Email Personalization: What to Do When You Have Limited Data

Email Personalization: What to Do When You Have Limited Data

When it comes to email personalization, data is very important. But what if you have very limited data to begin with?

The first line of action that comes to mind is using your prospect’s first name. 

It’s just the most logical thing to do, isn’t it? 

In real life, when you greet someone using their first name, you easily win the person even though he or she might not recognize you at first. It makes a person feel warm and important knowing someone knows or remembers who they are. 

A study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business also revealed that emails using the first name on the subject line has 20 percent more chances of being opened.

If such is the case, why stop using it? 

Why First Names Don’t Work Anymore

Have you ever met someone at a party and you called them by name? The problem is, you used the wrong name. 

How does that feel? Awkward, right?

The same thing goes when you email someone using the wrong name. Not only does it feel awkward but you can send your prospect away from you instead of drawing them toward you.

Secondly, almost everyone has been using this technique, so it could get quite stale. Chances are, consumers are already aware of such technique and it can become an annoyance to them.

Lastly, getting an email from anyone with your first name on it can be quite creepy. You begin to wonder how much information they have gathered about you. 

There’s More Than Just First Names

If using first names on your subject line doesn’t work anymore, are there any other ways to personalize your email without the proverbial first name?

Here are some email personalization strategies you can use as an alternative to using names. These techniques also work well when you have limited data in your hands.

Dynamic Content and Imagery

Use geographical or demographical data and combine them with relevant images to create dynamic content. 

For example, if you are targeting the Australian market, you can use pictures or images that Australians can relate to, like the Sydney Opera House, koalas, and more. If you are targeting the Singaporean audience, you can use familiar places and landmarks, such as the Merlion, Sentosa, and more. 

One of the best examples of this is PayPal. The images, even the language, change depending on which location you are. They make good with their promise: “We get where you’re coming from.”

You can also use demographic data — such as gender — in case you have very limited data. Adidas used this strategy for their Originals series email campaign. Whether the subscriber is a male or female, they made sure the recipient is receiving relevant information that will entice them to make a purchase.

Target Consumer Persona

Another way of personalizing your email without using first names is by using a name that perfectly describes your buyer’s persona. For example, if you are a travel company, you might use the word “traveler.” If you are a clothing brand, you might address your recipients, “Hey there, fashionista.” 

The online news magazine, Coconuts.co, aptly call their readers “coconauts” while Adobe dynamically changes the recipient field with the names of their target audience.

“From” + First Name

Using first names on the subject line might be stale but using your first name or the name of your company in the “From” field works to your advantage. According to statistics, 68 percent of Americans say that they open an email based on who it came from. 

You can either use your company name or the name of the person of the account manager so it appears that it comes from them. 

Conclusion

Using first names to personalize your email when you have limited data is not wrong. However, using it does not guarantee that the recipient will click that email and open it. It can or cannot work, depending on the audience. You can use the above suggestions and conduct your own A/B testing to see which works for your target audience.

Email Marketing Hygiene Tips for 2020 (Featured Image)

Email Marketing Hygiene Tips for 2020

We cannot stress this often (and enough), email hygiene is highly integral to the success of your email marketing campaign and through email hygiene, you can be sure that you are fully taking advantage of the power of your inbox. In this article, we discuss things that you might miss out on when doing your routine email marketing hygiene checkup.

The Hard Truth About Email Hygiene in 2019

ISPs are constantly checking you out and if your engagement and delivery metrics are off, there is a chance that they won’t deem your messages to be deliverable to some inboxes. This hurts your marketing campaign and your metrics.

Hard Bounces Won’t Help

Your email server will tell you if you are getting a hard bounce. Hard bounces are what you call emails that you send out but don’t land inside the intended recipient’s inbox. This really disrupts the way you record your metrics and it really messes up your email’s integrity. Remember to look out for system messages that tell you if certain emails are coming through your intended recipient’s inbox.

If you want to check on which email addresses are bouncing without having to send everyone on your system an email again, then you could do so with the help of several online applications that can check entire mailing lists for you. Don’t sacrifice the integrity of your email account.

Targeting: This is Your First Step of Not Ending Up in the Spam Folder

If you don’t know the basics of targeting, then there’s a pretty good chance that you might end up in the spam folder of a prospect’s email. 

  • Your subject line counts. Subject lines with the word “free” can automatically get caught by spam filters.
  • Are you using the right language?
  • Are you addressing your prospect properly?
  • Are your email habits spammy that it leads to your prospects feeling that you’re not a legitimate business?

You have to know your audience well before you communicate with them.

Customize, Personalize, and Monetize!

If we could summarize this particular section with one phrase it would be:

STOP SENDING GENERIC EMAILS.

