The Letterbox

I have been thinking about personalisation within Email Marketing.

Recently, I have seen a correlation between how as humans our real world approaches are also influencing our digital world. I have started thinking of email inboxes as letter boxes of a front door. Personalisation within the Email Marketing world has grown in popularity, and gives a sense of 'care' taken by those who have reached out to you.

Since I have recently become a home owner, it has become quite apparent at the amount of junk mail I get through my letterbox is quite large. From local pizza delivery services, to charities, and a variety of other unwanted pieces of paper. It then dawned on me that my own inbox was experiencing the same level of unwanted 'junk mail'. The similarities of how we treat our virtual and real mail is becoming evercreasingly similar.

For example, after a long day at work you return home.  You open your front door and discover lots of flyers from local takeaways (the third time this week) posted through your door. Immediately you feel annoyed but you discover a letter. One which is addressed to yourself. You then decide to immediately open this and see what is inside.

We all love to receive things which have been personally addressed to ourselves. The same applies to email marketing too. Personalisation has now become an important strategy when trying to improve those all important open and conversion rates.

Coming onto the design of the emails, these have changed too. We all know that mobile optimised templates are so important for email communications, however it seems that a simple text based email would perform higher than a graphic heavy one.

If you take my previous real world example of leaflets vs. an addressed plain letter. See the similarities? Now, with this being said, you will need to try this theory with just a few of your communications. For example, if you have a targeted email which is for a sales purpose you can try adjusting the email so it is more of a personal communication.

Just by adding in a contacts name, adjusting the copy so it is formal, and signing the email off by an actual person from the business, you should find your conversion rates being higher. I suggest if you are not already trying some personalisation within your communications, make it a priority and review its performance.