Need a clear way to plan for a marketing campaign? This guide will walk you through 7 simple steps to set goals, reach your audience, and measure your results.

Key Takeaways

• Setting clear, measurable goals is essential for guiding a marketing campaign, allowing for alignment with business objectives and progress tracking.

• Identifying and understanding the target audience through segmentation and persona development enhances engagement and campaign effectiveness.

• Developing a compelling campaign concept and choosing the right marketing channels are crucial for driving audience action and achieving desired outcomes.

Set Clear Campaign Goals

Clear campaign goals are the cornerstone of any successful marketing effort. Without well-defined objectives, your marketing can quickly become disorganized and ineffective. Clear goals help prioritize tasks and allocate resources, ensuring every team member knows their target. Moreover, these goals motivate team members and provide direction, making it easier to measure progress and celebrate achievements.

Aligning your campaign goals with broader business objectives ensures relevance and cohesion. For instance, if your business goal is to increase market share, your marketing campaign plan might focus on customer acquisition or brand awareness. Develop specific, measurable goals for your marketing campaign, such as increasing website traffic by 20% in six months or generating 500 leads. Accompany these goals with key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress using a marketing campaign template.

Regularly review and adjust your goals based on performance insights. This flexibility allows you to respond to unexpected challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. For example, if a particular tactic is not yielding the expected results, you can pivot and try a different approach. Clear articulation of goals also improves communication among team members, ensuring everyone is aligned.

Ultimately, clear, measurable, and actionable goals form the bedrock of successful campaigns. By defining what success looks like and how it will be measured, you set your team up for a focused and effective marketing effort. This clarity and direction will guide your entire campaign from planning to execution.

Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is a critical step in the marketing campaign planning process. Understanding the specific consumers most inclined to be interested in your product or service helps create campaigns that are more engaging and relevant. This allows you to tailor your messaging and marketing tactics to resonate with your audience, ultimately leading to a successful marketing campaign.

Audience segmentation is a powerful tool in this process. Dividing your audience into segments based on interests, purchase intentions, demographics, and other factors, you can connect with people more personally and drive higher engagement. For instance, a product launch marketing plan might segment the audience by age, geographic location, or purchasing behavior to ensure the marketing message is highly targeted and effective.

Creating detailed personas based on data and insights is crucial. These personas are representations of your campaign audience and help your marketing team understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Continuously revising these personas as new data becomes available keeps your campaigns relevant and effective.

Incorporating these insights ensures that your integrated marketing campaign is targeted, flexible, and responsive to your audience’s needs. This approach nurtures existing customers and attracts new ones, helping you achieve your campaign goals and business objectives.

Develop a Compelling Campaign Concept

A compelling campaign concept unifies your creative assets, messaging, and marketing activities, encouraging your audience to take action. Without a strong concept, your marketing efforts may lack effectiveness and cohesion, resulting in a campaign that fails to resonate with your target audience.

Different types of campaigns should be considered when developing your concept. Seasonal campaigns leverage specific times of the year, such as holidays or back-to-school seasons, to maximize engagement. Evergreen campaigns maintain brand recognition by being relevant at any time. Each type has its advantages, and the choice depends on your business goals and audience preferences.

Simplicity is often key in campaign concepts. Extravagant ideas are not always necessary; sometimes, straightforward and relatable themes work best. The most important aspect is relevance to your audience. Creative content that addresses their needs, interests, and pain points will always be more engaging than a generic message. Campaigns targeting significant life events, such as weddings or graduations, can also create a strong emotional connection with consumers.

Developing a compelling campaign concept ensures that all elements of your marketing campaign are aligned and focused on a common goal. This alignment helps create a seamless and effective marketing strategy that resonates with your audience and drives the desired outcomes.

Choose the Right Marketing Channels

Choosing the right marketing channels is crucial for reaching your target audience effectively. Different channels, such as email, websites, blogs, YouTube, and social media, can engage various segments of your audience in unique ways. Prioritize growing channels relevant to your audience when planning a social media marketing campaign. For instance, if your audience spends a significant amount of time on Instagram, focusing your efforts there can yield better results.

Understanding where your audience spends their time is essential for maximizing your marketing strategies. Assess current media channels for performance and customer presence to inform your selection. Audience preferences and engagement levels should guide your decisions, ensuring your marketing efforts are directed towards the most effective platforms.

