Personalization and the human touch

Even in our technology-driven age, people appreciate a personal touch in interactions – that’s why personalization remains a vital marketing tool. Human-to-human (H2H) marketing strategies focus on creating individual experiences, like personalized videos or understanding prospects’ interests through social media. These tailored approaches attract quality leads and boost conversion rates.

Why not level up your workflow by blending personalization with marketing automation? Trust us, it’s a game changer, making your marketing feel even more genuine and engaging to your audience.

How to personalize with marketing automation

When done right, marketing automation adds a human touch by catering to each contact’s unique needs and preferences. It teams up with personalization effortlessly, helping you deliver tailor-made experiences at scale. Here are four ways to achieve that:

1. Segment your audience

When it comes to reaching your audience effectively, segmentation is key. Dotdigital offers powerful tools that allow you to create segments based on various criteria, such as age, location, and RFM score. This means you can tailor your marketing efforts to specific groups within your audience.

By utilizing automation programs, Dotdigital makes it easy for you to create segments and deliver targeted messages. This not only saves you time but also ensures that your audience receives personalized content that resonates with them.

2. Use dynamic content

Dynamic content is a game-changer when it comes to email marketing. It enables you to provide personalized and targeted content to your recipients in one email. Achieving this is possible by tapping into your customer analytics and creating engaging content, which can be delivered at scale using dynamic content blocks and smart program logic.

Imagine being able to display images of local stores to recipients based on their location, making them feel like you’re right there with them. Or recommending products based on their recently viewed or purchased items, giving them that extra nudge toward making a purchase.

With dynamic content, you can create highly relevant and engaging emails that cater to each recipient’s unique preferences and behaviors. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows exactly what your customers want, delivering the right message at the right time.

3. Customer-driven journeys

Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all approach to automation programs. In today’s customer-centric world, it’s all about giving your contacts control over their journey. Instead of bombarding your customers with generic content, why not offer multiple paths based on their actions and preferences?

But it doesn’t stop there. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different approaches like remails to find what truly resonates with your audience. Keep testing and refining your strategies until you discover what works best for each segment of your contacts.

4. Leverage behavior data

Tapping into behavioral data is the key to understanding your audience by tracking their actions and responding in a way that resonates with them. With Dotdigital, crafting automation programs that respond to your contacts’ behavior as it happens becomes a piece of cake, paving the way for timely and relevant communication.

Imagine noticing a shopper leaving items in their cart, and effortlessly sending them a gentle trigger to encourage the completion of their purchase. Or, picture welcoming a new subscriber to your newsletter by guiding them through your brand’s journey, all the while showcasing meaningful offers, using marketing automation.

By harnessing the potential of behavioral data, you’ll never miss an opportunity to connect with your audience when it matters most, leading to stronger relationships and increased satisfaction.

Combine marketing automation and personalization for maximized results

Both personalization and marketing automation have their merits, but combining the two can help you unlock your full marketing potential. With tools like Dotdigital, you can provide personalized experiences at scale, catering to each contact’s unique interests and preferences, without sacrificing the efficiency and reach of automation.

1. Make your content mobile and desktop friendly

In today’s digital age, it’s important to ensure that your content is not only visually appealing but also optimized for both mobile and desktop devices. With more and more people shopping and browsing through their phones and laptops, it’s important to review how your website performs across different devices and make any necessary optimizations.

By making your content mobile and desktop friendly, you can provide a pleasant browsing experience for your users. Nobody wants to zoom in or scroll endlessly just to read the content or view product details. So make sure that your website and email design is responsive, with easy navigation, readable text, and properly sized images.

Optimizing your website for mobile devices can also help reduce abandoned carts and increase conversions. If users find it difficult to navigate or complete a purchase on their phones or tablets, they are more likely to abandon their carts. On the other hand, if the checkout process is smooth and user-friendly on all devices, it can lead to higher conversion rates.

2. Turn abandoned carts into revenue with crafty email follow-ups

The holiday season is here, and with more shoppers turning to online shopping, it’s the perfect time to focus on fine-tuning your abandoned cart recovery strategy. Don’t let those potential customers slip away – give them a chance to save their carts for later.

One effective way to reconnect with shoppers who’ve shown interest in your products is through personalized emails or messages. By sending follow-up messages tailored specifically to their abandoned carts, you can remind them of the items they left behind and entice them to complete their purchase.

Whether it’s a friendly email highlighting the benefits of the products or a text message offering a limited-time discount, these personalized approaches can make a significant difference in recovering lost sales during this busy holiday season.

3. Add a personal touch to your messaging

When it comes to holiday messaging, personalization is key. Gone are the days of generic mass emails and cookie-cutter marketing campaigns. Today, it’s all about creating a personal connection with your audience.

By utilizing the data you’ve gathered from preference centers and first-party data sources, you can tailor your messages to cater to each individual’s preferences and behaviors. This level of personalization not only shows that you value their unique needs but also increases the chances of engagement and conversion.

Imagine receiving an email that speaks directly to your interests or a targeted holiday ad that showcases products you’ve been eyeing. It instantly creates a sense of connection and makes you feel understood as a consumer.

4. Sprinkle some holiday magic into your SEO

The holiday season is the perfect time to sprinkle some festive magic into your website’s SEO. By incorporating festive keywords throughout your SEO copywriting and product descriptions, you can capture the attention of shoppers who are in the holiday spirit.

