How to Boost Email Conversions with Dynamic Content
There was a time not so long ago when marketers sent bulk email campaigns that used the same message and design for everyone on the email list. Those times are over. Today, savvy email marketers know that generic messages deliver poor results. Instead, the marketers that get the most conversions are sending highly-targeted messages to laser-focused audiences. As a result, their ROI is skyrocketing.
The good news is you can do it, too. I’m not just talking about just personalizing the message subject line or the greeting. Those things help, but what I’m talking about is using dynamic content to improve message relevancy, reduce unsubscribes, increase engagement, and boost conversions.
What is Dynamic Content?
Dynamic content is adaptable, smart content. It changes based on the person who sees it. In your email marketing messages, dynamic content could be a headline, image, call to action, offer, or any other element that you choose. You create a single message and then set up the criteria identifying who sees which content within your message using your email marketing platform. Next, you upload all of your variable assets, proofread and test them, and send your campaign.
When you use dynamic content, you save time and frustration by creating and tracking everything through a single campaign. Your email marketing tool automatically handles matching the right content to the right recipients, so everyone gets the most relevant message and your results improve.
Not only is it common sense that more relevant messages will produce better results, but research proves it! According to Jupiter Research, relevant emails drive 18X more revenue than generic, non-targeted messages. In addition, 56% of people unsubscribe from emails if the content isn’t relevant to them.
But that’s not all. Research from AVARI found that dynamic content can increase open rates by up to 73%. In other words, the ROI on dynamic content can be significant, and you should be using it in your email marketing campaigns.
4 Ways to Use Dynamic Content in Your Email Campaigns
Once you understand how dynamic content can improve your email marketing results, you need to figure out how to use it in your email campaigns. The key is to consider the data you currently have and the data you can collect in the future. In order to develop email marketing campaigns that effectively leverage dynamic content, you need to know what content changes could make certain segments of your audience more likely to follow a message’s call to action, and you need to actually have the data to support those changes.
To help you start brainstorming how you can use dynamic content in your email marketing, here are four common strategies that you can use:
1. Demographic Profiles
Demographic profiles include data related to age, race, marital status, income, level of education, parental status, geographic location, and so on.
Example: A restaurant could send the same message to its entire list but change the offer and images to match the recipients’ parental status. Parents would receive a free kid’s meal with the purchase of an adult entrée and non-parents would receive a discount off of two adult entrees.
2. Behavioral Profiles
Dynamic content is very powerful when it’s used based on behavioral profiles. As the name implies, behavioral profiles include data related to all behaviors you can track such as prior purchases, pages visited on your website, and so on.
Example: A pet store can create one message that shows different information based on customers’ prior purchases. People who purchased dog products in the past would get an offer for dog products, while people who purchased cat products would get a message promoting cat products.
3. Stage of the Marketing Funnel
As a person moves through the marketing funnel from the top to the bottom, the messages you send to them should change. You can use dynamic content to automatically change the information your contacts see based on whether they’re at the top of the funnel (leads), middle of the funnel (nurturing), or bottom of the funnel (conversion).
Example: A software company could send the same message to everyone on its list but change the offer so leads at the top of the funnel receive educational content explaining what the software does, people in the middle of the funnel receive a real-world case study from a relevant business, and people at the bottom of the funnel receive an offer for a free demonstration of the software.
4. Buyer Personas
Buyer personas go beyond the demographic profiles of your email list members. They also include information about each person’s behavioral and psychographic attributes. This includes things like the stores they shop in, the websites they visit, the television shows they watch, and the places they vacation.
Example: A clothing store can target people based on the types of vacations they take during spring break by promoting winter clothes to people who typically choose ski destinations and summer clothes to people who prefer the beach.
Integrating Dynamic Content into Your Email Marketing Strategy
One of the most important things I can tell you about dynamic content is this – be careful! Make sure you’re using accurate data and an email marketing platform that enables you to use dynamic content reliably. You definitely don’t want to send messages that include errors because the dynamic content isn’t displaying correctly to the right people.
Finally, it’s critical that you test your dynamic content to ensure it works correctly. Use an email QA and review tool like ProofJump to ensure all reviewers can see and test the dynamic content so there are no mistakes when you press the send button! You can schedule a free demo of ProofJump to see exactly how easy it makes the process of reviewing and approving dynamic content for your team and/or clients.
