The effectiveness of email marketing is widely recognized, as it is often rated the top marketing channel. However, personalization is increasingly becoming a key strategy that must be considered. Recently, the team at VentureBeat conducted a great study on the impact of personalization in email marketing. They surveyed around 200 email marketers and gained valuable insights into the future of this powerful marketing approach.
One of the key findings in VentureBeat’s study was how personalization impacts open rates. Around 95% of the marketers surveyed said that open rates increase when they personalize their emails. Additionally, unsubscribe rates go down when emails are personalized. These two points highlight the power of personalization, but let’s explore more of VentureBeat’s findings!
Here’s exactly how much personalization affected their email marketing efforts: 21.3% of the 200 marketers saw an open rate increase of 5-10%, and 20.8% of them saw a 15-20% increase. The third highest increase was in the 0-5% range, noticed by 17.8% of the marketers. While only 4.5% saw a total increase of 50-70+%, that’s a huge number, and it’s suggestive that it can only grow larger as personalization efforts improve over time. It’s also worth noting that 9.1% of marketers saw an increase in open rate of 20-30%, and 7.% saw an increase of 30-40%.
While addressing your recipients by name is only a small part of email personalization, it was found to be the most popular by marketers: 32% of marketers personalize by name, 29.4% do so by Social Profile, and demographics (age and gender) won third place at 27.4%. It’s worth noting that as automation services improve, it’s conceivable that other verticals like “previous interactions,” “call history,” and “web browsing history” could come to replace the top three. Check out the graphic below for more details :)
One of the more interesting findings by VentureBeat concerns how many segments marketers personalize email for. The highest percentage of segments was in the 2-5 range, which took 28%. 6-8 segments took second place at 20%, and 10-15 and 16-25 tied at 14% apiece. 100+ segments had only 3%, and individualized (segmented to an individual level) took 7%. See graphic below for more details.