Emerging marketing channels like SMS and live chat are becoming more vital for real-time engagement and support. These channels provide immediate communication opportunities that can enhance customer experience and satisfaction. Content marketing continues to grow, focusing on delivering valuable content to attract and retain audiences. Choosing the right marketing channels ensures that your message reaches your target audience effectively.

A multi-channel campaign approach can be particularly effective, allowing you to engage your audience across different touchpoints. This strategy not only increases your reach but also reinforces your message, making it more likely to resonate with your audience and achieve your campaign goals.

Plan Content and Creative Assets

Content and creative assets are the heart of any marketing campaign. They are the vehicles through which your message is delivered to your audience. Different content formats, such as video ads, press releases, and guest blogs, can reach diverse audience segments. The key is to identify which formats will be most effective for your campaign goals and audience preferences.

Streamlining feedback and approval processes enhances efficiency in production. Set clear guidelines for reviews and approvals, ensuring all team members are aligned and the content meets the campaign’s objectives. Campaign assets like visuals, messaging, and design elements can be repurposed across various channels, maximizing their impact and reach.

Creative assets should fit the campaign’s purpose, capture attention, and communicate the message visually while being professional. Identifying deliverables is essential for planning and ensuring quality work. By carefully planning your content and creative assets, you create a cohesive and compelling campaign that engages your audience and drives desired outcomes.

Map Out a Detailed Timeline

Mapping out a detailed timeline is essential for the successful execution of your marketing campaign. A well-structured timeline allows for effective management of resources and budgeting within marketing projects. It outlines necessary actions and helps teams understand when tasks will be completed, ensuring that everything stays on track.

Creating specific milestones within your timeline aids in tracking progress and maintaining team motivation. These milestones serve as checkpoints, allowing you to assess whether your campaign is on schedule and make any necessary adjustments. Project management tools can help maintain organization throughout the campaign, providing visibility into task progress and facilitating collaboration.

Establishing deadlines for each step in your timeline motivates team members to meet their targets and ensures that tasks are completed on time. Regular check-ins and progress reviews are essential to keep tasks on track and meet deadlines. By mapping out a detailed timeline, you ensure that your marketing campaign is executed smoothly and efficiently, ultimately leading to better results.

Allocate Budget and Resources

Allocating budget and resources effectively is a critical component of a successful marketing campaign. Small businesses often face unique challenges in budgeting due to limited experience and tighter financial constraints. A common guideline for budget allocation is the 70-20-10 rule, where 70% is for proven strategies, 20% for new initiatives, and 10% for experimental tactics. This approach helps balance risk and innovation.

Digital marketing represents nearly 60% of total advertising expenditures, indicating a growing need for budget allocation in this area. Tracking return on investment (ROI) is critical to evaluating the effectiveness of budget spending in marketing campaigns. Marketing budgets should accurately reflect all projected marketing expenses, including advertising, staff costs, and necessary software.

In-house handling, external help, and team availability must also be considered in resource allocation. Hidden costs in marketing, such as research and product testing, should be factored into the overall budget to avoid financial surprises. Utilizing a marketing plan template can help streamline the budgeting process by tracking expenses across various activities.

Carefully allocating your budget and resources ensures that your marketing campaign is well-funded and has the necessary support to achieve its goals. This strategic approach maximizes the return on your marketing investment and drives successful campaign outcomes.

Execute and Monitor the Campaign

Executing and monitoring the campaign is where all your planning comes to life. Establishing a precise launch date and coordinating efforts to ensure all team members are aligned is crucial for a smooth execution. Organized marketers are significantly more likely to report successful campaign outcomes. Using project management tools can improve execution efficiency, helping to keep everything on track.

Regularly monitoring campaign metrics is essential to measure success accurately. Focus on metrics that truly reflect effectiveness and avoid vanity metrics. Regularly measuring your marketing efforts helps identify areas for improvement, enabling real-time optimization. Setting up checkpoints along the way will help keep the campaign on track and allow for necessary adjustments.

Utilizing analytics tools, surveys, and customer feedback tools helps measure KPIs effectively. Communicating progress, successes, challenges, and the need for adjustments with the team is essential for maintaining alignment and focus. By executing and monitoring your campaign diligently, you can ensure it stays on course and achieves the desired outcomes.

