How dynamic content can increase your newsletters' ROI.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Did you know that a personnlized / relevant e-mail can generate up to 18 times more revenue than simple mass mailing? Knowing these numbers, it's no wonder why all the big companies personnalize all the e-mails they send their clients!

Before taking a look at how to use dynamic content, we'll analyze the difference between list segmentation and dynamic content.

List segmentation vs dynamic content

List segmentation:

A list of items you categorized depending on certain criterias. For example, you could split all your subscribers by age, gender, profession, revenue, purchase history, interests, etc.

When talking about newsletters, you use list segmentation to create different campaigns for each one of your lists. So you'll create a specific campaign for those who have an interest in snowmobiling (everyone with an interest in snowmobiling would get the same e-mail), and a 2nd campaign for people who like shopping.

This very efficient solution requires lots of time to manage all those different campaigns because you need to create campaigns for a wide range of lists if you want to cover all your userbase.

Dynamic content:

Adapt your content depending on pre-set parameters. For example, you could display someone's previous order details (of course, everyone would see different orders in their e-mail).

When talking about newsletters, you use dynamic content to display, for example, your client's name. Of course, dynamic content doesn't stop there. You can display any and all the information you've kept in your database about this client.

This solution allows you to create a single campaign, but adapt its content depending on your client's interests. It's not only very efficient, but takes alot less time ton manage than list segmentation

Purchase history

Using someone's purchase history to sell something is one of the most efficient tactics companies use. You can use their previous purchases to create a campaign that adapts its content depending on the products they previously ordered.

You could offer someone to purchase the same product (if it's something essential or seasonal), or you could also offer similar products that you believe would interest that customer.

You might also send someone an e-mail to remind them that they forgot something in their cart, and offer them to buy it with an additional coupon.

Personal information

Of course, personal information is also one of the most-used data when building dynamic content. As mentionned earlier, using someone's name in your newsletter really helps to get their attention. That person now knows that this e-mail really is sent to her, so it comes from a source she knows and it's not just general spam. 

You can basically use all the information you have available to make your content even more relevant. Whether it's using their gender (e.g.: try to sell a dress instead of a pair of jeans), their birthday (to wish them happy birthday while sending them a special coupon) or their profession (to send products linked with their job), all these information can help you increase your newsletter's ROI.

Geolocation

Geolocation is an efficient way of increasing your e-mail's ROI. You could, for example, send an e-mail about a specific event and directly plug in the travel directions from that person's home!

You can even target products depending on what's happening where they are. For example, you would send someone who's in California beach products while sending someone in the middle of a snowstorm snowblowers and shovels.

Shameless sales pitch ;)

Of course, at Numerique.ca, we're able to help build all the tools you need to generate dynamic content e-mails. Just give us a call! ;)