Last Updated on September 13, 2024
Technology has changed the way we interact with the online world. Any order confirmation email is incomplete without a recommended Products pane based on the previous purchases; and nothing can beat the excitement of finding a discount coupon in an email from your favorite fashion brand on your birthday. The common factor in both scenarios is the personalization achieved using Dynamic Content.
Dynamic content in an email is the term for aspects that change based on a subscriber’s profile data or history of interactions with a Company. Every subscriber reads your content differently and with different goals, and dynamic content helps in catering the same with content relevance.
How Dynamic Content Acts As Seasoning In Your Email Recipe?
Out of the average 210 billion emails sent on a daily basis to 2.6 email users globally, only 10% are user-oriented emails. With 56% Americans unsubscribing emails due to irrelevant content, it is important for marketers to send personalized email that hit close to the heart.
Dynamic content provides opportunities for better Geo-targeting, by tapping into localization, reaching out to subscribers to deliver custom branding offer (Men’s grooming product Axe is known as Lynx in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and People’s Republic of China) or Plain text email using Multi-MIME is prevalent where internet bandwidth is low. This generates 18x more revenue than generic broadcast emails and provides an average 260% increase in the CTOR (Click-To-Open-Rate).
The prime USP is that one email does the work of many, reaching multiple audiences without having to create and send multiple emails, saving a ton of time and energy.
Understanding Workflow behind Adding Dynamic Content in Emails
Create a Persona
The process of sending an email with dynamic content begins with the collection of data required for the personalization also known as “Customer Persona”. A persona can comprise of (but not restricted to):
Building a Persona is an ever-updating process, while behavioral and psychographic data require time and research to accumulate. There are various effective ways to do so:
- Surveys: In spite of surveys being the most effective way to collect demographic and psychographic data in a short period of time, not many recipients willingly respond to a survey. However, the number of respondents can be increased using incentives, but this can become really expensive.
- Polls: Simple one-question polls can be used to collect psychographic data. Many recipients prefer a short and simple poll compared to a long survey.
- Form Filling: By suggesting the subscribers to fill out a form in the welcome mail itself, helps you define their area of interest and get their Demographic data.
- Online and Offline interactions: Any other interaction, from an on-line purchase to a call-center inquiry, can be converted into possibility to collect, update and verify behavioral and demographic data. There is a chance of getting carried away by asking intrusive profile questions leading to drop in the engagement with a client.
Hubspot’s detailed survey form that helps collect Firmographics so as to provide customized business mails.
Identifying Target Groups
Once you have generated a customer persona, next step is to identify the common target groups with overlapping interests. Imagine a scenario wherein a Fashion retail outlet wishes to notify its subscribers about the forthcoming sale on fitness clothes.
As per the various data collected, 2 target groups based on Gender shall be made – but only consisting of those who expressed their interest in Fitness clothes or based on their past purchases. You can further narrow the groups on basis of age-group, location or spending pattern.
An Example where in the content changes as according the gender of receiver
Generate your Dynamic List
Once your finalized target groups are ready, you generate an Email list containing the tags defining them. In the above example the tags shall be such as Name, Gender, Brand Name, Body size, Discount amount, Offer time Period, etc.
Create a Personalized Email Body
Dynamic content can be used in any type of email types by placing it in the appropriate content box along with conditions for subscribers present in different lists. In the below list example, the text in green are the tags which shall be replaced. The tags however, vary from ESP to ESP.
Get, Set, Go!
Once your content is designed all that is left is to hit ‘send’ and watch the magic unfold as Adidas have done below.
Applications for Dynamic Content in Emails
Dynamic content can be used for both lead generation and client correspondence in the form of:
- A regular monthly newsletter
- RSS news feed or other similar marketing-related emails
- A newsletter on upcoming tours of a musical band, based on location,
- A Post-webinar email sent to a list of attendees segmented on the basis of level of interest or depth of understanding such as beginner, intermediate, or advanced topics.
How Can Dynamic Content enhance your landing pages
By changing the CTA of landing pages as per the segmentation, newcomers shall visit a different landing page compared to a registered subscriber.
In a study of more than 93,000 calls-to-action created using HubSpot, and hundreds of millions of views over a 12-month period, HubSpot found that calls-to-action targeted to the user had a 42% higher view-to-submission rate than CTA that were the same for all visitors.
Depending on the weather as per location, the CTA changes the landing page it shall direct to.
Increase Form Effectiveness with Dynamic Content
By using ‘if…else’ conditional tags you can generate two different forms to be added in the Welcome email or Thank You content. This allows you to redirect prospects to unique content after a form submission, based on the value they submit in the form field.
Dropbox sends a mail based on the company name in the subscriber’s Firmographic data.
Wrapping Up
With an average CTOR increase of 260%, it is evident that using dynamic content to personalize your email campaigns is a proven way to increase your email open and click-through rates. Just keep collecting the right data and make efficacious use of email marketing tools, then sky is the limit.
