People are often surprised at how effective email marketing is today. While some are under the impression that email died off a few years ago, these people are gravely mistaken. Email consistently pulls in a higher return on investment than other digital marketing tactics, including social media marketing and pay-per-click advertising. While it can be tricky to put together a great email campaign, dynamic email marketing can open the door to doing just that - even, or especially, in 2021.

What is dynamic email marketing?

Dynamic email marketing is the personalization of email messages using dynamic content. In other words, it’s sending the same email to your list of contacts, but the content within changes depending on the segmenting protocols that you define.

In today's digital world, personalization equals relevancy, and relevancy is contingent upon the data you collect.

For example, if you have collected location information from your contacts, you could use dynamic content based on location in an email marketing campaign inviting them to attend events held in their specific geographic areas. After all, the likelihood of a Chicago resident attending a local event in Chicago is much higher than that of the same resident attending a cross-country event in San Francisco.

In fact, in a recent study, using dynamic content based on location increased email click-through rates by 29%.

Many people think dynamic email marketing is the same as list segmentation, but it isn't. List segmentation requires sending out a different email to each individual list. While this is still a good way to deliver the right email message to the right person at the right time, creating multiple emails takes time. With dynamic content, you only create and send one email. 

For example, let’s say you’re an online retailer and you want to send out emails targeting people who abandon their shopping carts. Instead of creating a separate email for each and every abandoned cart, you could create one email with dynamic content that changes based on each individual's cart contents. Of course, this also requires you to collect the applicable data via your online shop.

What Do you need for dynamic emails?

To start sending these highly relevant email campaigns, you need to have (and have access to) a customer relationship management (CRM) database. A CRM is where all the information about your contacts should be stored, and is ultimately what allows you to send emails with dynamic content.

Many CRMs allow you to create custom contact properties for tailoring your marketing to your business, so having an in-depth understanding of your CRM is essential to setting up successful dynamic email marketing campaigns.

You also need to understand your customers. At what point are they in their buying journey? Are they ready to buy or simply researching? Using inbound email marketing best practices will allow you to better understand and connect with your target audience, so you can deliver the message they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it.

Why do dynamic emails work?

Put simply, dynamic emails work because they’re relevant to each and every contact who receives them. Batch-and-blast emails are dying off, and they continually under perform because they’re irrelevant to the majority of recipients.

Dynamic emails use contextual marketing that allows you to connect with a user regardless of where they are in their decision-making process. Many marketing and sales personnel focus too hard on pushing the sale. In the process, they forget a large portion of their contacts aren’t yet ready to buy.

How Do You Get Started with Dynamic Email?

This article provides a rather brief overview of dynamic email marketing, so it’s understandable if you need more information before you get started. If you have questions about whether you’re set up to send these types of emails, contact the email marketing agency professionals at THAT Agency. We're happy to help get you started.