One way to add a touch of holiday flair to your SEO is by updating your meta tags and headings to showcase that seasonal spirit. By including keywords like “holiday deals,” “gift ideas,” or those related to your product, you can align your website to what customers are searching for at this time of year. By with your customers’ seasonal searches, you can increase the chances of attracting more traffic to your website. 

You can make the most out of your website traffic by incorporating a clear call-to-action (CTA) section. Not only does it help enhance your click-through rate, but it also allows you to drive revenue. By organizing your CTAs with various links, you can cater to the different interests and preferences of your visitors.

To make your CTAs engaging, use simple language that is easy for users to understand. A user-friendly layout will also encourage them to take action. Remember, the goal is to create a seamless experience that entices users to click and explore further.

5. Be social media savvy

The holiday season is the perfect time to have some extra fun on social media. With so many people spending time online during this festive period, using paid and organic social methods is an effective way to reach both new and loyal customers.

On Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you can use targeted ads to connect with your desired audience uniquely. These platforms offer a range of gamification options to incorporate into your ad campaigns. You can create engaging content that resonates with your demographic using interactive quizzes, polls, and immersive storytelling experiences.

By adding gamification elements to your social media ads, you can transform the user experience from passive viewing to active participation. This approach not only increases brand awareness but also encourages interaction and engagement with your target audience.

But why stop there? For an added layer of flair and authenticity, team up with influencers who resonate with your target audience. Collaborating with influencers can help you tap into their engaged followers and create a buzz around your brand during the holiday season.

Time to wrap up

These five simple and engaging tips will help make your holiday marketing campaign a smashing success. By keeping your messaging personalized, your SEO festive, and your content as device-friendly and heartwarming as possible, you’re setting yourself up for a profitable holiday season. So why wait? Jump into the holiday marketing fun and spread good cheer all around.

What is personalization?

Personalization goes beyond simply addressing your customers by their names. It’s about crafting tailored experiences and delivering content that resonates with your audience based on their individual preferences, actions, and unique characteristics. To excel in personalization, it’s essential to make well-informed decisions at each step of the customer journey. This means delivering the right content at the right time to the right audience. 

Personalization is achieved by leveraging customer data and insights to provide an experience that is both relevant and engaging. This approach makes your marketing messages not only authentic but also meaningful to each individual customer.

In marketing today, personalization goes far beyond just using the customer’s name in an email or celebrating their birthday. According to Salesforce, 62% of customers expect companies to deliver personalized offers and discounts based on their previous purchases. While incorporating basic information such as a customer’s name, birthday, or gender is important, modern consumers expect more.

Top personalization tips

We’ve curated a selection of top personalization tips to help you make stronger connections with your audience. From leveraging dynamic content to tapping into customer insights, these effective strategies will ensure your marketing messages are tailored, relevant, and engaging for each individual.

1. Elevate your campaigns with dynamic content

Dynamic content is a powerful tool to supercharge your marketing campaigns by delivering laser-targeted messaging in a single send. Thanks to dynamic content blocks, you can easily display a variety of content, including text, images, and CTAs. These content blocks cater to each recipient’s data, preferences, and previous interactions.

By tailoring your content to specific factors like a customer’s location, subscription level, or any custom data field of your choice, you ensure that your messaging remains highly relevant and engaging for each individual. At Dotdigital, we love seeing how brands can capitalize on customer location data to craft unique offers that resonate with recipients and forge stronger connections.

Incorporate dynamic content into your campaigns to unlock higher engagement rates and deliver remarkable end-user experiences that set your brand apart and keep customers coming back for more.

2. Tap into targeted product recommendations

For ecommerce businesses and brick-and-mortar retailers with delivery or click-and-collect options, targeted product recommendations are an invaluable tool to add a personal touch to your email campaigns. To capture customers’ interest and encourage them to explore further, you can create product recommendation blocks that cater to their previous buying and browsing patterns or preferences. This can be based on a specific stage in the customer journey.

For example, if you’re a shoe retailer, you could showcase running shoes tailored to a customer’s specific needs. This could include their preferred terrain, distance, gender, or even color preferences. You could also feature items they’ve previously expressed interest in by browsing online or adding them to their shopping cart. These curated recommendations create a sense of familiarity and personalization that resonates with your customers.

Dotdigital takes it a step further by enabling you to harness machine learning to suggest the next-best products and more. By utilizing these advanced techniques, you can create unforgettable customer interactions that drive engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, increase conversions for your business.

3. Harness segmentation for ultimate personalization

There are times when dynamic content blocks are not enough, and you want to make the whole message personal. That’s when segmentation comes in handy. It helps you split your audience into groups based on things like age, customer type, or even personal tastes like favorite colors.

But that’s not all – with eRFM segmentation, you can group your audience based on their engagement and purchasing behaviors. eRFM stands for “engagement, recency, frequency, and monetary,” which means you’re looking at how engaged your customers are when they last made a purchase, how often they buy, and how much they spend. With Dotdigital, creating groups for different customers, like loyal fans or people who need some extra nurturing, is simple. Plus, you can make new groups when customers change how they act, so your messaging is always spot-on.

