Looking for marketing channels that drive consistent results? Look no further than email marketing, which has a built-in audience of 4.37 billion people.
Of course, things aren’t quite that simple. Your potential customers already receive dozens of emails from their favorite brands every day. As a result, they’re slowly becoming immune to anything they can find in their inbox.
At first glance, this is something you can solve with personalized content. The only problem: it’s hard to personalize your emails at a large enough scale. Well, that’s where dynamic emails come in.
What is a dynamic email, you ask? Read on to find out more about this marketing strategy and how to use it for your business!
Table of Contents
What is a Dynamic Email?
A dynamic email allows you to show personalized content to specific audience groups. You can segment these groups based on age, location, and so on.
In a dynamic email, you can personalize sections like text, visuals, and CTAs. When you send that email out, only a selected audience will see it. Everyone else will only see the rest of that email’s contents.
This has plenty of practical implications in marketing. Let’s say you want to send a newsletter that mentions a special event in New York. The newsletter is relevant to all recipients, but the event is only interesting to New Yorkers.
Should you create a new email list for this message? No; it’s better to have the event part show as dynamic content in the newsletter. That way, only your target audience in New York will find out about the event.
Types of Dynamic Email Content
As mentioned, dynamic emails allow you to personalize text, visuals, and CTAs. Here’s how each of these types of content can benefit from it.
1. Text
With dynamic emails, you can personalize any part of the copy. A common example is including the recipient’s name in the body of the email. This has become a common practice, but it still helps draw a customer’s attention.
Another thing you can personalize is the subject line. This has the tangible benefit of providing a higher email open rate. Studies show that 47% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line.
2. Visuals
Images, videos, and visual content can make your emails more engaging. That said, your customers have many needs and interests. Visuals that would be a hit with one target audience will miss the mark with another.
For example, let’s say you find a meme that most millennials would enjoy. However, other demographic groups are unlikely to get the reference. By using the meme as dynamic email content, this is no longer an issue.
3. CTAs
CTAs (or calls to action) encourage recipients to take specific actions. CTAs improve click-through rates, so all your newsletters should include them. With dynamic content, you can make CTAs even more relevant to customers.
Benefits of Dynamic Email
The main reason why dynamic emails are so popular is that they bring so many benefits to the table. Here are some common examples:
Personalized Customer Experience
The more unique your emails are, the more special your recipients will feel. Among other things, this is essential for brand awareness. By connecting your customers to your brand, you can move them down the sales funnel.
Greater Marketing Efficiency
Personalizing your emails takes a lot of effort to do right. In the past, marketers had to spend hours creating messages for different sections. Even with a robust email distribution list, this was a lot of work.
With dynamic email marketing, this is no longer an issue. Instead of creating unique emails for every lead, you can create templates for all customer segments. You can then personalize those templates based on their needs.
Tailored Content
Getting someone to subscribe to your newsletter is a big deal. If they take the time to read your content, you should make it count. The easiest way to do that is to find out what they’re interested in and give them that.
This is why many companies across different industries use dynamic emails. eCommerce sites, for instance, can use them to show personalized offers. Consider how your business can make the most of this feature.
Improved ROI
Today’s consumers want to see that businesses care about them. If you treat them like a cog in the machine, they’ll start looking elsewhere. That’s why sending dynamic content is the best way to up your engagement rates.
Increasing your engagement rates can also lead to more conversions. If your customers know your brand can help them, they’re more likely to convert. With dynamic content, you can address your customers’ specific pain points.
How to Create Dynamic Emails
Now that you know how dynamic emails can help your business, let’s talk about how to use them. At its core, this is a three-step process.
Step 1: Collect Customer Data
Like most effective forms of advertising, email marketing relies on data. To personalize your emails, you need to know who you’re sending them to.
Your website can be a solid starting point for any data collection effort. Every time someone visits your site, the system keeps track of them. See which pages they visit to find out more about their interests.
Next, try to get direct feedback from existing customers. Provide as many ways for customers to provide feedback as you can. Reviews and surveys are particularly helpful when it comes to gathering data.
Another way to get customer feedback is during the sign-up process. When someone signs up for your newsletter, ask them which issues they want to solve. This will help you create and cater your content to their needs.
Step 2: Segment Your Subscribers
Once you have a hefty email list, start segmenting your contacts. Doing so will allow you to create more targeted emails for each group. Some common ways to segment your subscribers include:
- Their industry
- Lead source
- Customer type (B2B, B2C, etc.)
- Type and size of business
- Region or location
- Engagement with previous emails
- Position in the marketing funnel
- Purchase history
Regardless of how many groups you create, make sure they consist of valid email addresses. The best way to do that is to use an email verification tool to clean up your email list.
Step 3: Customize Your Content
Once you have your customer groups, create a basic template for each one. Then, personalize those templates based on your customers’ data.
Some of the data points all marketers use are customer demographics. These include age, gender, and education. As basic as this information is, it’s a good starting point when crafting your dynamic email on Gmail.
You should also consider your customer’s emotions. This can include anything from their goals and values to desires and interests. This is the type of data that you should gather through surveys.
Finally, it can pay to look at behavioral data. For instance, you can look at someone’s purchase history to recommend similar products. You can also find out a lot from the ways customers decide to interact with your company.
Dynamic Email Marketing Tips
By now, you should have a decent idea of how to create a dynamic email campaign. Here are some additional tips to fill in the blanks.
1. Update Subscriber Profiles
Everything we’ve talked about so far relies on having accurate customer profiles. For example, let’s say all you have from a customer is their email address. If so, you won’t have the data to create dynamic content for them.
This is why you should always update all subscriber profiles before starting an email marketing campaign. The specifics will depend on the CRM software you use. If you don’t use software, you should get on that right away.
2. Track the Right Metrics
Tracking the performance of your email marketing campaign is key to its success. Without seeing how your subscribers react to your emails, you won’t know if you need to make changes or not.
With so many metrics to track, it’s tough to focus on the ones that matter. That said, one data point you’ll always need is the click rate per each dynamic block in the email. If it’s low, it’s clear your recipients aren’t interested.
3. Plan Out Your Content
When writing your email content, it can help you to consider which sections will be dynamic first. If you want to personalize the CTA, for example, you can try to make your content lead to the CTA more naturally.
Dynamic Emails and You
These days, providing a unique customer experience is at the core of any marketing strategy. Using dynamic email content is the best way to get there.
Hopefully, this answers your question of “What is a dynamic email?” As you can see, using this type of content can involve a lot of research. The above guide will let you know what to focus on in your marketing campaign!
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Dewang Goyal is a seasoned expert in the expansive field of email marketing, boasting a track record that spans over a decade of transformative digital communication strategies. As a regular contributor to the MailVerifier.io blog, he offers deep insights and practical advice, helping businesses navigate the challenges and opportunities of digital communication. His articles range from the art of creating compelling email campaigns to the strategies needed for maximum audience engagement.
With a solid foundation in Computer Science, Dewang merges the worlds of technology and marketing seamlessly. This unique perspective allows him to approach email marketing from both a technical and a strategic angle, ensuring that his readers and clients benefit from comprehensive guidance.