capture their interest than a message simply stating that “you abandoned your cart.”
Product Recommendations
Personalized product recommendations are a vital tool for increasing average order value reigniting interest in your products. Since you already have their browsing data and purchase history, you can serve them recommendations that are likely to capture their interest and get them back to your site.
In addition to their enormous utility, product recommendations are extremely cost-effective. They generate interest and get users clicking, all without having to offer any sort of incentive. For more on product recommendations, be sure to take a look at this article.
Email Personalization Matters
Personalization is one of the most effective ways to renew shopper interest, and create an extraordinary online shopping experience. By catering your emails to suit the needs of your audience, you will see an increase in all key metrics, including open rates, click through rates, and conversion.
Want to Learn More?
Don’t miss UpSellit’s free ebook, “27 Attributes of an Effective Email.” From subject lines to footers, you’ll find out why every piece of an email matters – and how you can perfect the art of the perfect email.
