Using Personalization and Dynamic Content in Email Marketing

The following is adapted from my latest book, Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business.

One of the best ways to improve your email marketing results is through personalization and the use of dynamic content.

What is Personalization in Email Marketing?

Personalization refers to editing content within your email messages for specific recipients. For example, you could use the contact’s first name in a message’s subject line or in the greeting of the message body copy.

Personalization is the simplest form of creating messages for specific individuals while still sending those messages in bulk and often through an automated process. You simply insert a field from the contact’s record in your email marketing list into your email message. Your email marketing tool pulls that information from each contact’s record when the message is sent to your chosen audience, so each message differs by that specific piece of information.

Personalization works very well to improve email marketing results because recipients feel like the personalized messages they receive are created just for them. It helps to build a stronger relationship with the people on your email marketing list that connects them to your brand on an emotional level.

With that said, it’s important to understand that you should only use personalization if you’re confident in the accuracy of your data. Sending a message with the wrong person’s name or another inaccurate piece of information creates a terrible user experience and will generate many unnecessary unsubscribes from your list.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Use personalization in email marketing only if you’re confident in the accuracy of your data! (Source: Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business) ” quote=”Use personalization in email marketing only if you’re confident in the accuracy of your data!”]

What is Dynamic Content in Email Marketing?

While personalization is very effective, you can do even better with your email marketing results by using dynamic content in your messages.

Dynamic content changes depending on the person who sees it. For email marketing, dynamic content could be an image in your message. It could be an offer, a link, or text in your message. Using dynamic content, you can create one message for your entire audience but configure that message so one or more specific elements change based on who receives it.

For example, a clothing retailer could send a message with a 20% discount offer to its entire list of subscribers. However, to improve the response rate, the retailer could segment the audience by gender and make the product image in the message dynamic. Women would get a message with an image of women’s clothing, and men would get a message with an image of men’s clothing.

When people see a message and offer that appears to be made just for them, they’re far more likely to act on it. You can create dynamic content based on demographic, psychographic, or behavioral data to better match your messages and offers to your target audiences.

Imagine how long it would take you to send different messages to every segment of your email marketing list. The manual process could take a very long time, but if you’re using an email marketing tool that offers dynamic content features, you can quickly create and send unique messages to multiple segments of your list.

Keep in mind, not all email marketing platforms include dynamic content features, so if you want to leverage dynamic content to boost your email marketing results, you need to choose a provider that offers the feature in its tool.

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. and Founder & Editor in Chief of an award-winning blog, WomenOnBusiness.com. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored 10 books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.