Measure Success and Analyze Results

Measuring success and analyzing results is the final step in the marketing campaign process. Tracking data against set marketing goals throughout the campaign timeline is essential for understanding its effectiveness. Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) helps assess campaign progress and overall success. This involves comparing the results against the KPIs established during the planning phase.

After the campaign ends, it’s important to identify what worked well and what could be improved. Analyzing campaign data increases the value of the data, assesses results, and reveals audience insights. By looking at data after a campaign, you can discover trends and which initiatives performed well. These insights can inform future campaigns, helping you refine your marketing strategies and achieve better results.

Conducting a retrospective meeting with the team to discuss possible improvements is a valuable practice. Apply the learnings from a completed marketing plan to the next initiative. Track and report on the metrics established earlier during the campaign to measure overall success. If the campaign goal is not met, analyze the data to assess why the metrics fell short and make the necessary adjustments.

Summary

In summary, planning a marketing campaign involves several critical steps, each contributing to the overall success of the campaign. From setting clear goals and identifying your target audience to developing a compelling concept and choosing the right channels, each step ensures that your marketing efforts are targeted and effective. Allocating budget and resources, mapping out a timeline, and planning content and creative assets are essential for a smooth execution.

Executing and monitoring the campaign diligently, followed by measuring success and analyzing results, completes the cycle, providing valuable insights for future campaigns. By following these steps, you can create a cohesive and effective marketing strategy that drives your business goals and achieves desired outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to set clear campaign goals?

It is essential to set clear campaign goals as they prioritize tasks, allocate resources effectively, and align marketing efforts with broader business objectives. This clarity provides direction and motivation for the team, enhancing overall campaign effectiveness.

How do I identify my target audience?

To identify your target audience, focus on audience segmentation and develop detailed personas based on relevant data and insights. This will help you pinpoint the consumers most likely to engage with your product or service.

What makes a compelling campaign concept?

A compelling campaign concept is one that unifies all elements while remaining simple and relevant to your audience, effectively encouraging desired actions. It must also align with your business goals to ensure its effectiveness.

Why is choosing the right marketing channels important?

Choosing the right marketing channels is essential for effectively reaching your target audience and maximizing engagement. Prioritizing channels that align with your audience’s preferences ensures that your marketing efforts are impactful and efficient.

How do I measure the success of my marketing campaign?

To effectively measure the success of your marketing campaign, track data against established marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This analysis will reveal what succeeded and what areas need improvement, offering important insights for future efforts.

Are you interested in finding out more? Browse the rest of our blog for other marketing tips. If you’re ready to create your first email, survey, sign-up form, or landing page then register for a free trial to get the tools you need to build powerful marketing campaigns!

© 2024, Vertical Response. All rights reserved.

While important, maintaining a vibrant and engaged subscriber list is an ongoing challenge. Over time, subscribers can easily disengage, and the once-frequent opens and clicks can dwindle. But here’s the good news: a dormant email list doesn’t have to be a lost cause. 

In this article, we explore the art of re-engagement with the help of Benchmark Email. Join us as we uncover the strategies, tactics, and step-by-step guidance needed to resurrect your dormant list and transform it into an active and responsive audience. With Benchmark Email as your ally, re-engaging subscribers and achieving your email marketing goals is not just a possibility; it’s a practical reality.

Why is an Engaged Email List Important?

Having an engaged email list is of paramount importance for several compelling reasons. First and foremost, engagement is a clear indicator of the quality of your email marketing efforts. An engaged audience opens and interacts with your emails and represents a pool of potential customers who are genuinely interested in your products, services, or content. This heightened interest translates directly into increased conversion rates, whether purchasing, signing up for a webinar, or taking another desired action.

Moreover, engaged subscribers are pivotal in maintaining a positive email domain reputation. Email and internet service providers monitor engagement metrics and spam complaints to determine the legitimacy and relevance of your emails. High engagement signals to ESPs that your emails are valuable and solicited, resulting in better inbox placement and a reduced likelihood of being marked as spam.

Beyond the technical aspects, engaged subscribers also provide an invaluable feedback loop. They are more likely to provide insights through responses, feedback forms, or surveys, helping you refine your offerings and tailor your content to their preferences. This, in turn, fosters stronger customer relationships and brand loyalty.

