By Christopher Lester, Emma
Digital marketing changes swiftly for retailers, almost as rapidly as consumers’ attention spans. Grabbing the attention of customers is tougher than ever, but with ever-changing and improving tools at their fingertips retailers that are willing to innovate will lead the pack. Enter: Dynamic content.
Gone are the days of blanketing an email subscriber list with a one-size-fits-all coupon and seeing the biggest possible results. Dynamic content is a retailer’s best friend for getting customers in the door and items in their online shopping carts.
Dynamic content takes personalization to a new level, allowing retailers to target individual subscribers with personalized content — all from a single email. That makes dynamic content the ever-adapting chameleon of the wild marketing rainforest: Changing itself based on demographics or preferences of subscribers.
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With uses ranging from simply inserting a subscriber’s name into a subject line to switching out images and full copy according to purchase history or interests, dynamic content is amazingly diverse. The more personalized the content, the more effective the message.
Below are three ways dynamic content can improve email marketing:
#1: Customers feel tailored to.
Dynamic content provides a personal touch to email communications. Insight into each customer’s specific interests and content preferences helps to individually tailor copy, images and other content to the specific subscriber.
Marketers can target individual subscribers with different content even when they’re on the same mailing list. Nike used a dynamic content approach in this email — the image and copy changed depending on whether it was targeted to a male or a female customer.
Without dynamic content, this email strategy would be complicated and time-consuming. But with some simple copy and pasting of code, the Nike marketing team can create a customized experience that’s relatable and invites engagement. The result? Every email subscriber feels like the brand understands their interests, creating a feeling of community and common ground.
#2 Subscribers stay longer.
Here’s a not-so-fun-fact: The average email list churns by about 30% every year. That means you’ll lose one out of every three of your current subscribers in the next 12 months. And since 56% of people unsubscribe from emails due to content that’s no longer relevant, personalized content is a modern marketer’s most timesaving and effective weapon in fighting the battle against subscriber attrition.
Dynamic content takes personalization to a whole new level, allowing marketers to target individual subscribers with different content — all from a single email. It’s also incredibly diverse — uses range from simply inserting your subscriber’s name into a subject line, to switching out images and full copy according to purchase history or interests. The more personalized the content, the more effective the message — and the less likely your customers are likely to click “unsubscribe.”
#3 Results come quite easily.
The best part, retailer friends? Dynamic content’s not just the flavor of the month for no reason. It works, and it’s so easy to use.
Dynamic content is incredibly adaptable — it works with whatever data fields you’re capturing from your audience, whether that’s location, purchase history or spirit animal (sea otter, since you asked). It’s also easily trained— it only displays the content you tell it to in response to the data fields you assign.
Integrating email marketing software with other marketing and CRM tools like Shopify, Eventbrite, Salesforce and Formstack is a low-effort strategy that creates an endless stream of customer data for you to use. If you have information on your customers’ interests, location and past purchases, why not tailor the best message possible for them? If you’re not, you’re missing out on revenue — 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels.
Dynamic content can improve click-to-open rates by as much as 73%, AVARI reports. And if you want to see the impact in dollars and cents, consider this: Personalized promotional emails also lift transaction rates and revenue six times higher than non-personalized emails, according to Experian.
You simply can’t argue with the numbers: a 14% improvement in click-through rates and a 10% increase in conversions could be game changers for some brands.
For more tips on dynamic content and other modern marketing must-haves, download our Field Guide.
Christopher Lester is the VP of Sales at Emma, where he leads the team of experts who provide strategic and tactical services to all Emma clients as well as specialized support to large senders and significant brands. Lester’s extensive experience in sales and marketing makes him the perfect ally for businesses trying to engage customers with email. And his passion for celebrating in style — we’re talking anything from a stellar open rate to his dog Olive’s birthday — just makes him extra fun to be around.
