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Here’s the deal: whether they’re subscribers, prospects, or loyal customers, the demand for personalization is non-negotiable. (And we’re not just talking about “Hello %%first_name%%.”)

With artificial intelligence (AI) becoming increasingly prevalent, there’s a growing demand for more human-centric marketing. In fact, 64% of emails sent by companies leverage personalization using dynamic content—making it a standard practice in the industry.

If you’re in the business of fostering brand trust and creating customers for life, then meeting this expectation is just the bare minimum. 76% of buyers expect personalized attention because they understand that tailored experiences reflect a brand’s commitment to understanding their needs and preferences.

So—how do you meet these subscribers, prospects, or loyal customers where they are? By offering personalized inbox experiences that surpass the standard. Ahead, we’ll look at how to create inspiring personalized emails, including:

• What are personalized emails and what are the benefits of personalized emails?
• Creating a sense of urgency with countdown timers
• Incorporating weather forecasts
• Show what resonates with interest signals
• Gamify with live polls and scratch offs
• Captivate with personalized images

Keep reading to learn about the importance of personalized emails along with tactics you can apply to your own email marketing program.

What are personalized emails?

Personalized emails are targeted messages that cater specifically to the interests, needs, and preferences of an individual subscriber. These emails leverage data to create a relevant and engaging experience, tailored to each subscriber. This approach transforms a standard email into a personalized experience, helping to foster trust between a brand and subscriber.

Benefits of personalization in email marketing

Let’s look at some of the ways personalization helps email marketers connect with their subscribers.

Increased click-through rates (CTR)

Depending on the content of your email, adding personalized, dynamic elements to your emails can see higher click-throughs. For example, if you integrate a live poll into your emails, you’ll encourage more clicks (like email marketer Laura Jean saw with her campaigns: a CTR improvement by 53%!). By creating an enticing opportunity for subscribers to participate in, you’ll encourage more engagement.

Improved conversion rates

Personalization can significantly boost conversion rates, delivering six times higher transaction rates than emails without personalization. When subscribers see content that resonates with their personal preferences or purchasing history, they are more likely to be persuaded to take action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service.

5 ways to create personalized emails that will inspire

1. Creating a sense of urgency with countdown timers

Countdown timers can be a powerful way to bring a sense of urgency into the inbox. As a powerful visual tool, countdown timers are a tried-and-tested tool that encourages subscribers to take action while building anticipation for what’s to come.

Countdown timers can be used in a variety of ways:

• Create urgency about the end of a sale or promotion
• Build excitement about the start of an event 
• Launch a new collection or offer
• Show personalized time-based content (e.g. days until birthday/time until flight)
• Remind subscribers of delivery deadlines for holidays.

In this example, we’re using a countdown timer to create excitement for an event.

2. Incorporating weather forecasts

Personalized weather forecasts will make your emails resonate—rain or shine—with:

• Local weather forecasts based on the subscriber’s location
• Weather at a holiday or event destination
• Products based on weather forecast

Ted Baker uses dynamic content to display products suited to the weather at the moment of open. This example is the “wet weather version.”

3. Show what resonates with interest signals

Interest signals show how many times subscribers have interacted with something, based on the clicks an element in an email receives. Showing an actual count provides genuine social proof in the email, making it clear to subscribers how valuable and popular each product is, which in turn motivates them to click.

In this email from DFS, the number of people who are “loving” each product is displayed, giving subscribers a browsing experience backed and validated by other subscribers.

Litmus Personalize offers you quick and easy way to incorporate Interest Signals into your emails. Learn more here.

4. Gamify with live polls and scratch-offs

Live Polls

Using live polls in email is a great way to encourage customers to engage with your brand and show them that you are listening to their opinions. You can do this by:

• Using voting or polling for gamification
• Collecting real-time interest
• Asking people to vote to boost engagement
• Create follow-up emails based on how customers voted

In this case, Bulk uses live polls to obtain customer feedback on their newly launched products. This approach serves not only as a means to gather information for enhancing future email personalization but also to gain insights into what customers are really enjoying.

Email scratch-offs

Email scratch-offs are a surefire way to impress email subscribers and inspire them to interact with your emails. Simply put, they’re like scratch-off tickets right in an email, allowing recipients to “scratch-off” an interactive image, revealing an exciting promotion, offer, or promo code.

The beauty of scratch-offs is they instill fun moments of interactivity that incentivize subscribers to engage with your emails by placing a reward on the other side of the engagement. These rewards could be promo codes, a new product reveal, or a contest prize.

We covered all the ways you can leverage email scratch-offs in this must-read guide.

5. Captivate with personalized images

Picture this: you open an email and there’s your name, right inside the hero image. Exciting, right?

So, how does it all work? Personalized imagery taps into CRM data to feature your name directly in the image. It’s not just names, though. Images can be customized based on a subscriber’s location or even a customer’s date of birth.

Not only can you set up images to dynamically update based on the email recipient, if you have Litmus Personalize, you can set up specific parameters for images based on the data volunteered by your subscribers.

Thanks to the Rule-Based Images feature in Litmus, you can personalize content across audience segments using merge tags and simple logic that already exist within your customer relationship management (CRM) or email service provider (ESP). In a few quick steps, you can set these up.

Here’s the quick 4-step process:

• Simply set your conditions, parameters, and merge tags
• Upload a custom image and click-through URL for each
• Define your fallback experience (what your audience will see if they don’t fit into the segments defined above)
• Easily preview your images and then copy and paste your HTML into your email!

Whether you are showcasing products based on the audience, tailoring images to subscriber location, or sending exclusive offers with customized images for different membership levels, Rule-Based Images make it easy to provide personalized 1:1 experiences in emails in just a matter of clicks.

This is all part of a whole new level of personalized email experience!

Visit The Email Gallery for email personalization inspiration

Need help finding the perfect personalization tactic for your next email? That’s where the Litmus Email Gallery comes in! Explore a whole world of personalization—right at your fingertips.