An engaged email list is not just a metric to boast about but a cornerstone of effective email marketing. It drives conversions, enhances email deliverability, and offers direct communication with your most interested and loyal audience. Cultivating and nurturing this engagement is an ongoing process that pays off with improved ROI, customer retention, and the overall success of your email marketing campaigns.

How to Identify Dormant Contacts and Send Re-engagement Campaigns Using Benchmark Email

Identifying dormant contacts in your Benchmark Email account is crucial in re-engaging them and optimizing your email marketing efforts. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to identify these dormant contacts:

1. Log In to Your Benchmark Email Account

Go to the Benchmark Email website and log in to your account.

2. Access Your List or Audience

From the Benchmark Email dashboard, click “Contacts” and select “Lists,” where you manage your email lists.

3. Select the List or Audience You Want to Review

Choose the specific email list or audience you want to analyze for dormant contacts. Click on the list name to access its details.

4. Sort Contacts by Engagement Metrics

Once inside the list or audience details, select the “Clean List” feature at the top.

Then, select “Contacts that have not opened in the last” and select the time frame.

 

Then select the option “Create New List.”

5. Save the Dormant Segment

The list will be automatically saved to your contacts list; however, please rename it if you’d like.

6. Plan Re-Engagement Campaigns

With your dormant segment identified, plan and execute re-engagement campaigns tailored to these contacts. Craft compelling content and incentives to encourage them to re-engage with your emails. Make sure you include the following:

• How they got on your list
• What types of emails can they expect to receive
• Would they like to unsubscribe?

7. Monitor Progress

Continuously monitor the effectiveness of your re-engagement campaigns. Track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to assess whether your efforts successfully reactivate dormant contacts.

This step-by-step process is just one way to identify dormant subscribers using Benchmark Email. Download our webinar recording below for more methods that will help you ensure your email subscribers stay engaged with your brand. 

By James Westfield July 25, 2024

Creating an automated email campaign can seem daunting. You have to consider multiple factors that can make or break your conversions. At the same time, you have to do this while balancing your customers’ needs. Then there’s the need to ensure your automated email series addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey.

To make the process easier, we’ve put together this guide. Follow these email automation workflow best practices for optimal results.:

6 email automation best practices to follow

Ready to jump on the email automation bandwagon? Follow these six email automation best practices to reach your subscribers with the right emails at the right time:

1. Set goals and map your automated workflow 

Setting up an automated email workflow is pointless if you don’t know what you want to achieve. Think about it. How else will you gauge the effectiveness of your automated email sequences without marketing goals?

Your goals determine the type of automation workflows you set up. For example, an email sequence whose goal is to drive sales will look different when compared to one that exists to onboard new customers.

Here are other automated email workflow goals you might have:

• To inform or educate
• To reduce cart abandonment 
• To promote an event
• To win back subscribers

To ensure the best results, your automated workflows and goals should align with every stage of the customer journey. That’s why creating a customer journey map helps. Think of the customer journey map as a visual representation of the stages your customer goes through when interacting with your brand. Essentially, it allows you to visualize your customer’s specific points of interaction with your brand at every stage.

The main benefit of this email automation strategy is that it can boost your customer retention rates. When you combine goals with a customer journey map, you can deliver timely messages that resonate with your customers. 

Additionally, when you analyze your automation workflows against goals, you can identify the factors that impede desirable user behavior. This can help you finetune your email workflows and help customers progress through their journeys.

2. Trigger emails on customer behavior

When creating a sequence of emails, automate them to send based on specific customer actions and inactions. 

Behavioral triggers refer to email sequences that activate in response to the recipient’s actions. Common behaviors that can fire off such email workflows include:

In the image below, Sony sends a trigger email in response to an abandoned cart from its Playstation Store:

Meanwhile, time-based triggers occur in response to inaction. For example, you can set up an email sequence that triggers after a user has been inactive for a specified period. The content, calls to action, and aim of each of the individual emails in the sequence will be to win back the customer.

Triggered emails are essential because they let you speak to the customer at specific points in their journey. That helps enhance the customer experience. 

Additionally, trigger emails target specific customer journey stages. So, they essentially lead customers toward taking a desired action. 