By rewarding your brand champions with special offers and winning back inactive customers, you’ll create a better experience for everyone. Personalization is all about choosing to do or not do something based on the customer. If this group isn’t engaging with your campaigns, it’s a good idea to exclude them from your newsletters and instead reserve sends for them for big events (like Black Friday). This way, your campaigns will be more engaging, and your customers will be happier.

4. Create personalized journeys with custom automation paths

Designing and building customized customer journeys is a breeze with Dotdigital. By using automation programs, you can create personalized journeys that cater to each customer’s unique engagement with your brand. With the drag and drop functionality of our automation builder, you can easily design tailored paths, utilizing actions, decisions, and delays to create the ideal experience for every individual customer.

These customized journeys empower your customers to choose their own path through the automation program, with each action they take (or don’t take) determining the subsequent messages they receive. This way, you can ensure that every journey is one-of-a-kind, offering highly engaging and relevant content that speaks directly to your audience on a personal level. By tapping into our platform, you’ll bring these personalized journeys to life, improve customer experience, and boost conversion rates. 

Summary

In today’s digital world, personalization is no longer optional – it’s essential. So, why not revamp your personalization approach? By implementing these strategies, you’ll give your audience the personalized experiences they want and set your marketing campaigns up for incredible success.

1. Embrace simplicity

Make sure your emails are easy to read by avoiding cluttered layouts. Keep it simple by removing unnecessary elements, using a single-column format, and using clear headings. Use colors that work well together and organize your content to make it easier to understand. Break up your content into shorter, easy-to-digest chunks that your readers can quickly scan through.

2. Consistent branding is key

To build trust and recognition, make sure you keep things consistent in your email designs. Stick to your brand’s colors, logo, and typography so that your emails become an extension of your overall brand identity. This will help you establish stronger connections with your subscribers. Consistency in branding also shows professionalism and attention to detail.

3. Maximize white space

White space is more than just a design element – it plays an important role in enhancing readability and organizing content. By incorporating sufficient white space around headings, paragraphs, and other essential elements, you can create a visually pleasing layout that directs the reader’s gaze through the email. This approach not only makes your content more captivating and effortless to navigate, but it also alleviates any sense of overcrowding, resulting in a more relaxed and pleasant reading experience.

4. Optimize for mobile devices

In today’s world, people tend to check their emails on smartphones, which makes it crucial to design responsive and mobile-friendly layouts. To optimize for mobile devices, it’s important to adjust font sizes for smaller screens and ensure that buttons are easy to tap. Testing the email on different clients is also necessary to ensure a seamless experience. Additionally, compressing images and keeping email file sizes small can facilitate faster loading and prevent reader frustration.

5. Use clear and distinct CTAs

It’s essential to pay close attention to the call-to-action (CTA) buttons in your email campaign, as they can have a significant impact on its success. Ensure that your CTAs are visually appealing and easy to spot, with a clear message. You can try out different colors, sizes, and positions to see which configuration works best. Also, use persuasive language that encourages your readers to take action, without coming across as overly sales-oriented.

6. Prioritize accessibility

Creating emails that are accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities, is not only ethical but also practical. To achieve this, prioritize features such as using a font size that is easy to read, ensuring high color contrast, and including descriptive alt text for images. By making your designs accessible, you can increase engagement rates and reach a more inclusive audience, preventing anyone from feeling left out of your message.

7. Choose visual elements wisely

To make your emails more attractive, consider adding high-quality images and graphics that match your message. Be careful not to let visuals overpower the main message. Also, optimize images for faster loading and ensure they display correctly on various email clients and devices.

8. Leverage personalization and dynamic content

Leveraging personalization for each recipient can greatly increase their engagement. By incorporating user data, like their name, location, browsing and purchase history, you can personalize subject lines, text, images and recommendations. Utilize dynamic content to tailor emails based on subscriber preferences and behavior, resulting in a more relevant and captivating experience.

9. Test and refine your design

To ensure maximum engagement and conversion rates, it’s important to regularly assess your email designs. A/B testing can help you compare various aspects of your emails, from headlines to CTAs to layout options. Analyze the results to spot any trends and fine-tune your designs accordingly. Remember, consistent improvement is essential to stay ahead of competitors and maintain strong relationships with your audience.

10. Animated GIFs and interactivity

Enhance your content with animated GIFs, countdown timers, and interactive elements such as forms and surveys to engage your audience. It is crucial to ensure that these additions do not divert attention from your key message or compromise accessibility. Interactive content, when executed correctly, can add excitement and boost engagement rates.

Summary

By incorporating these 10 tips into your email design strategy you will grab your audience’s attention while also creating a long-lasting impression that builds trust and loyalty toward your brand. A properly executed email design strategy that focuses on user experience, accessibility, and engagement will enhance conversions and improve your customer relationships.

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through some these best practices to improve your personalized email marketing game.

What is email personalization?

Email personalization is a powerful marketing strategy that revolves around creating and delivering content tailored to the interests, preferences, and unique characteristics of each subscriber. It involves using customer data to create personalized messages that speak directly to their needs and desires. This leads to improved open rates, click-through rates, and ultimately higher conversion rates.

Email personalization best practices

To make the most out of email personalization and drive successful results, it’s important to implement proven best practices. Here are some key personalization strategies that can help elevate your email marketing strategy:

1. Collect and use the right data

The foundation of email personalization is collecting relevant customer data. You can collect first-party data via the channels your customers interact with you on. This data may include basic information like their name, location, and job title.