The reason behind this is simple, everyone wants customized and bespoke treatment and you aren’t achieving anything if you’re not being personal with your prospects.

Time to Cleanup Inactivity

This is pretty much the rule of every relationship if they haven’t been responding for quite some time, then maybe it’s time for you to cut them out. As we mentioned earlier into this article, ISPs are actively monitoring who you send out to and if people aren’t engaging with you, this will hurt your deliverability.

However, if they are a previous customer, consider creating a different email marketing plan for them. Previous customers sometimes deserve a different kind of approach in order to engage them again. You can’t send the same emails to prospects on different areas of the sales pipeline. It just doesn’t work and it is a waste of resources.

Role Accounts Have to Go!

It is always a great practice to mail to real people and not role accounts because of a couple of factors. Role accounts can be managed by different people and these people can be replaced, sending an email to these accounts is also an impersonal way of targeting prospects and could lead to your promotion getting ignored. Another issue with role accounts is that they barely engage compared to real email accounts.

Subscription Confirmation

Do you want a cleaner list overnight?

Get people to confirm their subscriptions with your list.

In this way, you’ll be able to get rid of contacts who do not want to be bothered and don’t want to engage with you. You’ll be able to narrow down your leads and make sure you properly nurture the ones that matter the most.

Verification of Leads is Important

If you decide to purchase an email list – although we advise you not to – make sure that the leads that they give you are verified. If ever you’ve built the list yourself or have asked for help from consultants, make sure that they are still verified nevertheless. This allows you to center your campaigns on real leads that are worth the effort.

Email Hygiene Checks Really Have to be Routine

Our list is timely if you haven’t checked your email lists in 2019. However, you have to make a point of consistently checking your email lists for hygiene. This can be done on a monthly basis, but at least do it once per quarter.

As you can see, it is easy to miss out on several things that we could be doing for our email campaigns. Email hygiene is essential to maintain a good database of client leads and it also helps keep lead verification efficient. Remember there are always benefits to good hygiene!

How to Write Response-generating Emails to the C-Suite

How to Write Response-generating Emails to the C-Suite

Email is not an option, but a crucial one of the most influential marketing tools. Let’s take three important statistics below that speaks of email marketing that’s relevance to businesses today.

  • Speaking of C-Suite, email marketing has an average ROI of 3,800 percent. That’s a $38 return for every dollar spent. Salesforce
  • Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences. Wordstream
  • In 2017, there were 3.7 billion global email users, and by 2021 the number is predicted to grow by 4.1 billion. Statista

The C-Suite is the busiest pack in the office every day. Phone, in-office, lunch and coffee meetings come one after another, leaving these corporate titans with only 30 minutes at the most on their swivel chair to open and reply only to the most important emails. However, you might just be able to grab their attention by sending them a compelling and response-generating email.

Steal The Reader’s Attention

Choose words that could steal the reader’s attention, whatever he may be busy with at the moment he sees it in his inbox, for your subject line. Use strong actionable words or language like ‘Take’, Power’, Upscale’, ‘Grow’, ‘Run’, ‘Celebrate’. However, make sure that the message of your email must be contained and clearly related in the words you used on the subject line.

Related: 5 Email Opening Tips to Conquer Shorter Attention Spans [VIDEO]

Establish Importance In Your Email Copy

Personalize the approach by establishing a relationship between you and the reader by stating the reason why are you writing, which would eventually make them realize the need to read through the whole message and the urge to take action required by your message. Emphasize on the benefits that your reader will get and less of the features. Make your copy short and straight to the point. Remember, the C-Suite can only spend 15 minutes, at the most, in a day to check their inbox. Avoid long, too wordy copies that might bore the reader and evade your email.

Related: Quick Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy

Include Call-To-Actions

Make life easier for your reader. Include call-to-actions in your email like links to websites, downloadable forms, and registration or query boxes. Short simple action words like ‘Sign Up’, ‘Download Now’, ‘See More’, ‘Start Today’, ‘Shop Now’ and ‘Order Now’ are just some of the most effective call-to-actions that you can use to get your readers to act quickly. Thus, giving them a convenient and hassle-free way of engaging with your service.

Related: Basic Principles of Action-inducing and Lead Generating CTAs

Email Send-out Schedules That Will Surely Increase your Conversions

Email Send-out Schedules That Will Surely Increase your Conversions

When it comes right down to email marketing, it is essential for B2B marketers to commit to a specific schedule. Having one makes it easier to engage prospects and, more importantly, secure a better position for one’s products and services.

To be more specific, an effective email marketing schedule provides a lot of benefits for companies across different industries. Business decision makers would usually begin or end their day by opening their inboxes, so companies that want to offer their solutions will have to make sure their messages come across to their target audiences and avoid being buried under a pile of promotions and other marketing messages.