3. Incorporate follow-ups in the automated campaigns

Unfortunately, emailing your target audience once won’t be enough to get them to take your desired action. It doesn’t even matter whether they’ve expressed a strong interest in your products or services. Life’s distractions could still steal their focus away and hurt your chances of making a sale or nurturing a lead.

So, incorporate follow-ups into your automated campaigns.

This entails contacting a customer who has stopped progressing through their customer journey. For instance, the customer may have abandoned their shopping cart at checkout or registered for a webinar but failed to attend. Whatever the case, your follow-up email serves to give them a gentle nudge so that they re-engage with your brand. 

In the context of automated emails, your follow-up emails should trigger in response to your email recipient’s behavior. Abandoned carts, lead magnet downloads, newsletter subscriptions, free trial signups, and more are all fair game for follow-up emails.

Regarding how often you should follow up with your customers, there’s no clear-cut answer. As a rule of thumb, aim to automatically send follow-up emails a few days after your initial confirmation email. For example, if a customer abandons their shopping cart, you can wait between three days and a week before following up with them.

Meanwhile, if a customer’s behavior reveals that they need time to mull over whether to do business with you, play the long game. Program a longer series of emails with informative content like blog posts and case studies to nurture them until they come around. You can use ready-made AI templates like the one above to speed up the content creation process.

4. Implement hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization refers to email marketing that leverages insights from historical and real-time customer data and use them to deliver relevant and personalized content. For instance, in hyper-personalization, you’d send a male subscriber this email on the left. A female subscriber would receive the email on the right:

To leverage hyper-personalization in your automated email workflows, gather as much customer data. Collect their demographic information, previous purchases, interests, and browsing trends. For this, use tools such as surveys, preference centers, heat maps, and recording sessions.

Your email marketing efforts can benefit from hyper-personalization in numerous ways. For one, it helps you create email content and personalized messages that resonate with your audience segments. When used with email segmentation, you can create dynamic content based on factors like your audience’s behavior and location.

Also, hyper-personalization is great for customer engagement. It can help you tailor your communications in a manner that’s optimal for higher conversion rates. Thanks to AI-powered automation, you can speak directly to your customer’s needs and pain points at scale.

Finally, hyper-personalization gives you a deeper understanding of your customers. This benefit is significant because it improves your email marketing chances in numerous ways. 

Not only will you get better at targeting customers, but you’ll also have the data needed to create a pleasant customer experience. Your customers will deem your emails as a source of valuable content. 

5. Maintain consistent branding

When your email subscribers open your automated emails, they should instantly know that the email came from you. Brand recognition is key to business success. Half of consumers say they’d buy from a brand they easily recognize. 

To foster this familiarity, maintain consistent branding across your email and web properties.

There are several ways to do it. The easiest method is to place your company logo in the profile picture section of your email account and the email’s header. As the image below shows, SaaS company ClickUp adheres to this best practice:

This email design technique ensures that your logo will be the first visual element your email contacts see when they open your emails. It’s also the lowest-cost method for building brand recognition with your email campaigns.

Another effective method for maintaining brand consistency is to use the same design elements in your email as you do on your website. Incorporate the same fonts and color scheme in your email newsletters. This will prevent your potential customers from being confused when they visit your email and other web properties.

6. Continuously track performance

It’s good practice to continuously track how your automated marketing emails are performing. Tracking performance provides a treasure trove of data you can rely on when planning future campaigns. 

One way to track performance is to run A/B tests on the various elements of your emails regularly. Send two sets of emails with different subject lines, layout designs, and call-to-action copy to two sets of audiences. Then, note down which version produces higher email engagement rates.

While doing A/B tests, keeping track of success metrics will help you gauge your campaign’s performance. The key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. 

You can analyze the results in your chosen email marketing automation software. Use the metrics to make data-driven decisions related to your workflows as part of your B2C or B2B strategies.

You can also track campaign performance using email funnel conversion analysis.

mail funnel conversion analysis tracks how customers move through your conversion funnel. With it, you can identify bottlenecks that cause subscribers to churn or impede their progress along their journeys. The data you get from this analysis will help you optimize your funnel for conversions.

FAQs

What is an automated email workflow?

An automated email workflow is a series of emails that are automatically triggered and sent based on a subscriber’s specific action. That action can be everything from a link click to a form submission. 