Additionally, you can collect zero-party data from surveys, sign-up forms, or customer account profiles. Remember, it’s important to be ethical and transparent when collecting data so you respect your subscribers’ privacy and international regulations. 

2. Understand your audience

To craft an email that resonates with your intended audience, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who they are, their preferences, and what type of content they find valuable. To gather this information, it’s essential you implement a preference center at the start of your customer journey. As time goes on, you can collect additional data on demographics, browsing habits, purchase history, and email click data. This will allow you to create individualized user personas for each segment of your audience.

3. Segment your contact and email lists

Segmenting your email and contact list is an important personalized email marketing tactic. Breaking down your email list into smaller groups based on user attributes or behavior can help you create targeted and relevant emails. For example, you could segment your list based on geographical location, past purchase behavior, or the recipient’s age group. Tailoring your emails based on these segments ensures that your audience receives content that aligns with their interests.

4. Use dynamic content

Including dynamic content in your emails is another way to enhance the personalization of your email campaigns. Dynamic content refers to elements within the email that change based on the recipient’s data, such as their name, location, or browsing history. Incorporating dynamic content within the email can help you create a highly personalized experience for each recipient without having to craft individual emails manually.

5. Craft persuasive subject lines and preview text

The subject line and preview text are the first things recipients notice, so it’s crucial to make them eye-catching and captivating. Including personal touches in your subject lines, such as the recipient’s first name, can improve open rates. Also, use your preview text to suggest exclusive content within the email, enticing users to open it and interact with your content.

6. Personalize your calls-to-action (CTAs)

Tailoring your calls-to-action to match the interests and preferences of your email recipients can increase your click-through rates and conversions. Use the data you’ve collected on the user’s preferences or past behavior to personalize the CTA, offering them a unique and relevant experience. This can be achieved using dynamic content, as well as tailoring the CTA copy to reflect the user persona you’re targeting.

7. Test and optimize

As with any marketing strategy, it’s essential to continuously test and optimize your email personalization tactics to ensure maximum efficacy. Use A/B testing to experiment with different subject lines, content, CTAs, and design to find out what resonates with your audience. Use analytics to understand the impact of each email on open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, enabling you to make data-driven adjustments as required.

8. Communicate regularly but don’t overdo it

Personalized emails are more likely to keep your audience engaged and coming back for more. However, be mindful not to overdo it – emailing your recipients too frequently may result in a decrease in engagement. Striking the right balance between regular communication and giving your subscribers space is important. Use your data to understand when and how often your audience likes to engage with your content to ensure you deliver a positive experience.

Summary

Email personalization is an important part of creating a successful email marketing campaign. By implementing these best practices, you’ll be able to create targeted, personalized emails that engage your audience and drive meaningful connections. Don’t miss the opportunity to stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes and take your marketing efforts to new heights – start personalizing your emails today.

What exactly is causing the concern? Broadly, iOS 17 automatically removes tracking parameters from messages, mail, and links, making it more difficult to tie an interaction to a specific user. This new feature is termed Link Tracking Protection.

Don’t panic: link tracking is still going to be a viable tool and metric. Only specific link types for specific user cases will be affected, and Dotdigital customers will likely see less than a 1% effect on the data they get from their link tracking. This means we can applaud Apple for wanting to be a safer place for consumers while knowing our customers will still have access to data that will help them build successful strategies.

Why are they doing this?

Apple is taking further steps to make things more secure for its users. In this update, they are targeting cross-site tracking because of the way it violates privacy; their goal is to make this better for the community. Causing change for marketers is a side effect of wanting to be better. As part of the sending community, we can embrace these changes by learning about them and helping our customers understand what they mean and how they will impact their marketing strategies. 

How does Link Tracking Protection work?

Some links that are shared by organizations, marketers, or within social media may include a ‘query string’. Query strings can be used to track clicks and user journeys on websites, allowing marketers to analyze their users’ behavior in detail. Query strings in links are easy to spot; they start with a question mark, and multiple metrics can be tracked by conjoining parameters in the string with ampersands.

Here’s an example that tracks campaign id (1405123), marketing medium (email), and the recipient’s SnowYo customer ID (101):

https://snowyo.co/?utm_campaign=1405123&utm_medium=email&SnowId=101

Through our testing and interpretation of what’s been shared so far, we’ve determined that Apple’s Link Tracking Protection appears to pick up query strings and remove them from the link. The link is still functional and delivers the user to the target landing page, but the sanitization prevents marketers and organizations from tracking users who have clicked and arrived at their website through such links.

Private Browsing and Link Tracking Protection

Apple stated when referencing Private Browsing for Safari that ‘When a tracking parameter is detected, Safari strips the identifying components of the URL, while leaving non–identifiable parts intact.’ They also indicated that links will be sanitized when Private Browsing users copy a link containing a tracking parameter.

The changes to the new iOS primarily impact the Private Browsing Mode within Safari, and users with this mode enabled sharing links in mail or messages. This means that other browsers without similar limitations to tracking would not be affected under iOS 17. It is not fully clarified what the effect will be for iOS users who don’t primarily use Safari in Private Browsing Mode.