Scheduling email marketing sendouts is an important consideration that B2B marketers will have to take seriously. To compete better for the hearts and minds of their prospects, they will need to pinpoint the exact times their prospects should be receiving newsletters and other content.

Whether you are using marketing automation platforms or doing it manually, scheduling your messages lets you maximize your resources, increase your engagements, and accelerate your conversions.

Still, one question is begging to be answered: When would be the right time for prospects to receive emails?

For that, we scoured the web for possible answers, and here’s what we found so far.

Tuesdays

According to research conducted by Customer.IO, the second day of the week seems to be a more viable time to send marketing communications to prospects, pointing out that “Tuesday’s emails have an overall open rate of about 18%, the highest open rate compared to the other weekdays.” This is on account of the fact that decision-makers revert back to “work mode” after undergoing Monday’s post-weekend slump. In the afternoon, people are about to leave work and set their agendas the day after. This gives you an opportunity to slip in your emails just when they are opening their inboxes.

Related: How to Make Sure Your Cold Emails Make it to the Inbox [VIDEO]

Midweek

Generally, a lot of businesses concur that email blasts are generally done in the middle of the week when people are at the peak of their focus when it comes to working. This article on Wordstream points out that the ideal time to send is between 1 to 3 PM, although morning sendouts from 9 to 11 AM is also preferable. For MailChimp, on the other hand, sending out at 2 PM provides the most leverage in terms of getting better engagements.

Thursday morning

The same article suggests an even better time for an email blast. Thursday mornings provide basically the best conditions for decision-makers to open marketing messages, to Wordstream at least. Despite being too early a time, an 8 AM email blast (consistent with the recipient’s time zone, of course) does secure higher open rates compared to other schedules during the day.

Sundays

Email blasts on the weekend?! Well, it is possible if you think about it very carefully. In the Email Marketing Quarterly Benchmark Study for the Fourth Quarter of 2013 cited in an article by Get Response, Experian points out that Sundays are the best day to send emails. Furthermore, the best time to receive them typically ranges from 8 PM to 11:59 PM. It’s an unusual time for a send-out since most email bounces happen during the weekends, but if done right, organizations can see an improvement in their click-through rates and conversions.

Anywhere after work hours

Campaign Monitor has different findings for optimum send outs. According to its own analysis, 24% of emails are opened from 6 PM to 11 PM just when decision-makers are going home. It makes sense since the rush hour traffic in the earlier part of this frame provides the most appropriate time to open emails using mobile. Campaign Monitor goes on to say that at least 47% of all emails are opened outside of work hours, demonstrating the need for companies to optimize their newsletters and other email content for mobile users.

Our verdict

What we learned from these observations is the fact that most B2B decision-makers prefer to open emails outside of their offices. The general principle is to conduct email blasts before or after the workday begins. This is not to say your business should follow this as a general rule of thumb. You can also create efficient campaigns by testing out different times of the day and acquire an effective time frame that fits your marketing objectives.

Related: Quick Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy

Australian map design with emails

Expanding your B2B Email Marketing List? Try these 3 Creative Ways

The most important component of any sustainable email-based B2B lead generation campaign is email list expansion. That’s because no matter how superb your content is or irresistible your subject line sounds, none of it would matter if your list is not optimal in quality and quantity.

And since most email lists shrink by an average of 30% every year, expanding your email should not be a one-time effort, but an ongoing one. Sometimes, the most effective ways to generate a list are those which are the easiest. You have to learn to turn every opportunity into something productive.

Here are 3 creative ways to grow your email list:

1. Mobile apps. A lot of people rely on their smartphones and tablets to instantly retrieve information they want: directions, weather updates, recipes, trivia or any other stuff that’s readily available and won’t have to require them to boot a laptop or PC.

As a business you can also leverage mobile apps to cater to the needs of people. What’s important is for you to know what information they need, so you could have them opt-in for a subscription, thus expanding your list for newsletters, promotions and other marketing content.

2. QR codes. Some restaurants and bars offer free drinks when people sign up to their e-newsletter by scanning a QR code posted on the wall, sometimes even inside restrooms. While usage rates for QR codes are relatively slow, it’s still being used as a means for customers to opt in even in the physical world.

Online, QR codes of course facilitate the lead generation process by doing prospects away with filling out lengthy forms. It’s the thing of the future, and sooner or later it’s going to be a huge part of the commercial industry.

3. Online contests. Believe it or not, there are people who find it hard to resist joining contests. So whenever you would host one, there will be participants for sure. On top of that, offer a really interesting and business-valuable prize so that even those who are not much of contest fans would also be swayed to take a crack at it.

When people are interested in getting the prize or the concept of the contest itself, it should be easy for you to have them disclose their email addresses to join.