Message personalisation is a powerful tool for prompting engagement in your promotional emails, but not optimising your sending strategy and messaging for this approach can mean disappointing results. The good news is there are at least five factors you can control that will help you amplify the effectiveness of your personalised email campaigns. Let’s have a closer look at them.
1. Prioritise Email Deliverability
If your emails don’t land in subscriber inboxes, then no amount of message personalisation will get them seen. There are several ways you can improve deliverability on bulk email, and not all of them pertain to the messaging itself. You can do the following behind the scenes to boost deliverability:
- Use only compliantly collected contact data when sending campaigns to subscribers.
- Remove any uncompliant contact data pro-actively from your lists or databases.
- Ensure that proven email verification techniques are in place (incl. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).
If you’d like to learn more about email deliverability and what you can do to ensure your recipients receive your carefully crafted messaging, then download our Email Delivery Guide
2. Write in a Personable Tone
It’s always a good idea to come across as relatable and friendly in your emails. You can achieve this by greeting your recipients by name and addressing them in an informal yet respectful way.
Try referring to them by the pronoun “you” throughout your email. When you establish this one-to-one rapport early on, the personalised fields in your messaging are more likely to be welcomed by the reader and experienced as sincere.
3. Keep It Seamless & Simple
Avoid the temptation to cram your emails with personalisation fields. The key is to incorporate recipient data seamlessly and elegantly. Over-personalised messaging might come across as insincere or desperate and could look like you’re trying too hard to engage with recipients.
Rather use a combination of several personalisation tactics that draw on the strengths of data fields while also relying on the major impact of list segmentation and dynamic content. Many of these techniques are imperceptible to the reader and will add a level of refinement to your personalised messaging.
Learn what common mistakes to avoid when sending your contact list personalised emails by reading our Step-by-Step Guide to Message Personalisation
4. Use Positioning & Pain Points
A highly effective approach for establishing a connection is to position your value proposition as a way for recipients to avoid losing something or gaining a valuable advantage. Depending on the audience you’re targeting, you should be able to discern whether focusing on cost or gain is more appropriate.
Similarly, you can get recipients on your side by addressing burning pain points they commonly deal with in their respective industries. Doing so automatically positions you as an objective guide or helper and will endear you to recipients in the long run.
Offering value or solving problems are proven ways to guarantee your personalised messaging is perceived as worthwhile and relevant by recipients.
5. Stick to Appropriate Times
No matter how engaged your recipients are, sending your emails at an inappropriate time could mean disappointing engagement. It’s up to you as an email marketer to know when (and how often) your audience expects an email from you.
A good rule of thumb is to stick to normal business hours. In South Africa that will be weekdays between 8 am and 5 pm. Consider if it’s really relevant and necessary when you need to send messages on weekends or public holidays, and ensure your recipients opted in to receive emails on these days.
Email analytics is a great way to zoom in on optimal times for email sending and is available on leading sending platforms like Everlytic. As your audience engages with your communication, you’ll be able to see at what times they open, click, and engage with your messaging. Similarly, you’ll be able to see at what times they tend to unsubscribe or complain.
Having a firm understanding of bulk email best practices is key to making the most of your message personalisation efforts. Learn more about becoming an effective Message Personaliser.
Do Groundwork Before You Personalise
If you have the data and want to start personalising your emails, first remember that merely inserting personalisation fields into your email does not ensure success. You’ll still need to do the groundwork and ensure your content is authentic, valuable, and correctly positioned for your intended audience.
