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Email Marketing Guide 2: Email design & content

5. Personalised email newsletters

Many marketers confuse personalisation with relevance. Just putting in a "Dear Bob" field into an email that contains the exact same content as everyone else's email is obvious and puts people off. Of course there are reasons why you would want to personalise by name - banks, insurance companies, etc are expected to have personal details and have a personal relationship with the recipient. But subscribers generally care about WHAT you're sending them and how relevant it is, rather than how personal you are with them.

One of the most personalised email newsletters amongst our clients does not feature a "Dear Bob" anywhere in it. Instead it is personalised by its very specific and relevant content. It comes from the reader's Account Manager, has a letter from the area General Manager for the reader's region and contains regional news of interest to the reader.

Making your email newsletter relevant

Here are just a few ideas to make your email newsletters more relevant, and in turn more personal:

• The opening welcome message in your email newsletters is from a person known to the subscriber.
• The information contained in your email newsletters relates to the specific model, product or service the subscriber has.
• If you are promoting events only list events in the geographical area of the subscriber.
• The time sent relates to the geographic location.
• Offer the subscriber a subscribe panel giving options on what they'd like to receive in their email from you.

Areas covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Email newsletter subject lines
• Email newsletter layout
• Email newsletter content
• > Personalised email newsletters
• Email call to action