it all depends on knowing your audience

[sakibkhan22197]

A word of caution, though: Only ask one or two of these personalization-oriented questions. The more fields you include in your forms, the lower your response rate .

Technique #2: Personalize the object
I've already highlighted how emails with personalized subject lines are more likely to be opened, so this one's a no-brainer.

But don't assume that simply adding the prospect's name or company in the subject line will magically do the job. You have to be more sophisticated than that.

A quick look at my inbox and it’s easy to find examples of smart subject line personalization. For example, Wayfair personalizes the subject line––and the entire content of its emails––based on the types of products I’ve browsed:



While travel site Matador Network uses my content preferences (mostly food and culture) to send highly relevant newsletters:



Again,.

Once you understand who they are and what they care about, it becomes much easier to write highly personalized subject lines that will make them want to click.

Technique #3: Personalize for the recipient's time zone
This may seem obvious, but it's surprising how often brands get it wrong.

Of course, if you only serve a very specific geographic area that includes a single time zone, you don't have to worry.

But if you have clients in the United States –– and even further afield –– you don’t want to be sending them an email at 6 p.m. with a message that begins, “Rise and shine, it’s a beautiful morning!”

Luckily, plenty of email marketing software platforms make it easy to schedule your messages to arrive in your audience’s inboxes at the time you want, no matter where they are located.

Technique #4: Send cart abandonment emails
Shopping cart abandonment is a big problem in the eCommerce world, with research from the Baymard Institute revealing that the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is nearly 70%.

Customers abandon shopping carts for a variety of reasons, from the price of additional costs like shipping and taxes to poor return policies:

Bar graph showing reasons for checkout abandonment among US adults in 2021. Key reasons include high extra costs (49%) and account creation (24%).

But just because they abandoned you once, it doesn't mean you fresh list can't convince them to come back with a timely cart abandonment email.

Abandoned cart emails are a great example of personalization because they are tied to a specific action taken by the customer. They couldn't be more relevant.

Let's say you abandoned a checkout because the additional fees were too high, then the next day the retailer emailed you a 10% discount code. Chances are, you'll go back and buy again, right?

So it's no surprise that these emails consistently record sky-high open rates above 40% :

Line graph showing the shopping cart abandonment open rate from 2016 to 2021, with rates fluctuating between 42% and 46%.