How To Personalize Your Email In 2023

If you’re reading this, you already know personalization does magic to your campaigns.

According to a study by Experian, personalized emails receive 26% increase in open rates. Another study by Dynamic Yield from 2017 found that up to an incredible 88% of users agree they are more likely to respond to an email favorably if it looks like it’s been specifically created for them.

For a truly individual approach you need to know not just your lead’s first and last name, but their location, company position and name, and, most importantly, their preferences and dislikes. Knowing exactly what your prospect wants from you is the most effective way to personalize your message.

Step 1: Choose the best data source

Any data you can find about your prospects can be used for personalization, from their favourite color to their dog’s name. But to make sure you have a consistent flow of data you need to choose the data source that’s best for your business (B2B or B2C), product, campaign size, etc.

Social networks

No source can compare to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Fresh information right from your leads, updated on a regular basis. Use data gathered from social networks to study the behavior of your prospects. Learn what makes them upset, happy or excited. Person’s social activity is also a good indicator of how willing they are to engage. People who take time to reply to tweets are more likely to reply to your email than those who don’t interact with their own followers.

Best for: small laser-targeted campaigns, TA analysis, both B2B and B2C.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a heaven for professional data, offering unique insight into people’s professional life, like their experience, relevant skills, company position, etc.

Another useful piece of data LinkedIn provides is professional reviews – Recommendations. They can be posted by the person’s employees or employers, or people they have previously collaborated with. This can give you unmatched insight into the person’s character.

If you happen to find and add your “ideal” prospect to your list of connections, it will allow you to expand your list of potential prospects through the so-called 2nd and 3rd connections. This pool of prospects is usually vast enough even for big campaigns. Use our guide on how to collect enriched data and email addresses of your 2nd and 3rd LinkedIn connections to create extremely enriched lists of prospects.

Best for: B2B, campaigns of all sizes.

Quora

This question and answer platform is usually used by marketers trying to push their products and services in case the question appears at the top of Google’s search results. However, Quora can also be a great way to analyze your audience and for B2B businesses to find potential clients/collaborators/partners.

Search through questions related to your field to find active businesses looking to promote their product. These businesses will most likely be interested in a valuable offer or a chance at promotion.

Don’t hesitate to also use Quora to analyze the problems and pains of your target audience.

Best for: B2B, small laser-targeted campaigns, TA analysis.

Other sources

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora are enough to satisfy your basic enriched data needs. However, if you want a deeper insight into you target audience in general, you can try some less obvious choices like Reddit, Telegram, and Feedly.

Similarly to Quora, find threads, blog posts, questions or answers to analyze your TA: create lists of do’s and don’ts, note your audience’s pain points, likes, and dislikes.

Best for: TA analysis.

To collect the emails and further enrich your data use Snov.io Email Finder extension for Chrome and build enriched prospect lists.

Step 2: Analyze the data

At this point you must know exactly who you are targeting (your perfect buyer persona), the size of your email campaign, and what data you will be using. If the buyer persona is usually established before lead generation even begins, the other two parameters are not as simple.

Your target persona

Depending on your product, your target audience can be a person or a company. Establish the perfect audience and always segment your leads.

The size of your email campaign

B2B campaigns tend to be smaller than B2C ones. This is because the product offered to businesses is usually more specialized and, of course, more expensive. Marketing such products to businesses, small or big, requires more research about the business.

Bear in mind, personalization for B2B campaigns targeted at small businesses will be similar to that in B2C campaigns. This is because such businesses are usually run by rather small, tightly-knit teams who will appreciate friendlier approach. Make sure you understand the pains this business is going through to make the best offer and seem knowledgeable enough about the company to know what you are talking about.

In general, smaller campaigns tend to be more personalized. Larger email campaigns usually use one piece of personalization besides the recipient’s name. The level of personalization is, however, completely up to you – you are only limited by your time and imagination.

Data you will be using

The gold standard of personalization is a name and a company name, if applicable. However, you can use any data you find to create a truly personal message. Just make sure you don’t overdo it with personalization: sending deeply personalized messages with excessive data you collected through a person’s social media account can intimidate them, and sometimes even cause outrage. Try not to come across as a stalker. You can get to know your prospect, sometimes even better than them, but use just enough data to make them feel valued, no more.

Step 3: Write a personalized message

After an extensive data research and analysis, you should have enough information on your prospect to write a personalized message. At this step you should abandon everything you’ve ever known about mainstream cold emailing techniques, as they will only hold you back.

Don’t use cliches or pre-made templates – they are the killers of good email copies. Make your message feel as if you are in an open face-to-face conversation with the recipient. Use your knowledge of their behavior and preferences to structure your message in an appealing way.

Name

First name and last name are the basics of personalization and (when possible) you should be using them in every personalized email you create, so we will not be covering that in depth. One thing to mention, however, is that you should not use both first and last name at the same time. Use first names for a friendlier, more casual feel (“Hi, Jessica”), and last names for emails that should have a highly official tone (“Greetings, Mr. Stevens”).

A nice place to start is with the company name. This will show your recipient that you have done your research on their work and are serious about building a connection for further cooperation.

Please note, for our examples we are using the attributes with curly braces – {{firstName}}, {{lastName}} and {{companyName}}. However, these change from email sender to email sender, so make sure you are using the ones that are recognized by the one you are using for your email campaign.

Try to identify the pain points of your prospects.Show them you can relate and are aware of the specific problems they are facing.

Position or qualifications

Use what you know about your prospect’s position or their qualifications to appeal to them through praise. For example, if they wrote an article on their specific professional topic, use this article as a way to point out their remarkable proficiency in a that field or problem. In this case, you will use attribute tags to mention the article your prospect worked on.

Obviously, this would be a highly targeted, small email campaign. Nevertheless, such personalization and genuine interest will charm the prospect.

Quora… Again

If you manage to collect such highly specific data, use your prospect’s Quora questions or comments as a reference in your mail. When replying to questions, a company may use their company account. You can then track the necessary department representative by searching through email addresses on their website with an email finder extension.

Praise their answer, their expertise, or their helpfulness. This is a good way to search for a collaboration or partnership.

Tweets

To convince prospects that they are unique, use your awareness of their activity on social media. This will show them that you truly care about their opinion. Refer to individual tweets they may have posted or retweeted. You can even use a link to that specific tweet in your attribute.

Don’t forget

You can use anything you want in your email, as long as you use it right. If you want to use a piece of highly personal or specific information (their dog’s name, their car model, etc.) make sure you do it only if it’s relevant to your product.

For example, do not use info on their favorite TV show if you are selling medical equipment, or the aforementioned car model if you sell pet products. Don’t make it creepy.

The main idea of personalization is to treat each prospect as an individual and only use relevant, accurate information.

Step 4: Create a triggered email drip campaign

Personalization doesn’t stop at your email copy. Recipients should receive emails depending on how they react to your campaign. Email drip campaigns is one way to do it.

Based on your prospects’ interaction with the campaign, they will receive different follow-up emails if they open the initial email, click a link in it, or ignore it completely.

To find out more about email drip campaigns,  read this guide to using Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns.

Conclusion

When creating a personalized email in 2023, you have to be creative. Don’t limit yourself in creativity, but always keep in mind these rules:

• Focus on quality, not quantity
• Use only relevant data
• Keep it natural, human-like and friendly
• Don’t be afraid to use casual style

Use personalization to build meaningful and trustworthy relationships with your audience.