Increasing Personalization in Messages
By Jim Kinkade
Message personalization plays a primary factor
in successful bulk email marketing.
According to Jupiter Research, inserting a person's
name into an email increases open rates by as
much as 10%. But higher action levels for messages
can be attained when each individual listed in
a database table receives a personalized message
that includes relevant information about him or
her. By effectively using information fields stored
in the database, a mass email marketer can tailor
an email message to the customer dynamically via
merge fields. The higher the quality of information
gathered during the subscription process, the
more personalized the message can be to a given
customer.
First name, last name, subscription date, and
items purchased are just a few examples of the
merge data which can be used to highly personalize
email messages. Almost any information stored
in fields within the database can be easily used
to personalize an email message. The merge field
is the basic tool for message personalization
in both Campaign Enterprise
and Email
Marketing Director.
Merge fields work like this: when an email message
compiles, the value of the field replaces the
merge field placeholder, which is the field name
surrounded by curly braces e.g.
{First_Name}. When the recipient sees the
message, they will see "Jim"
and not {First_Name}
in the salutation. Using Arial Software products,
merge fields can be inserted in the message body,
subject line or the destination URL of a click
through link, to pass unique information back
to the database.
Properly placed merge fields can remind the
subscriber of the date they signed up, and what
information they provided. Giving them a link
to where they can manage their subscription is
a good practice and is easily accomplished by
adding merge fields to the destination URL, passing
user information to login page links. The person
receiving the email message need only click to
go to the correct page, and automatically log
in from the email message. The destination URL
may look like this:
http://www.domain.com/userlogin.asp?uid{UID}?pass{Password}
There is no more fumbling, or struggling on
the part of the customer to remember or retrieve
their login information, they merely click from
their inbox.
Case statements and other dynamic content use
fields in the database as triggers. The trigger
fields determine which information is included
in the dynamic email message. For example when
the following case statement is added to the message
body:
{CASE WHEN OrgType=1 THEN
"{Field1}" WHEN OrgType=2 THEN "{Field2}" ELSE
THEN "{Field3}" END}
Then, the value of Field1, Field2 or Field 3
appears in the email message. Field1 and Field2
are additional fields stored in the database table.
In this case if the OrgType in any of the records
is equal to 1 the value in the table for the field
named Field1 will appear in the message. If the
ID is equal to 2 then the value in the table for
the field named Field2 will appear. In all other
cases, the value in Field3 will appear in the
message. Large blocks of text are available in
the fields when the message compiles. These fields
can easily be populated with information gathered
during the original subscription form. The subscriber
might indicate that they want to receive coupons
along with the monthly newsletter; the coupon
field could be used as a trigger to append the
newsletter with the coupons for those records
in the database that chose to receive them. This
is all done automatically for each individual
in the email list.
The closer an email message mirrors a real two
way conversation, the greater the chances are
for the mass email marketer to obtain their desired
results. Recently conducted research indicates
that showing users a product they'd previously
considered leads to immediate purchases by 60%
of respondents, and deferred purchases by 58%.
Engaging customers with previously obtained data
is a good way to continue a productive relationship.
And since the mass email marketer has hundreds
or thousands of people to contact, dynamic message
personalization is the key to increasing email
message relevancy. -- Arial Software
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