The State of Email Marketing Personalization in 2017: Your Email Personalization Questions Answered

• Updated on: 2018-12-22
• Read original article here

At Movable Ink, there’s nothing we love more than seeing brands embrace new email technologies and achieving big things as a result.

2017 was an incredible year for innovation, and we saw lots of marketers getting creative with email marketing personalization. In our recent webinar with Campaign Monitor, we looked at the major personalization trends of 2017 and creative use cases for taking advantage of personalization in any campaign.

We covered a lot of ground, so naturally we had a lot of questions. Here are a few of the top questions. Keep scrolling to find the full recording of our webinar presentation, The State of Email Marketing Personalization in 2017.

Hello! I’m really interested to hear where the 4400% ROI stat comes from? We have real difficulty persuading charity clients to invest in email, this is a golden stat to help us convince them of the value.

This a great question, especially considering that this stat gets repeated over and over again. While the actual ROI of an email program will vary from company to company, Campaign Monitor noted in their annual report that marketers are earning $44 for every dollar spent on email. Here are a few more helpful email stats from Capterra.

How much data do I need to collect in order to create a successful personalized campaign?

This was a popular question, and the answer is entirely dependent on your brand and your goals. If you’re looking to test basic personalization, you may already have the data you need – first name, age, and gender, for example.

But if you’re looking to get more advanced, like the Delta email we discussed, this will require more data. The good news is that if you have a loyalty program, it may be easier than you think to activate that data in your emails. Check out our ebook for inspiration: How to Build Better Loyalty Emails.

Can you discuss best practices in personalizing customer journeys? 

When it comes to email personalization best practices, your email content will only be as good as your data. No matter what data you’re using, you’ll want to double-check to make sure you have all the fields you need and have fallback content in place just in case.

To learn more about mapping your email strategy to your customer journey, check out this infographic from AWeber: Using the Marketing Funnel to Improve Your Email Marketing.

I always have clients ask me what the best practices are for send-time and send-date optimization. Am I correct in telling them it is totally contingent on their audience?

We had multiple questions during our webinar about send times, and there is no magic answer: it’s true that the best email send times are determined entirely by your audience. It’s always best to test, but there are a few guidelines to keep in mind.

First, don’t rule out any particular day to send email. Some brands will avoid sending emails on Friday, but guess what? The emails that do get sent will get noticed.

Second, it’s typically best to send during times that you know your audience is paying attention. For some audiences, this is first thing in the morning. For others, it may be Sunday night. The only way to know for sure? Test, test, and test some more!

What are some good examples of email marketing personalization?

We have lots! Check outEmail Marketing Personalization 101 if you’re just getting started. For more advanced use cases with behavioral marketing, check out our Behavioral Marketing Playbook. Finally, if you’re in need of holiday email personalization inspiration, check out our Steal These 2017 Holiday Email Ideas ebook.

Miss our webinar, The State of Email Marketing Personalization in 2017? Check out the full recording below!