Dear Mr. Personality,

We salute your non-creepy efforts to add a personal touch to your emails. And you're right - by now, most of your recipients are wise to the first-name-greeting personalization gig, knowing full well that there's not some forlorn intern in a dark room who's personalizing and sending emails one at a time.

We've put together four ways to go beyond the greeting with your personalization efforts, including ideas with segmenting, triggers and more. And while personalizing your email greeting is a fine place to start, it's important to remember that the big idea behind personalization is connecting with your audience based on who they are - not just what their name is.

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4 ways to personalize your email campaigns

1. Try personalizing with another field.
What do you know about your audience members besides their first names? The same trick behind first name personalization works for any other information you're storing about your audience. If you know your subscribers' city, company name or purchase history, consider making generic sentences a bit more personal:

-> We hope to see you soon at our store in [member city].
-> We're looking forward to doing business with all the fine folks at [member company name].
-> Thanks for joining our customer loyalty program in [month joined].
-> Hey, I see that you're wearing that [color of shirt] shirt again today!

Okay, so perhaps the last one is *too* personal. But whatever field you decide on, be sure and assign backup placeholder text for anybody whose information you may have missed along the way.

Learn more...
-> Get help with simple personalization

2. Create personalized content for special segments of your audience.
The most effective personalization doesn't stop at a word or a phrase. Try crafting unique messages to appeal to different segments of your audience.

Let's say you've got a big list of customers who've made a prior purchase. It'll include both loyal shoppers and people who've only bought once. It'll have both men and women. It may even include domestic customers as well as some who live in another country. Like Nebraska.

Those segments are vastly different, so shouldn't the campaign content reflect those differences, too? Whether you vary the offer, the product or just the wording, personalize the content to connect with each segment of your subscribers. They'll appreciate a message that's meant for them, and you'll appreciate the results - recent research by the Aberdeen Group shows that organizations that implemented this style of segmentation saw both their click-through and conversion rates increase by an average of 9%.

Learn more...
-> Get help using search and segment
-> See 8 ways to use search and segment

3. Use trigger emails to personalize the delivery.
Personalizing *what* people read in your emails is important, but you can also create a personal connection based on *when* your emails arrive using Emma's trigger email feature. They let you reach your recipients on their individual schedules, and they do it all automatically. In a word, they're neat.

For example, try setting up a welcome email that's triggered whenever someone new joins your list. Your subscriber gets the joy of immediate gratification, and you get the benefit of sending an email the moment someone expressed interest in receiving it.

You can also base that personalized delivery on dates you're storing about your members, simplifying how you communicate with your customers about birthdays, membership renewals, and surveys after a purchase. Oh, and the customized delivery of these tips is all thanks to the type of trigger that personalizes delivery around clicking a link in a previous email.

Learn more...
-> See three unique ways to put triggers to work
-> Get help with welcome-based triggers, date-based triggers, and link-based triggers

4. Personalize, but keep it personal.
Above all, remember that personalization isn't only a matter of using these nifty database and segmentation tricks. Creating a personal connection with your customers can be as simple as keeping a natural, conversational tone in your email and finding warm, complementary images. It's all about recognizing that your subscribers are more than just names you're emailing - they're people you're having a conversation with.

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Hope our ideas get you thinking about how you're connecting personally with your subscribers. If you've got questions or thoughts to share, you know where to find us.

Cheers,
Emma