Mail, Messages, and Link Tracking Protection

Apple further clarified that Link Tracking Protection applies to messages and mail which are sent and opened by users of iOS 17. Not much additional detail was shared so there are still questions to be answered: is this a feature that can be disabled? Will links be sanitized if messages are being sent between 2 users? If a link is shared but the default browser is Google Chrome, will the link be sanitized of the tracking query link? There’s much to test and learn.

How does this impact Dotdigital services?

First of all, if you’re adding links to your marketing campaigns that don’t contain query strings, you’ll be entirely unaffected. If link click tracking is enabled, click reporting in your Dotdigital account is going to continue to work just fine – we use a hashed string in the URL for tracking and redirection purposes, and Apple’s Link Tracking Protection doesn’t remove this. 

However, you may use query strings within your marketing to track your users and traffic for contact data insights and analysis – for example, to track ROI, feed into your Google Analytics account, or in our Pages and Forms functionality so you can bind data from a query string directly from an email.

These insights are useful to surface recipient patterns and allow for analyzing how your marketing campaigns are progressing. They empower you to identify where improvements can be made and ultimately lead to the success of the strategies being used.

Based on our testing, the potential disruption to your marketing campaigns from Link Tracking Protection seems as though it will be small. It appears to be limited to Safari’s Private Browsing mode only, which will likely account for less than 1% of individuals within a Dotdigital account’s contact list. And if you’ve got our link click tracking enabled, you’ll still at least get click data in your Dotdigital reporting for these contacts.

What’s next?

When the beta release of iOS 17 happens this month, we will be monitoring the development of the new features so we can continue to understand and communicate how they operate and affect you and our Dotdigital platform. 

We know having the right data to help make sure you get the most from your marketing strategies is key to the success of your business. Continuing to be up to date with what’s happening is something you can trust we are doing. If you need further help, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Why?

Because it’s often the first thing recipients see. And, if they check out the sender’s name first, they’ll then turn to the subject line to decide whether opening it will benefit them.

No matter how amazing your design, the level of personalization, or the fancy imagery you use, it won’t make a difference if you can’t get readers to open it in the first place.

Of course, that’s not to say creating first-class email content is a waste of time. That’s the stuff that gets the conversions and drives sales. But, to get the opens that lead to clicks, you need to work for it.

We’ve got simple tips to help you create the perfect email subject line. Follow these, and we guarantee you’ll have the best email subject lines in the business.

Personalize, personalize, personalize

If you want to increase your open rate, it’s important to personalize your subject lines. You can grab your reader’s attention by using data fields to pull in information about the customer, like name, location, or other relevant information. Additionally, targeting your message to the right audience is crucial. Personalization not only makes customers feel valued and understood, but it also provides useful content that can make their life easier. In an inbox full of generic messaging, personalization can set your email apart.

Use artificial intelligence (AI)

If you’re looking for a way to take any email subject line to the next level – say hello to WinstonAI. This innovative tool uses cutting-edge Microsoft Azure GPT3.5 technology to help you come up with the perfect subject line that will make your campaigns stand out from the crowd. Plus, WinstonAI can even analyze your past campaigns to learn your preferred tone, wording, and structure. This can help you free up time when you’re stuck figuring out what the perfect subject line is. 

Vary subject line length

Many email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and more cut subject lines when they’re being viewed by web-based readers. Usually, the cut-off point for this is around the 55-character limit. Mobile inboxes, on the other hand, commonly cut off subject lines at about 30 characters.

To ensure that your subject lines are making an impact, be sure to check your campaign reporting. This will help you identify the device on which your customers are opening. Then, you can plan your subject lines around this suggested length.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you must strictly stick to these character limits. One of the best parts of working on subject lines is the ability to experiment. Don’t think about it as trial and error – think of it as trial and trial and trial until success.

Include a call to action

You want customers to complete an action. That’s why you’re emailing, so why not be clear about what you want? Positive action verbs are a good option as long as you’re careful not to come across as spammy. Think along the lines of “get yours,” “discover,” “save”, “join us”, and “book today.”

If you’re worried about coming across as a spam sender (we’ll be covering how best to avoid this later), then try making key benefits or propositions the CTA in your email subject line. If the key benefit of shopping with you comes from your offer of free shipping, push this in your subject line. If you’re offering student discounts, shout about it to drive opens.

Essentially, you should be thinking, “What will drive my readers to convert?” Whatever the answer, try running with it in your email subject line.

Be relevant

Relevancy is key. Whether it’s your email copy or your subject lines, shoppers will only answer your emails if it’s going to benefit them.

Don’t be vague or mysterious. Intriguing subject lines might generate good open rates, but your end goal is click-throughs and conversions. And you’re not going to get those if your email isn’t related to your subject line. In the long run, this could actually be detrimental to your brand. By misleading them, you could erode their fragile trust in you.

So, keep your subject lines related to your key message. It’ll increase the quality of opens and consequently improve your click-through rate.

Tell, don’t sell

Steer clear adding unnecessary descriptive adjectives to your subject lines. Words like ‘amazing’, ‘unbeatable’, and ‘stunning’ actually do very little to convince recipients to open.

Our Global benchmark report revealed that false urgency in subject lines don’t perform well. Words that were once considered to inspire action are driving inaction. Especially in retailer sectors, words like ‘exclusive’, ‘days’, ‘ends’, ‘save’, ‘extra’, and ‘last’ were the worst performing. 

