At I-COM, we know that effective email marketing starts with data. Before any personalisation strategy can be implemented, it’s essential to evaluate existing customer data, assess segmentation efforts, and identify areas for improvement. If businesses fail to segment their audience effectively, their emails risk becoming generic and irrelevant, leading to disengagement and lost opportunities.
Personalisation ensures that every email sent has value to the recipient. Instead of sending the same message to an entire database, businesses can tailor content based on customer behaviour, preferences, and past interactions. This approach improves engagement rates and builds stronger relationships with customers over time.
What Is Personalisation?
Personalisation in email marketing is the process of tailoring email content to individual recipients using data insights. While basic personalisation includes addressing a recipient by name, advanced strategies go much further by customising subject lines, recommendations and dynamic content based on customer behaviour and interests.
Examples of personalisation in email marketing include:
- Dynamic content: adjusting email content based on customer data, such as showcasing different product recommendations based on previous purchases.
- Behaviour-based triggers: sending emails in response to specific actions, such as abandoned cart reminders or post-purchase follow-ups.
- Location-based offers: providing tailored promotions based on a customer’s geographical location.
- Purchase history segmentation: recommending products that align with previous buying habits.
Personalisation enhances the customer experience by making emails feel relevant rather than intrusive. Instead of receiving generic promotional content, customers get emails that reflect their preferences, needs and interests.
Why Personalisation Matters for Your Customers
Customers expect more from brands than ever before. Receiving irrelevant emails can lead to frustration and even cause customers to unsubscribe or mark messages as spam. Personalised emails improve the customer experience in several ways:
- Relevance: customers are far more likely to engage with an email that aligns with their interests and needs rather than one that feels random or generic.
- Convenience: personalised recommendations make it easier for customers to find the products or services that suit them, removing unnecessary steps in the purchasing process.
- Trust and loyalty: when customers see that a brand understands their preferences, they are more likely to continue engaging with its emails, leading to repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.
A study by McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions, and 76% get frustrated when personalisation is lacking. If businesses ignore this expectation, they risk losing engagement and falling behind competitors who invest in tailored email marketing strategies.
Why Personalisation is Important for Your Business
Beyond improving the customer experience, personalisation has direct benefits for businesses, making email marketing more effective and data-driven.
Better segmentation and data insights
Personalisation helps businesses refine their understanding of their audience by identifying customer segments based on purchase history, behaviour, and engagement levels. This allows for more strategic targeting and better overall campaign performance.
Higher click-through and open rates
Personalised emails consistently outperform non-personalised ones. Emails with a personalised subject line are 26% more likely to be opened, and tailored content leads to higher click-through rates (CTR). By making emails more relevant, businesses can drive more traffic to their website and increase conversions.
Reduced spam complaints and unsubscribes
When emails are relevant and engaging, customers are less likely to mark them as spam or unsubscribe. Personalisation ensures that recipients only receive content that aligns with their interests, reducing the risk of being seen as intrusive.
In short, personalisation allows businesses to maximise the effectiveness of their email marketing strategy, leading to better engagement, increased conversions and stronger customer relationships.
Optimisation Strategies: A/B Testing and Surveys
Personalisation should be an evolving process, continuously refined based on customer responses and data insights. Two key strategies for improving personalisation include A/B testing and customer surveys.
A/B testing
A/B testing allows businesses to experiment with different personalisation elements to determine what works best. Testing subject lines, email layouts, call-to-actions, and content variations can reveal what resonates most with different customer segments.
Surveys for customer insights
Gathering feedback through surveys helps businesses better understand customer preferences, allowing for even more targeted personalisation. Direct insights from customers can inform everything from product recommendations to email frequency and content preferences.
Expanding Personalisation Across Channels
While email marketing is a powerful tool on its own, personalisation can be extended across multiple digital channels for an integrated customer experience.
SMS marketing
Personalisation can be applied to SMS campaigns by sending tailored text messages based on customer behaviour and preferences. This ensures that messages feel relevant and timely rather than generic promotions.
Google Ads
Email engagement data can be used to refine Google Ads targeting, ensuring that audiences see relevant ads based on their interactions with previous emails.
Meta Suite (Facebook & Instagram Ads)
By using email segmentation data, businesses can create highly targeted social media ad campaigns, ensuring that customers see content aligned with their interests and past behaviours.
How to Personalise Emails and Segment Your Data
Personalisation relies on effective segmentation. Businesses can segment their email lists in several ways to create targeted campaigns:
- Behaviour-based segmentation: grouping customers based on their actions, such as website visits, abandoned carts or past purchases.
- Demographic segmentation: targeting users based on factors like age, location, gender, or job role.
- Engagement-based segmentation: identifying high-engagement customers versus inactive subscribers and tailoring messaging accordingly.
Lifecycle stage segmentation: creating different email flows for new subscribers, repeat customers and lapsed buyers.
Why Klaviyo Makes Email Personalisation Easy
At I-COM, we are proud Klaviyo partners, working with businesses to maximise the potential of their email marketing strategies. Klaviyo is a leading email marketing platform designed to simplify and enhance personalisation, making it easier for businesses to deliver relevant, data-driven content to their audiences. Unlike generic email marketing tools, Klaviyo offers deep integration with e-commerce platforms, enabling brands to build tailored experiences that drive engagement and conversions.
By leveraging Klaviyo’s advanced segmentation, automation, and AI-driven insights, businesses can create highly targeted email campaigns that adapt to customer behaviour in real time. Whether it’s abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase follow-ups, or personalised product recommendations, Klaviyo ensures that every interaction feels timely and relevant. Its user-friendly interface and robust analytics allow marketers to refine their strategies without requiring complex manual intervention.
Key benefits of using Klaviyo for email personalisation:
- Advanced segmentation tools: businesses can easily create highly specific customer segments based on purchase history, engagement and behaviours.
- Automation capabilities: Klaviyo enables personalised email sequences triggered by customer actions, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
- AI-driven insights: machine learning features help optimise campaigns by predicting customer preferences and identifying high-converting content.
- Seamless integration: Klaviyo integrates with e-commerce platforms, social media, and CRM systems, making it easy to apply personalisation across multiple channels.
As Klaviyo partners, we help businesses unlock the full potential of the platform, providing strategic guidance, implementation support, and campaign optimisation to drive measurable results.
Ready to Start Your Personalisation Journey?
At I-COM, we specialise in data-driven email marketing strategies that enhance personalisation and optimise results. Whether you’re looking to refine segmentation, improve engagement rates, or expand personalisation across multiple channels, we can help.
Enquire about I-COM’s email marketing services today and discover how we can elevate your email campaigns, get in touch with us today on 0161 402 3170, or fill out our online contact form.
