News­let­ter and e-mails are very effective marketing tools as they provide the perfect op­por­tun­ity to per­son­ally address customers and present them with cus­tom­ised content. Most marketers per­son­al­ise their content since it’s difficult to compete with the number of news­let­ters that land in customers’ inboxes daily. Many of these won’t even be opened let alone read. If you want to get a reader’s attention, you need to customise your campaign to them. We have some tips for how to perfect your per­son­al­isa­tion.

Why should I per­son­al­ise my news­let­ter?

Most people are exposed to huge amounts of ad­vert­ise­ments, both online and offline, on a daily basis. This tidal wave of in­form­a­tion proves to be strong com­pet­i­tion for every marketing campaign. The advantage of e-mail marketing: you’ve already made it into the user’s inbox! Although this doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily mean anything since people ignore in­form­a­tion that isn’t relevant to them. But if you address someone per­son­ally, the prob­ab­il­ity of catching their attention is much higher. By using in­form­a­tion you know about the user, you can per­son­al­ise the content and provide them with added value.

The aim of per­son­al­ised e-mails is to:

  • Provide relevance
  • Increase click-through rate
  • Increase the prob­ab­il­ity of a con­ver­sion
  • Improve the per­form­ance of an e-mail marketing campaign
  • Improve the customer re­la­tion­ship on a long-term basis

Start at the re­gis­tra­tion

The first step is to actually get the customer to subscribe to the news­let­ter and add them to your e-mail list. In order to clear the first hurdle, you should try to com­mu­nic­ate value to the customer as early on as the re­gis­tra­tion. You have to make it crystal clear as to what the benefits and ad­vant­ages are of re­gis­ter­ing and receiving the news­let­ter.

But how do you actually achieve this? First of all, you should only promise what you can deliver. If you promise the user special offers and campaigns, you can’t then send out news­let­ters with empty content. To be able to deliver the right offers and in­cent­ives, you should let the sub­scriber decide for them­selves what kind of e-mails and the content they want to receive when they register. The best option is to provide various topics and news­let­ter types to choose from. Having an idea of what the user wants is es­pe­cially valuable when no in­form­a­tion about their previous purchases is known.

Per­son­al­ised subject lines

Once you make it into the user’s inbox, the next hurdle is the subject line. This is the deciding factor for whether the user opens the e-mail or not. Marketers don’t have a very big character allowance to win their customers over. Users typically open what they consider trust­worthy and what arouses their curiosity. A very simple way to get their attention is to use their name since this will grab them faster than any other kind of content. In addition to per­son­al­ised e-mails or per­son­al­ised subject lines, you should combine the e-mail with a user action – like our examples show.

Action Example
Shopping in-store Thank you for your order, Mrs. Smith
Request (e.g. submit a rating) Thomas, we need you!
Special offers Maria, you can now save 77%!
Con­grat­u­la­tions Happy birthday, Mr. Williams!
Re­act­iv­a­tion Mike, your £20 coupon is waiting for you!


What’s important here is reliable sub­scriber in­form­a­tion. If their name is written in­cor­rectly, is missing, or they’ve been given the wrong title, they won’t read the e-mail. The sender address is also an integral part in at­tract­ing attention and creating trust as it’s one of the first things the user lays their eyes on. No matter how in­ter­est­ing and per­son­al­ised the news­let­ter is, if the sender name or address look un­trust­worthy, the e-mail will be binned.

Ap­pro­pri­ate customer approach

What about when it comes to ad­dress­ing the readers? The personal approach is now com­mon­place and the phrase ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it’ has never been more apt. The topic and target group determine how the e-mail should be addressed. The safest option is ‘Mr. / Mrs. + surname’ since using first names is not always ap­pro­pri­ate and is usually reserved for long-term and close customer re­la­tion­ships. But what happens when contact details are in­com­plete? Missing or incorrect in­form­a­tion can usually be filtered out by most news­let­ter software solutions and these re­cip­i­ents will receive the im­per­son­al ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ greeting. You should avoid brackets(e.g. Dear customer(s)) as they interrupt the reading flow. Ways to address per­son­al­ised news­let­ters:

Type of address In­form­a­tion available Example
Formal, im­per­son­al title Missing/in­com­plete contact details Dear Sir/Madam
Nouns Missing/in­com­plete contact details Shopper, traveller
Surname Name known Good morning, Mrs. Smith
First name Name known, long-term customer re­la­tion­ship Hello Maria

Ap­pro­pri­ate content and CTAs

You should adapt content as much as possible to your pre-defined recipient groups. In addition to the text and ap­pro­pri­ate choice of article, you need to choose your images and graphics wisely. The aes­thet­ics of a news­let­ter have a huge impact on how well it performs overall. Not all designs are perceived the same; they vary based on factors like age, gender, and interests. A positive impact on click-through rate has been noted when busi­nesses decide to make a news­let­ter for women and another one for men.

CTAs (Call-to-Actions) are another way of per­son­al­ising news­let­ters. They help to obtain more in­form­a­tion and data so that future e-mails can be more ac­cur­ately per­son­al­ised since they’re ideally connected with an active request. How the user reacts (whether they like a Facebook page or par­ti­cip­ate in a survey or giveaway) can give you valuable in­form­a­tion about their motives and goals.

Trigger e-mails

Trigger e-mails are based on events and play a big part when it comes to e-mail per­son­al­isa­tion. These primarily include e-mails that are sent out on special occasions such as birthdays or holidays like Christmas. These news­let­ters are connected with different modes of ac­quis­i­tion depending on the sub­scriber. They can be in­di­vidu­ally cus­tom­ised through the address, content, and even at what times they’re sent out. Trigger e-mails can be sent out when new products are available that are similar to what a user has purchased in the past. Trigger e-mails are also used during re­tar­get­ing and are always sent at specific moments, i.e. when an order hasn’t been completed, or the customer hasn’t shopped for a certain number of days. The aim is to re­act­iv­ate the customer and these messages are often sent auto­mat­ic­ally according to a pre­de­ter­mined time pattern. A good example is con­sum­able items, where it’s easy to predict when there’s a need for supply. You can find more in­form­a­tion on the right time to send out news­let­ters in our Digital Guide article.

Seg­ment­a­tion is essential

In an ideal world, each user would receive a com­pletely in­di­vidu­al and per­son­al­ised news­let­ter. But this is difficult to achieve, es­pe­cially when it comes to content. Even the most es­tab­lished team of editors would find it a challenge to provide that many different versions of content. So it’s a better idea to form groups of customers and to segment re­cip­i­ents.

The basis for this is your database, which should hold different in­form­a­tion about your different sub­scribers. The data obtained can be used to see patterns and then form typical types of customers based on these findings. Seg­ment­a­tion can range from simple clas­si­fic­a­tions such as gender, age, and place of residence, to more detailed grading. The in­form­a­tion that is es­pe­cially important for marketers with anything to do with e-mail, web-related behaviour, and shopping behaviour. If you have data regarding what the customer has already purchased or what’s on their wish list, you’re well on your way to per­son­al­ising their news­let­ter.

Con­clu­sion: per­son­al­isa­tion is key

Data and facts give marketers important clues on how to per­son­al­ise a news­let­ter, but you should always create yours with the target group in mind. With the correct strategy and the right content and themes, per­son­al­ised e-mail marketing should improve your customer re­la­tion­ship by providing your read­er­ship with more value. In addition to personal touch, there are also other factors that determine the success or failure of a campaign. You can read more details in our guide to suc­cess­ful e-mail marketing.

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