Automated workflows can be a powerful tool in your overall email marketing strategy. Not only do they save you precious time. They also help you reach your business goals with minimal intervention.

What are the benefits of email automation?

Email automation workflows provide several benefits. For one, they help you respond to customer behavior appropriately. Also, email automation saves you time. It automates mundane and repetitive workflows (for example, welcoming new customers). Finally, automated workflows drive conversions. They help you personalize email communications and send them to audiences that find them relevant.

What is the best email automation tool?

There are several excellent options on the market, but we can confidently say that AWeber is among the top options. It offers all the features needed for automating email workflows. These include an email builder for design and behavioral automation features. Other great automation tools include HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse.

How do I automate my email?

Automating email campaigns is a five-step process. Step one involves choosing email automation software. The second step has to do with determining the goals for your automated campaigns. Your third step is to target and segment your audience. Step four involves deciding on email triggers. The final step involves creating email campaigns and activating them.

In closing

The email automation best practices discussed should get your campaigns off to a flying start. Your email campaigns must incorporate follow-ups to bring disengaged customers back into the fold. Without goals, creating automated workflows will be a pointless endeavor. For best results, make sure to map them to the customer journey during the goal-setting phase.

Meanwhile, hyper-personalization can help you gain actionable insights into your audience and drive customer engagement. Maintain consistent branding across your email, social media accounts, and website. This will ensure brand recognition. Automate trigger emails to ensure content gets sent at the right time and based on pre-specified user actions. Finally, consistently track your campaign performance. It will help you iron out any issues in your future campaigns.

Good luck with your email automation journey!

Email personalization is consistently one of the biggest priorities for marketers—but it’s also one of the things that’s making them tear their hair out.

There’s good reason for both of these facts. Personalized email helps captivate audiences with true 1:1 experiences, leads to more engaged subscribers throughout the customer journey, and increases conversions, conversion rates, and, ultimately, revenue growth.

When we asked marketers about personalized email content for our State of Email Innovations Report, we found out that 95% do some sort of email personalization, even if it’s sticking to basics like “first name” merge tags.

But only 3% of marketers use live or real-time dynamic content, which is the key to unlocking the true benefits of email personalization.

When we asked you what was stopping you from going all-in on email personalization strategies, lack of data (24%), lack of resources (21%), and lack of inspiration (13%) topped the list.

The good news is that all of those complaints are totally fixable.

Buckle up, email geeks. We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to all the email personalization best practices you need to know, plus a handy-dandy downloadable to use for your team.

5 email personalization best practices for a winning strategy

Email personalization takes effort, but it pays off big time for your email marketing strategy. 76% of buyers expect personalized experiences because they understand that they reflect a brand’s commitment to understanding their needs and preferences.

Giving emails a personal touch isn’t just a nice way to do email marketing or make emails look pretty. They actually drive results.

When you deliver emails that speak directly to your subscribers where they are in their customer journey, they feel more connected to your brand. Says Litmus Email Marketing Manager Tracie Pang, “When personalization is done right, it’s something subscribers are more likely to engage with. They’re more likely to click on a product, browse your website, and make a purchase.”

What are the best practices for personalizing email campaigns to increase engagement?

Here are five email personalization best practices that make it happen:

1. Collect (and organize) as much data as you can

24% of email marketers told us they struggle to find the right data to personalize their email marketing campaigns. Oof, we feel you. Google’s ending third-party cookies and Apple Mail Privacy Protection have been a one-two punch for email marketers looking to find ways to target their subscribers more effectively.

But guess what? You have access to a lot more data than you think. Instead of lamenting the end of third-party data, it’s time to use the data you have:

1. Zero-party data is explicitly given to you by your audience, either through surveys or polls or purchase data. Anytime you’re asking your subscribers a question and they answer it, it’s zero-party data.
2. First-party data is the individual-level data collected from your audience, like browsing data from your website, shopping history, or social media engagement.
3. Second-party data is purchased from another company—basically, someone else’s first-party data. Second-party data gives you context and scale, helping you understand consumer trends, analyze the competitive landscape, or conduct research.

Email marketers using zero-party data in particular are at a huge advantage in the personalization game. Whether it’s their topic preferences, wishlisted products, or survey results, you can use email to generate data for future personalized campaigns.