Keep it simple and tell readers what they can expect from your email. There’s no need to make grand promises and oversell what is simply a new product launch, event, or mid-season sale.

Once again, this will improve the quality of your opens. When it’s clear to the reader what’s inside you’re giving them more reason to convert.

Avoid spam words

It’s every email marketer’s nightmare to have their hard word flagged as spam.

After all the work that goes into creating a fully optimized email marketing campaign, you don’t want to be the one in five that gets caught by the spam filter.

Spam filters are constantly checking for specific triggers that indicate an email might be spam:

• Specific word choice
• Messages in ALL CAPS
• Emails without an unsubscribe button
• Links to unknown or questionable websites
• Colorful, hard to read, and different sized fonts

Typically spam filters look for suspicious words or phrases associated with scams, schemes, free gifts, and more.

What to avoid:

• Spam words that make exaggerated claims and promises, e.g. #1, 100% satisfied, earn money, free consultation, and satisfaction guaranteed.
• Words that create unnecessary urgency and pressure, e.g. act now, apply now, get started now, please read, while supplies last, and more.
• Spammy words or words that imply shady or unethical behavior, e.g. cancel at any time, no hidden charges, meet singles, etc.
• Words that are considered jargon or typically used in legal documents, e.g. as seen on, bonus, certified, cheap, join millions, this message contains, quote, and more.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t EVER use these words in your emails. It just means to use these words and phrases responsibly.

The best performing subject lines have included words like ‘reasons’, ‘introducing’, ‘discover’, and ‘recent’. This indicates that customers are looking for content that inspires, such as ‘introducing our new range. They want brands to do more than simply push a product, they want you to sell it.

Write your subject line last

To ensure your email subject line is clear, relevant, and engaging enough to convert, you should be writing it last.

After you’ve finalized the design and written your email copy, you’ll know the exact message you’re trying to communicate. With that in mind, deciding what to include in your email subject line will be much easier.

Test your subject lines

No matter what tactic you try or the results you get, you need to test your subject lines. What works one day might not work a couple of days later. Or what increases opens for one segment may have absolutely no effect on another. That’s why you should be constantly split testing your email campaigns.

Summary

By experimenting with these subject line tips and analyzing your audience’s response, you can identify what resonates best with them. Remember to keep it concise, intriguing, and relevant to the content of your email. With practice and persistence, you’ll be able to consistently craft subject lines that grab your audience’s attention and improve the success of your email marketing campaigns.

Understanding why readers unsubscribe

While marketing list depreciation is expected, you want to keep minimal. To properly optimize customers’ email marketing experiences, you need to understand why people unsubscribe in the first place.

Surveying customers at the point of unsubscription is the only way to gather real insight into their actions. This will give you a clear idea of what elements of the customer experience you need to prioritize improving.

3 top tips to reduce unsubscribes

1. Personalize

In the modern world of marketing, personalization is essential to reducing unsubscribes. Whether you’re a B2B, B2C, or non-profit brand, customers expect uniquely personal experiences from brands. Failing to meet this expectation will drive disappointed and unengaged customers to unsubscribe.

Personalization can take many forms. From using first names and dynamic content to segmentation, all personalization tactics have a positive impact on the reader’s experience. By tailoring your message to align with individual preferences, subscribers are more likely to engage with your email and maintain a long-term relationship with your brand.

To ensure your content is relevant to your readers, create actionable segments. Nobody wants to read irrelevant content, and if your content doesn’t apply to them, they’ll ignore your marketing efforts. By targeting specific groups based on factors like gender, company size, or location, you can ensure that your content is tailored to the individual reader.

Dynamic content blocks such as product recommendations also go a long way in personalizing your email marketing. Especially using AI-powered product recommendations, every email will be automatically populated with content unique to the reader based on their previous behavior.

Nothing demonstrates how well you know your readers more than a personalized email. It speaks directly to their interests and behaviors, making your email one they’ll want to open. The more you deliver relevant content, the more value customers will get from the relationship. Unsubscribe rates will fall significantly when you deliver one-to-one marketing.

2. Re-engage

There are many tools in a marketer’s arsenal that can help you identify disengaged customers. From eRFM to lead scoring, you should keep a close eye on your customers’ behavior to prevent losing them.

An automated re-engagement program is a perfect way to bring customers back before they leave you forever. Using insights gathered from your RFM persona tracking or lead scoring, you can trigger this program as soon as a customer lapses.

Well-timed “we miss you” emails, teamed with an incentive can drive a shopper back to your website. You can also use this program to drive subscribers to update their marketing preferences or complete a survey. By asking for feedback or encouraging a review of their marketing preferences, you’re demonstrating your commitment to the customer. It’s a clear demonstration that you care about their experience and are willing to change to fulfill their needs.

This will go a long way to keeping readers happy. All too often customers are bombarded with marketing emails, so giving them control of their relationship with you will set you high above the competition. And no one will unsubscribe from a brand that clearly cares about its customers.

3. Familiarize

Don’t wait until you’re on the cusp of losing a customer to remind them why your brand is the one. Newsletters – real ones, not just sales emails masquerading as newsletters – are essential for establishing strong relationships with your readers.

You should think about what kind of content will add the most value to your readers’ experience. Educational articles about how to get the most out of your products and services are an automatic win. They prove that you care about their overall experience, not just sales.

