Did you know that emails with a personalized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened? Knowing this, it’s a no-brainer that you should be personalizing your subject lines. But, personalization can be used much more than just in the subject line of your emails. By personalizing your emails, from subject line to time delivery triggers, you can provide a custom experience for your audience that makes them feel like people and not another automation. Before we go through how you can implement AI-driven personalization in B2B email marketing campaigns, let’s go over what personalization even is.
Understanding Personalization in B2B Email Marketing
Personalization in B2B email marketing involves tailoring your email content and messaging to resonate with specific audiences. And yes, it is much more than using “Hello {Contact.First.Name}. Personalizing your email campaigns can deliver relevant content that addresses the specific pain points, interests, and needs of your audiences. As an example, if you have someone who viewed your pricing page close to their renewal period, your automation. These can follow up to see if they have any questions or need to book a meeting.
Why is Personalization So Important?
Now that you have an understanding of what personalization in B2B email marketing is, let’s go over a few reasons why it’s so important to implement.
Increased Engagement
Personalized emails are more likely to catch the attention of your audience. In turn, this can increase the likelihood of them engaging with your emails. Personalized emails often have a higher open rate and click-through rate compared to generic email blasts. This is because it makes your contacts feel like the email was specifically created for them.
Improved Relevance
By delivering content that is relevant to your audience’s interests and needs, personalized emails can improve the relevance of your content. And, because you are sending content that aligns with their needs, they are more likely to take action. This could be downloading a whitepaper, scheduling a demo, or making a purchase. As a result, you have a good chance of increasing your click-through rates and ROI.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Finally, personalization contributes to a positive customer experience by demonstrating that you understand their challenges and preferences. After all, a generalized email blast will not have content that everyone resonates with. This can lead to increased trust and loyalty towards your company, which can result in an increase in customer lifetime value.
How to Implement AI-Driven Personalization in B2B Email Marketing Campaigns
Now that you know how AI-driven personalization in B2B email marketing campaigns can help improve the quality of your engagements, you’re probably wondering how to get started. Here are some of the top ways that you can use personalization in your email campaigns.
Behavioral Targeting
As the name suggests, behavioral targeting will deliver content based on a user’s actions. AI algorithms can track recipient behavior in real-time to deliver timely and relevant content. As an example, if a contact clicks on a link in a previous email, like to keep reading a blog, you can automatically send a follow-up email with a relevant whitepaper for them to download. By sending content that they have shown interest in, you can increase the chances of conversion.
Content Creation
A lot of email software, like Mailchimp and HubSpot, are starting to implement AI-generated content creation capabilities. They can create content based on the contact’s past interactions, website behavior, and firmographic information. For example, a B2B software company might use AI to create personalized product recommendations based on the contact’s industry, job title, or even previous purchases. You’ve probably seen emails like this from online retailers like Amazon or clothing stores, but B2B companies can also take advantage of this kind of technology.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is when you assign a rank to your contacts based on where they are in your sales funnel. Someone at the top of your sales funnel would have a lower score than someone at the bottom who is close to conversion. AI-powered lead scoring can analyze various data points like demographic information, firmographics, behavior, and engagement history to predict the likelihood of a prospect converting. By using this insight, you can prioritize leads and tailor your content accordingly. It’s also helpful for leads who are just getting familiar with your company, so you don’t send them content that is above their knowledge level or rush them into converting before they are ready.
Recognizing Events
Within your CRM, you can set up automations for special events based on your contact’s information. This could include sending out emails for birthdays, anniversaries of using your product, or job title change/promotion. By sending out this kind of personalized email, you can show your contacts that you care about them and appear more human than brands that don’t. Additionally, you could offer fun promotions like 10% off their birthday month if that makes sense for your business.
Send Time Optimization
With the help of AI, you can analyze your contacts to determine the best time for sending emails. This kind of technology will look at factors like time zones, past open times, and engagement patterns. By sending emails at the right time, you can increase the chances of your email being opened. As an example, if you are sending out a monthly newsletter, you can set it to send at 10:00am in the contact’s time zone. Otherwise, some may receive the newsletter at 4:00am and some may receive it at noon, if you’re sending it based on your time zone.
Lead Segmentation
Segmenting your contacts based on behavior, preferences, and characteristics can help you deliver personalized content based on their interests. By creating targeted email campaigns tailored to each segment’s specific interests, you can increase engagement and conversion rates. There are a ton of different ways that you can segment your leads based on your sales funnel. Take a look at this article, How to Improve Lead Quality in B2B SaaS with Segmentation, to learn more about implementing this at your company.
Predictive Analytics
With the help of AI, you can analyze historical data to predict the future behavior of contacts. For example, you can identify which prospects are most likely to convert the soonest and tailor your email content accordingly. This can help you focus on leads that have the most potential. On the other hand, you can use predictive analytics to help see current customers who may be close to ending their subscriptions or not re-ordering. For this example, you could send them a discount code to help ensure they are happy and going to stay a customer.
Personalizing Your Website
While personalizing your email campaigns can help improve your conversion rates, you still have to collect contact information to even get started. Start personalizing even before this with website personalization. With the help of Visitor Queue, you can personalize your landing pages based on a visitor’s firmographic information like where their company is located, the industry, and more. For example, you can show a relevant case study based on company size to an SMB looking to use your services. Instead of showing them a case study from an enterprise-sized company that they will not relate to. This can help your website increase its conversion rate, collect more contacts, and generate more ROI. Start personalizing your website for free today by starting a 14-day free trial of Visitor Queue.
Wrap Up
As you can see, there are a number of ways to use AI-driven personalization in B2B email campaigns. The first step in building out any of these strategies is to choose a CRM that has the capability and features available. HubSpot and Salesforce are both great options. Since they have a lot of functions available and integrate with Zapier to build even more. As always, if you have any questions about using Visitor Queue to personalize your landing pages, do not hesitate to reach out.