The Benefits of Email Personalization: Increase Engagement and Sales

"Dear Sir/ma"

With the sheer number of emails competing for attention every day, getting one that opens like this tells the recipient the sender barely knows them. A generic message like that rarely sparks any real interest or curiosity. It's closer to a WhatsApp broadcast message: the kind that annoys the recipient instead of engaging them.

According to recent data from Statista, around 306 billion emails were sent and received daily worldwide in 2020, and the platform projects the total number of email users will reach roughly 4.6 billion by 2025. Against that kind of noise, generic email doesn't stand a chance.

How does your email get noticed and stand out from the crowd? The answer is email personalization. Tailor your email to your audience and you get more engaged readers, which is central to any successful strategy.

In this article, we'll cover what email personalization is, the benefits of personalized email marketing, the role of browsing behavior in doing it well, and the practical tips to implement it.

What is email personalization?

Email personalization means crafting email content tailored to the preferences, behaviors, and demographics of individual recipients. Done well, it raises the perceived value of your brand.

It goes beyond simply addressing the recipient by their first name. It covers the entire email experience, from the subject line (see our guide to subject lines that boost open rate) to the body content and call-to-action. Personalized emails can include recommendations based on past purchases, content tailored to a recipient's interests, and even personalized send timing.

If you're not personalizing your email content for your target audience, you're losing those customers to the brands that do.

The benefits of personalized email marketing

1. Enhanced Customer Engagement

   Personalized emails resonate more with recipients, leading to higher engagement rates. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Relevant, valuable content builds a deeper connection and encourages more clicks, purchases, and shares.

2. Improved Customer Experience

   Personalization creates a sense of individual attention that makes customers feel valued. When customers receive emails that cater to their specific needs and interests, it improves their overall experience with the brand, which drives satisfaction and loyalty.

3. Higher Conversion Rates

   Personalized emails aren't just more likely to be opened. They're more likely to convert. Data from Epsilon shows personalized emails deliver 6 times higher transaction rates than generic emails. Tailored product recommendations and offers noticeably increase the chances of converting a lead into a customer.

4. Increased Revenue

   The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to drive sales, and email personalization is a proven way to do it. A study by Experian found personalized emails generate 6 times more revenue per email than non-personalized ones. Targeted messages and offers, built on good data, drive more sales.

5. Reduced Unsubscribe Rates

   Irrelevant content is one of the main reasons people unsubscribe. Personalization keeps content relevant and useful, which cuts down on unsubscribe rates. An email about post-pregnancy care sent to a male recipient with no context is exactly the kind of mismatch that gets people to hit "unsubscribe" the moment they see it.

6. Better Customer Insights

   Personalizing emails requires a real understanding of your customers, and building that understanding produces useful insights along the way. Analyzing behavior and preference data gives you a better read on your audience, insight you can use to refine your marketing strategy, improve the product, and enhance the overall customer experience.

7. Increased ROI

   Personalization lifts open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates together, and when all three improve at once, ROI improves with them. Reaching the right people with the right message is the shortest path to a better return on your email marketing spend.

The role of browsing behavior in email personalization

Behavioral data, particularly browsing behavior, is one of the most useful personalization signals available, and it's often underused.

What a recipient looked at on your site (or in your product, for a SaaS company) tells you more about their intent than demographic data ever will. Someone who spent time on a specific pricing tier or feature page is telling you what they care about right now, not just who they are in general.

That's why the role of browsing behavior in email personalization goes beyond "you viewed this, here's a reminder." Used well, browsing data lets you:

• Trigger follow-up emails based on specific pages viewed, not just generic site visits
• Recommend content or features related to what someone actually browsed, rather than what's generically popular
• Time your send around a recipient's active browsing session instead of a fixed schedule
• Prioritize which leads to follow up with first, based on depth and recency of browsing activity

For SaaS companies specifically, browsing behavior inside the product (which features someone clicked into, where they got stuck) is often a stronger signal for lifecycle email than anything captured on the marketing site. See our SaaS email marketing guide for how that maps onto onboarding and retention emails.

What are the effective tips for implementing email personalization?

Segment Your Audience

The first step in personalizing emails is segmenting your audience: dividing your list into smaller groups based on demographics, past behavior, purchase history, and interests. Segmentation lets you tailor messages to each group's specific needs, making your emails more relevant and engaging.

Use Dynamic Content

Dynamic content changes based on the recipient's information: personalized product recommendations, tailored content blocks, custom offers. It lets you create highly relevant emails that resonate with each recipient individually.

Leverage Behavioral Data

Browsing history, past purchases, and interaction with previous emails all provide valuable insight into your customers' interests. Use this data to build recommendations and offers likely to resonate with each recipient (see the section above for specifics on browsing behavior).

Personalize Timing

The timing of your emails significantly affects their impact. Analyze when recipients are most likely to engage and optimize your send times around that, so your emails land at the moment they're most likely to be opened and acted on.

Craft Personalized Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing a recipient sees, and it decides whether they open your email at all. Subject lines that reference the recipient's name or interests noticeably increase open rates, so make sure yours are compelling and relevant.

Test and Optimize

Email personalization isn't one-size-fits-all. It requires ongoing testing to determine what works for your audience. Use A/B testing to try different personalization strategies, and refine your approach based on the results, using analytics and attribution data to see what's actually driving conversions rather than guessing.

Conclusion

Email marketing is no longer a one-size-fits-all effort. It requires meaningful interaction that leverages data, technology, and creativity. Email personalization strategies help you achieve your marketing goals and stand out in a crowded inbox. By delivering relevant, valuable content that resonates with your audience, including using browsing behavior as a signal, you build a more meaningful connection with your customers and a better bottom line. With Circle you can do all of this without stitching together five different tools, whether you're reaching people by email or through other channels.