Your brand’s story is also important. To establish a strong bond between the customer and your brand, you need to show them the people behind the brand. The more human you are to the reader, the stronger the relationship will be. By demonstrating your brand values around economic, environmental, and social issues, the reader sees that you are passionate about the same issues as them.

Summary

For an effective email marketing strategy, it’s important to reduce unsubscribes. You can achieve this by implementing these three quick and efficient methods. By taking a tailored approach that aligns with your audience’s expectations and desires, you can foster long-lasting relationships and drive success in your email marketing campaigns. Don’t let unsubscribes undermine your efforts; take action today and keep your email list thriving!

Consistently sending the same message will eventually damage your brand reputation, increase unsubscribes, and ultimately hold up conversions. Sales will dip and profits will suffer. All because you failed to engage customers enough.

Targeted emails don’t have to be complicated or hyper-personalized works of art. Successful email marketing strategies are all about understanding and catering to your audience’s individual needs and preferences. Read on to learn four key benefits of targeted email marketing. These benefits will revolutionize your campaigns and boost your business growth.

What is targeted email marketing?

We all know that email marketing is the most successful channel available to marketers today. Email marketing offers $42 ROI for every $1 spent. But that’s just the beginning of what’s possible.

You can significantly improve your ROI, sales, and profits by adopting targeted email marketing.

Targeted email marketing is a way of ensuring your emails make an impact in the inbox. Using the information you already hold about your customers, you can send tailored messages to specific sets of subscribers. You target them.

To improve your email marketing strategy, it’s important to segment and personalize based on customer information like their interests, age, and gender. This level of personalization impresses readers and improves their experience with your brand. This increases the likelihood that they’ll act on your calls to action and remain loyal customers.

4 benefits of targeted email marketing

Let’s look at these four benefits of targeted email marketing…

Improve relevancy

Segmentation ensures you’re sending a more relevant message to your audience. You can divide your customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, preferences, past purchase behavior, or engagement history. 

By categorizing customers into these segments, you can tailor your email campaigns to address the unique needs, desires, and expectations of each specific group. Customers who receive relevant content are more likely to engage with your email marketing efforts. Customers will click and convert because targeted emails appeal to their goals and offer value to them.

It’s most effective to gather information and segment new subscribers through their welcome program. You should regularly prompt customers during their customer journey to update their marketing preferences.

Segmentation is an essential and under-utilized email marketing tactic and helps build stronger connections with your audience. But, the more you segment and target your audience, the better your results will be.

Increase ROI

Sending targeted and personalized emails leads to higher engagement rates and increased sales conversions. With more customers converting, your revenue will naturally rise. By understanding your customers’ preferences and needs, you can provide them with targeted discounts and promotions that cater to their interests. This approach allows you to deliver the appropriate message at the right moment, resulting in higher customer engagement. When you deliver relevant messages, engaged readers convert faster. And more conversions mean more revenue.

If you know customers are interested in a specific product range, target them with offers that appeal to them. Even basic segmentation such as age and gender significantly affects your ROI. Marketers can enjoy ROI increases of up to 760% when sending targeted, segmented campaigns.

Better customer relationships

We’ve already mentioned that improved relevancy in your emails will demonstrate your brand’s value to the customer. In the long run, it will also help you build and nurture long-term relationships with your customers. 

When you know your customers and segment and personalize your emails accordingly, customers will hold your marketing in high regard. By regularly sending relevant content, customers will develop high expectations from your emails. The more you meet – and exceed – these expectations, the more their trust and respect for your brand will increase.

Longer customer retention

Targeted email marketing not only makes building relationships with subscribers easier; it also makes retaining them easier. 

Creating personalized and targeted email marketing campaigns can greatly enhance customer retention. It’s important to build strong relationships with both potential and existing customers by continuously learning about their preferences and optimizing your email campaigns. 

By doing so, you increase engagement and ensure your customers receive value from your emails. This fosters loyalty and customer satisfaction, ultimately leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

Shoppers who value your experiences will seek you out, in and out of the inbox. If you replicate these experiences in your cross-channel marketing they’ll think about you first, every time.

Optimize for ultimate success

It’s important to optimize your marketing strategy as customers’ needs and goals change with every conversion. Encourage customers to update their marketing preferences and keep track of email marketing metrics such as opens, click-through rates, and ROI to determine which tactics are most effective. Adjust your campaigns accordingly to align with your customer’s interests and behaviors.

Summary

By using targeted email marketing strategies you can connect with your audience, increase ROI, build stronger customer relationships, and improve retention rates. It’s a powerful tool that can significantly impact your digital marketing efforts. To stay ahead of the competition, it’s highly recommended to invest in targeted email marketing strategies to take your marketing campaigns to the next level.

Unfortunately, there is a significant disconnect between expectation and reality in CX. In research carried out by Adweek and Accenture Interactive, they found that while 80% of brands believe they deliver a superior customer experience, only 8% of customers agree.

Brands have to go further and break down boundaries to meet customers’ expectations.

What are interactive customer experiences?

Customer experiences have changed. Brands can do more with customer data. From personalization to augmented reality, savvy shoppers know brands can deliver exceptional experiences.

As a result, CX is less about fulfilling wants and needs and more about meeting increased expectations. Customers compare experiences with diverse brands across different industries. That means that a shopper who has a positive experience buying plants online expects a similar experience when buying anything; groceries, takeaways, jewelry.

