It’s 2016 and consumers aren’t looking to work with businesses that look, feel and act like a faceless corporation. In decades past, consumers haven’t been as focused on the personality presented by a company or store they frequented. What mattered was that they made good products and offered top-quality services.With personal aspects of businesses now easily accessible through the Internet and social media, the times have changed. Of course products and services still matter a great deal, but a business’ personality is equally as important to an audience base that cares about interaction. This is why social media platforms have gotten so big in recent years – engagement is king on the Internet right now.When discussing “value” in this day and age, your business’ image and personality is included in the definition. This is important to remember when crafting the content for your email newsletter. Anyone can craft an email, but only you can create a newsletter that’s customized to your business and image.When you include a more personal messages in your email – both in the form of customer personalization, as well as thoughts from you as a speaker for your business – you increase your possibility for engagement and lead generation.The good news? It’s possible to incorporate this kind of custom personal element to every email newsletter you send.
Transactional vs Promotional Emails
First, let’s go over some Email Marketing 101. Marketing emails typically fall into two different categories.
- Promotional Emails are sent out based on certain campaign goals. They’re custom built, usually have a hyper specific target audience in mind and specifically discuss a goal or product you’re trying to promote.
- Transactional Emails are akin to the emails your customer receives every time they make a purchase through your website. Anything that is sent after a prompted response, like password resets or shipping emails, etc.
Just by taking a look at these two distinct types of email, you can probably take a guess at which business owners most focus on. There’s going to be a lot of call for personalization in a newsletter, of course, but who looks for personality in an email about username recovery?Despite this making sense, transactional emails get opened more than promotional emails, according to Experian, and this is key information. If you sign up for a newsletter service for a forum you frequent, which email are you more likely to open: one that alerts you to a notification on your post, or one that’s compiling threads you frequent the most.
Jumpstarting Email Interest
There’s a difference between personalization and pseudo-personalization in email marketing. Pseudo-personalization is content that is friendly and engaging, but it’s only masquerading as truly customized content for consumers. You’ve seen the messages in your own inbox: “Dear Valued Customer, we appreciate your order.”Unfortunately nothing about that speaks to a consumer directly.Easy steps to making email newsletters more personal include:
- Including the client name in the content at least twice.
- Specifically mentioning their purchases.
- Make suggestions based on their prior purchases / visited pages.
- Incorporate your customer into the goal of your newsletter.
Creating Personal Copy
Your email newsletter has to be engaging to your consumer or it will deleted. or even worse the recipient may even unsubscribe from your list altogether.Look at Redbox’s email newsletters. They all give a similar purpose to the consumer (reminding them to watch a movie and showing them current available titles), but they also include a custom element. When Redbox customers view the Redbox site while logged into their account, their promotional emails include notifications about their relevant history. This includes availability notifications and suggestions based on previous rentals.Base your standard email newsletter content on largely popular consumer trends and then include areas of personalization. This strikes a balance between giving the customer a sense that you care and acknowledge their use of your products and services while maintaining a healthy distance.
Love Customers and They’ll Love You
Another great tip can be found in this HubSpot blog: be lovable. In this context, the blog speaks on letting your own brand’s personality shine through and building a customer relationship on this concept. Just like other relationships, the bond between a customer and a business is one that is a two way street.If you want to use your own business’ personality as a means of promotion and engagement, you owe it to your customers to make the connection symbiotic. When your customers appreciate your business’ personality, and you also acknowledge your customers as individuals, everybody wins.
