One of the main reasons people shop online has to do with speed. Unless you have plenty of time on your hands or you enjoy browsing through hundreds of product pages, you’ll most likely want to get your online shopping session over and done with in a matter of clicks.
But at the same time, people get a certain thrill out of feeling important and special. When they deem that someone has already done or made something unique, just for them, in an attempt to anticipate their needs and wants.
What do marketers call this? Personalization.
When considering online shops, personalization refers to individualized product recommendations, offers, or other kinds of content, based on each user’s age, gender, location, preferences, browsing behavior, previous purchases, etc., so as to create unique shopping experiences for each client in real-time.
Two-thirds of the businesses that offer personalization improved both their profitability and customer loyalty. Additionally, 86% of consumers claim their purchase decisions are influenced by personalization, with half of them actually preferring shopping on a website where they benefit from this technology over a traditional e-shop.
An effective & complex ally
“But, wait!” you might say. “People have been doing this for ages. The staff at my favorite restaurant already knows I like to finish off my lunch with a shot of espresso, so they bring it to me even when I forget to order it, and sometimes it’s even on the house.” Indeed, personalization as a practice is not new. It can be easily done by any person on a small scale. Yet, as soon as your client or subscriber base gets to thousands or hundreds of thousands, using personalization across your marketing mix will require some tech-savviness.
You will have to deal with complex algorithms, big data, and statistics to obtain accurate and instant results. Moreover, should the data you need not be available, you should also have a backup plan, a default one-fits-all result.
Looking for the right solution
If you’ve decided to give personalized newsletters a chance, you should know that in order to send a different and relevant version of the same email to each and every one of your subscribers, you can opt for various email marketing solutions. For example, if you are a rather pragmatic entrepreneur, you may want to consider our partner Retargeting Biz. Their platform allows the creation of fully personalized newsletters in just a few clicks.
Whichever solution you end up using, however, bear in mind the following features:
- Ability to segment the audience - the better you identify and distinguish your key segments, as well as each subscriber’s individual behavior, the more conversions your newsletters will drive.
- Cross-device compatibility - the content of your newsletters must be adapted to each channel or device for a better user experience (e.g. phones, desktops, dedicated apps, etc.)
- Creativity & design - creativity may not be exactly a scarce resource, but designing outstanding newsletters regularly will end up depleting your resources (particularly time) at a fast pace. To simplify and streamline the creative process, seek solutions that feature templates or drag-and-drop editors.
- Manual control vs. full automation - when it comes to marketing, there is no panacea that withstands the test of time. Today’s hottest strategy can easily become obsolete tomorrow. As a result, you need flexibility in determining the right strategy for your newsletter campaigns. Choose a platform that allows you to make manual adjustments in addition to leveraging A/B testing, automated and optimal sending times, as well as product recommendations.
Let’s have a look at personalized newsletters in action
- Selecting your segment
The first step in creating your newsletter campaign using Retargeting Biz consists of choosing who to address. The platform features several predefined segments, including buyers, non-buyers, active, etc., but you can also customize your own audience segments to match your business strategy.
- Choosing the subject
The subject of an email has an immense impact on a newsletter campaign’s success. An uninspired subject line may cause your carefully crafted message to end up in the Trash folder without being even opened.
Retargeting Biz features engaging, witty, and fully customizable auto-generated content suggestions, in addition to tips and performance details, speeding up the creation process.
- Body & content
As mentioned above, templates can easily become your new best friend, especially if you’re short on time and inspiration. Whether you choose among the predefined newsletter templates available on the platform or start a design from scratch, you can customize the content of your newsletters by dragging and dropping smart element blocks, such as text, photos, videos, links, banners, etc.
- Implementing smart widgets
Retargeting Biz managed to make newsletter personalization as easy as dragging and dropping a few smart content blocks. There are 8 AI-based recommendation widgets (Recommended for you, Frequently bought together, Other you may like, Recently viewed, Bestsellers, Live Feed, Most popular, and New products) you can include in the body of your emails to drive conversions and impress your subscribers.
- Adding dynamic elements
To make your newsletters stand out, you can sprinkle the body of your newsletter with engaging content, such as banners, countdowns, discounts, GIFs, stickers, etc., matching all occasions and preferences.
- Sending intelligently
Timing is key. This is why you should think carefully before scheduling the sending times for newsletter campaigns. If your subscribers are simply too different in their email-reading habits, let the AI take charge and determine the optimal sending times, when each subscriber is most likely to buy and generate sales.
If you have a hard time understanding which types of subject lines trigger subscribers’ curiosity, for example, the A/B testing feature is here to help. Just select the variable you’d like to test and the AI will determine the winning option.
Last but not least, the coup de grâce against low open rates. If your initial newsletter hasn’t been opened by certain subscribers, you can automatically resend the same email with different auto-generated subject lines and previews to maximize your chance of success and of driving sales.