Better opening rates, clicks, conversion, and more engagement, what do you think about that? It is possible, only if you provide the right information to each individual.
Nowadays, people expect a company to know their interests and present them with products they will like. To get there without working like crazy, you have to use dynamic content. It allows to deliver offers adapted to each contact while meeting their high expectations.
The Dialog Insight application contains several features that can handle dynamic content, but before you use it, you need to know what it is. Here is the ABC of dynamic content!
Segmentation vs dynamic content
Let’s start with the difference between list segmentation and dynamic content. You can create as many segments as you want based on the characteristics of your readers. The difficulty (or the nightmare if you really have a lot!) will come when you have to manually deploy different messages to each of your segments. Indeed, with segmentation, you have to create as many messages as there are segments, because they have differences (it’s why you segmented them!).
With dynamic content, you only have to create a single message in which some of the sections change according to conditions. In this way, you are not limited to the initial segmentation criterion, since the conditions can refer to several data recorded on the user’s profile.
Thus, it is possible to edit entire sections of the message, or just a few elements of an email, say an image or a call to action. In this way, dynamic content makes your campaign more relevant to the interests and behaviours of your subscribers. It also allows you to deploy only one campaign for your entire list, or part of it, if it meets the stated conditions.
Dynamic content criteria
There are several options available to you for choosing the conditional content of your messages. Some are more basic, while others require a powerful tool to store a large amount of customer data. This is the case, for example, for eCommerce site that record the actions of individuals who buy or abandon their shopping cart. Here are some examples of criteria on which to base dynamic content.
1. Purchase process
In marketing, it is important to communicate according to the stage of the buying process. People in the discovery phase do not seek the same information at all as those who are in the process of comparison. For example, a message will be different when a customer downloads a PDF document then a prospect downloading the same document. On the one hand, the client knows and probably uses your product / service, while on the other, the prospect seeks to know more. So you have to talk to them differently.
2. Past purchases
Purchases are a mine of important information in relation to your contact. You have the ability to provide dynamic content according to the actions carried during his shopping. In the easy options, you can present complementary or similar products to a recent purchase. This could allow you to re-engage, or increase the value of a product complementary to a purchase made.
In fact, the recommendation of personalized products in an email is so effective that it can increase the click rate by over 300%.
3. Abandoned carts
A user who goes to a shopping cart, enter his personal information and then decides to leave is giving you something big. It gives you access to some essential information, and you should take advantage of that. Some companies use it to provide additional discounts for abandoned products, or otherwise remind the person what he/she is missing, as shown in the Puma image below.
In fact, it is important to mention that sending a notification related to the abandoned shopping cart gets an average open rate of 40.5%. What’s even more interesting is that one in five users will complete their purchase after opening this email.
So do not overlook dynamic content that is based on the abandoned baskets
4. Behaviours
Like the principle of past purchases, it is possible to create dynamic content based on a subscriber’s actions on a website. For example, if this person has visited the page of a product several times, it is possible to send the same product as a purchase suggestion. In fact, personalization related to online behavior is also another mine of information that is worth exploiting. Just think about the stored information, then use it for different targeting.
5. Gender
This is a very simple element of differentiation, but oh so important! Use the sex of your recipient to present suitable offers. As the images below show, Nike sends a promotion mounted on the same email template, clearly part of the same campaign. It contains two different images and calls to action leading to different parts of the site. This level of customization is necessary for some businesses, and dynamic content can limit the effort that is put into deploying this type of communication.
6. Age
In the same vein, age can also be used to personalize the images of an email so that the audience feels more challenged. Aiming at couples, teenagers or older people through images clearly identifies who a message is addressed to.
The content can also be an interesting element to personalize. For example, for a company working in personal finance, do not send content on retirement to your clients in their twenties. And conversely, your older clients have no interest in receiving content that talks about student margins or buying a first home.
Tailor your content to all your age groups to be as relevant as possible and offer content for each of these age groups. You will keep these customer segments longer.
7. Geolocation
I have already received some super-tempting offers only available to people living in the United States. It’s so frustrating! Especially if access to this product is possible locally and the price does not undergo any modification. In short, if you know the place of residence of your contacts, please use it! This allows you to submit local offers while displaying the nearest store. You can also send a message in the correct time zone.
Wrapping it up…
Using dynamic content is a way to work well, in that you save time in editing elements while being much more interesting for those who will receive it. There is also so many ways to use it that the only limit is your creativity (and your tool!). I will also review, in a future article, the different ways to use Dialog Insight to do this task.