Interactive experiences will help you continuously meet these experiences. Interactive content personalizes customers’ interactions with your brands and boosts overall engagement.

Think online questionnaires, web-based calculators, or gamified content. It’s content that lets users personalize and participate in it.

In-email customer experiences

Interactive experiences can come in many formats, but in recent years, email marketing has made massive strides towards providing customers with unique experiences.

AMP for email

AMP for email is a powerful tool that revolutionizes customer experience by allowing you to build web-like experiences right in their inbox. It allows readers to interact with your email and choose their own path.

This innovative feature is an excellent asset when it comes to showcasing various aspects of your brand, products, or services. While offering captivating and personalized customer experiences, you can also guide users towards accomplishing a specific goal. However, you also want to drive users to complete a specific goal. Using an AMP-powered carousel feature, email recipients can flick through your highlighted products or campaign photographs before clicking on your email’s main CTA. For example, a ‘register your interest’ button.

Similarly, customers can discover their own pathways by choosing what content they’d like to see in your email campaign. You can later use these insights to deliver a more personalized experience throughout their journey.

Real-time personalization

To create long-lasting relationships with customers, it’s important to provide a hyper-personalized experience. Real-time personalization is a way to achieve this by using up-to-date customer data. Typically, pulling in a subscriber’s first name using data field is an example of this.You can also use location data to provide location-based dynamic content, to make the campaign super relevant to the customer. By segmenting data and getting to know your audience, you can create targeted content that resonates with them. 

GIFs and videos

GIFs and videos bring joy and delight to your email openers. They grab your subscribers’ attention immediately, keeping them engaged and scrolling down your marketing.

Embedded videos have a great engagement rate which ultimately drives more conversions. Animations and videos make communicating complex ideas simple. In a matter of seconds you can explain your latest product launches and business updates.

Advice from interactive experience experts

Odicci helps brands boost customer engagement and drive customer loyalty with interactive experiences such as quizzes, games, and product finders. These are the top tips on creating interactive and engaging emails from CEO Founder of Odicci, Jacques Prothon:

Creating emails that work: how to jazz up your email design

Just because customers are interested in receiving emails doesn’t mean that you’re keeping them engaged. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to ensure your customers are engaged with your emails. We’ve listed six ways to jazz up your email with interactive experiences.

Gamification: can you beat the high-score?

By introducing gamification into your customers’ experience, you can enhance their engagement and increase clicks and conversions. By asking people to play a game such as a memory game or a matchmaker you are tapping into the creative potential of your subscribers. Add an engaging moving gif design to drive clicks and enjoy your dwell time stats go through the roof as people will be engaged for a long time on your website. Thanks to this pinball game Virgin Holidays experienced a 47% click-through rate.

FOMO: are you one of our lucky winners?

By using elements of accomplishment, envy, ownership, and scarcity you are driving your audience towards clicks. When signing up, subscribers are expecting to receive some type of value, such as a coupon, free gift, or a contest entry. If you want subscribers to continue being engaged with your emails, keep providing something of value and make them interact online with an online scratch card or shake your phone to reveal a prize. Feelunique is driving subscribers to an interactive summer spin for a chance to win special discounts.

Enhance customer experience: swipe your preference

To enhance customer experience Central England Co-Op used an interactive “Tinderesque” swipe survey behind email to collect customer preferences and deliver more personalized emails. The swipe survey running behind an email marketing campaign drove a 28% click-through rate with 20% of surveyed customers sharing their preferences. The swipe survey is a great experience to boost clicks and drive engagement.

Rewarding customers: thank you, here is something for you

Subscribers are looking for positive experiences with brands. One of the most popular customer rewards in use by many brands is when a subscriber reaches a certain level of a loyalty program. Paperchase uses various experiences to reward members of their TreatMe Loyalty program, here is an example of Spin the Wheel on PayDay for TreatMe members only.

With loyalty you can also combine experiences with other moments such as birthdays, special moments in the year, or the launch of a product by giving exclusive access.

Customer Feedback: how did we do?

After a purchase or a delivered service use interactive experiences to ask for feedback and make that experience engaging, fun and above all easy. TeamSport used a Net Promoter Score survey to get feedback from customers after their races. Valuable information is collected for each track and customers can be rewarded afterwards.

Intrigue: what does the future hold?

Instead of engaging your audience with a standard marketing message, use email to create interest, curiosity or intrigue. Use a clever hook to invite subscribers to an interactive personality quiz or a product profiler and deliver a personalized brand interaction

A great way to deliver the message and drive clicks from your emails to these engaging experiences is to use moving GIFs that demonstrate how the reward, game, quiz or interactive promotion works in a few seconds. Using moving GIFs is the perfect way to show what engagement and reward(s) subscribers can expect. To get the best results you can create moving GIFs that are personalized or tailored to a segment, or audience.

Summary

As we know email marketing is one of the best tools to drive sales and convert leads. With interactive experiences it is possible to substantially increase your click-through rates and conversions whilst delivering great value to your audience. Don’t be intimidated these interactive experiences can be published in just a few clicks. Give it a try or contact Odicci for more information about our pre-built interactive experiences, with more than 80+ out-of-the-box experiences you won’t be disappointed.