Technology

Don’t Let Poor Personalization Harm Your Email Marketing Strategy

A recent survey from Adobe finds that email is still a useful marketing medium—but personalization is greatly lacking, causing some major headaches for your email marketing strategy.

You may feel like the world has moved on to newer ways of distributing content online—but the truth is that email is holding its own, especially in the workplace.

And if you put a strong focus on personalization, you might ensure that users stick with it. According to a recent study from Adobe, the average consumer spends about five hours a day checking email—three hours for work email and two hours for personal email. While consumer email checking is on the decline (around 143 minutes per weekday in 2019, down from 162 the prior year), work email is up (209 minutes, compared with 198 the prior year).

But the problem that marketers, including those at associations, will struggle with is the overload element—with email users unable to read every email, let alone hit “Inbox Zero,” the competition is rising, and only a quarter of brand emails are deemed interesting enough to even open.

The problem isn’t solved by sending more emails, however: 38 percent of people at work and 43 percent of personal email users say they’re already emailed too often. On top of that, messages they get from you are too poorly targeted—something a quarter of workers and 23 percent of personal email users say they suffer from. (Another common headache? Getting emails urging consumers to buy something they’ve already bought—another sign of poor personalization.)

In a blog post, Adobe’s Sarah Kennedy, the vice president of global marketing for digital experiences, noted that poor personalization can be a missed opportunity to break through.

“It’s no secret that customers now expect personalized experiences both online and off,” Kennedy explained. “Accurate and useful personalization in email marketing is a must. Get their names right. Provide offers for products and promotions they’ve already expressed interest in.”

She also adds that the spray-and-pray approach may harm your campaigns’ overall impact. “Forget about mass emails to your entire subscriber list. Understand the implication of their gender, location, age, and whatever else you already know about them.”

(drogatnev/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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