2. Know your audience better than they know themselves

Once you have the right data, you can start brainstorming different ways to personalize your email campaigns. You don’t have to radically change your email marketing strategy to do this. Instead, think about the emails you’re already sending and how you can add variants to them based on the information you know about past purchases, browsing behavior, or customer support interactions.

Create super segments of each of your audience. You may already be splitting customers vs. prospects, for example. Now, take that one step further:

Customers vs. Prospects	Personalized Campaign Idea	Data You Need
Customers who purchase products in multiple categories	Gift guide or come visit our store	Purchase behavior Stated preferences Geolocation
Customers who have purchased one product but not a second	Product recommendations	Purchase behavior Browsing history Stated preferences
Customers who have purchased 3+ products (aka your superfans)	Ask for a review or shout-out on social media	Purchase behavior Sentiment
Prospects who have been on site browsing in the last 24 hours	Back-in-stock or “get it before it’s gone”	Browsing history
Prospects who haven’t engaged with an email in 30 days or more	Re-engagement campaign	Email engagement Browsing history
Prospects who are thiiiiis close to making a purchase	Abandoned cart or abandoned browsing	Interest signals Browsing history

Email personalization isn’t just about personalizing email subject lines, using “first name” or including specific information in your email, though these can be powerful personalization techniques.

Instead, it’s about providing the right nudge at the right time in the customer journey to get them thinking about your brand. That way, when they are ready to purchase for the first or the fifth time, it’s your brand they’ll go to first.

3. Go beyond first name tags with live or real-time content in your email designs

When it comes to actually building a personalized email, including live or real-time content can help your brand stand out. We were surprised to learn that only 3% of email marketers we surveyed had used live or real-time content in their personalization efforts, since the tactic showed up again and again when we asked you what you wish you could do with personalization.

Live or real-time content can be intimidating because unlike first-name merge tags, it can’t necessarily be handled by your ESP. Add features to your emails that make your subscribers excited to read them, like:

• Interest signals, which display live click totals so you can show subscribers what their peers are most excited about
• Countdown timers, which add a sense of urgency to your promotional emails
• Live polls, so subscribers see in-the-moment how their opinion matches with other subscribers
• Scratch-offs, which add a little interactive fun to emails by revealing a product or promotion on a click

Email marketing is always a race to see what’s new, delightful, and different. These kind of personalization tactics can give your emails a little extra something that gets subscribers engaging with your emails more.

4.Personalize email timing and frequency

Personalization isn’t just the content and design of your emails. You can optimize your larger email marketing strategy on a personalized level, too. That means sending your emails when a subscriber is most likely to read it — whether they’re checking emails during their morning commute or while relaxing after dinner.

You can do this using your open data through your ESP, but if that’s difficult to get at, then you’ve got nothing to lose by asking your subscribers directly. Beef up your subscriber preferences page with options to customize newsletter type, frequency, and timing.

5.Continuously test your emails (and include a fallback)

Part of what makes email personalization so tricky to pull off is that you’ve got a lot of moving parts that need to flow seamlessly together. You never want someone to receive a literal “FIRST NAME” in their email, or six emails instead of the one they were supposed to receive.

Any time you add personalization into an email campaign, make sure you include a generic fallback. You can swap out product recommendations for a bestseller campaign, for example, or include information on multiple product categories in an email instead of the one you know the subscriber is most interested in.

Start getting results from these email personalization best practices

Email personalization can help do all the typical things email marketers look for: increased click-through rates, collecting better customer data, and the creation of more relevant content in subscribers’ crowded inbox. But it’s more than simply improving email marketing metrics. Personalized messages help you develop and nurture a true customer relationship.

Personalized email campaigns offer the type of customer engagement that no typical mass email strategy can offer. Implementing the email personalization best practices will pay huge dividends and establish your brand as someone who truly understands its audiences and customers

To achieve it, you need an email marketing platform that’s built with personalization in mind.

If email personalization is a big priority for you this year, we’re here to help. Litmus Personalize is an easy way to create uniquely personalized, engaging email experiences that boost customer loyalty and drive higher conversions and revenue. Brands and teams of all types, from ecommerce to financial industries, have leveraged Litmus Personalize to take their personalized email strategy to the next level. Learn more about email personalization with Litmus Personalize.