If you have ever bought a book on Amazon, you will probably know about real time dynamic content. The website that first introduced the personalized recommendations dropped jaws everywhere. The concept evolved in later years, and now we can use dynamic content (DC) or smart content in many marketing tools.
Dynamic content creates a customized and personalized experience for the customers, building content relevancy, and increasing your chances of getting a conversion. Personalizing your e-mails is one of the essential practices considering your whole e-mail marketing strategy. But the majority of marketing enthusiasts don’t know where to start.
So let’s start from the beginning
How does Dynamic Content Works?
It may feel like your customers are getting spoiled, but the actual truth is that the competition out there is neck to neck, and the more you give your customers what they are looking for, the more chances you have to get their attention and earn your place in their shopping list.
Successful marketing strategies give the customers what they desire; at the time they want it and, sometimes, it can even anticipate their intentions. That’s where dynamic content steps in.
It provides easy access to relevant info and increases the efficiency of your campaigns. But what does it even mean?
Easy access means that customers will receive the info they’re looking for regularly in their inboxes. It also means that this information is easily accessible, whether it’s in your e-mail marketing, your blog, website, or any other modes of communication you use.
The content that customers will receive is relevant to their current situation. It will help them solve a particular problem, satisfy their wishes, or even help them through a difficult decision-making situation.
With that said, your marketing campaigns need to be more productive. You can cut straight to the point and make the marketing process simple and fast; the chances of successfully hitting the target will increase tremendously.
Relevant e-mails drive 18X more revenues than broadcast e-mails
The concept of dynamic content on e-mail marketing is rather simple: your e-mail content has specific areas that display different images or texts, according to the customer segmentation you opt for. It can be shown in terms of images, articles, product offers, or calls-to-action; based on the customer’s gender, preference, demographic data, and purchase history, etc.
Dynamic content helps you reduce the time you spend on creating numerous campaigns to different contact lists. It improves your click-through rates, increases your ROI and, also, minimizes your opt-outs – as your customers learn that your e-mails are always relevant to them.
The Key Benefits of Dynamic Content
In e-mail marketing, it’s not unusual to face low engagement rates and shrinking contacts lists. A marketing professional needs to know that subscribers are unique, have different needs and reactions. Although most marketers don’t use personalization yet (30% of companies personalize their e-mails, according to Experian), targeting customized e-mails is the key to reach better results.
There are a few critical benefits of dynamic content that can help you on a long-term basis to achieve marketing’s most important goals: retaining customers. First of all, DC generates e-mail engagement, which then leads to e-mail conversions and, ultimately, creates loyal customers.
There are a few great examples of dynamic content in the e-mail that show just what we previously stated. The first one is the strategy employed by AAA, Ohio. It is a company that offers membership services on Travel, Automotive, Discounts & Rewards, Insurance, and Financial Services.
They were assisting a travel expo: to create the customer’s desire for traveling, they were displaying real-time weather of different locations, for example, the Caribbean. The company registered an increase of nearly 21% on their click-through rates.
Another great example is the mobile app Disney Movies Anywhere that lets the customers watch Disney Movies – as the name says – everywhere. It uses a reward program to encourage customers so that they remain loyal to the brand.
The e-mails sent by the company displays real-time point balances to the users and make offers based on available inventory. This can be an excellent strategy for companies that have loyalty programs: showing real-time punctuation and rewards will improve your open rates as your customers will want to stay updated.
Step by Step on Dynamic Content
When you decide about working with dynamic content, there are a few simple steps to make the most of your marketing strategy. Always Remember that planning is vital to succeeding in your dynamic content campaign:
- Decide what content will be dynamic: Craft a hypothesis. For example, if you believe that creating content according to gender can increase your click-through rates, you can bet on that to make the most of your marketing strategy.
- Segment your list: incase you haven’t done so, it’s time to segment your list according to the categories that you will address: behavior, gender, shopping history, age, preferences, geolocation, etc. Remember to add an updated info section in your e-mails so your customers can continue to receive relevant information from you. After all, life changes and they may not remain at the same location or still have a dog, for example.
- Craft the content: once you know what changes to do and how to do it, it’s time to craft your content. For example, if you are creating some content for genders, remember to focus on items that highlight the male/female differences. You can use various templates, with different colors, for example, or customize the content as well.
- Don’t forget the CTA: CTA is there. You ask your customers to do some action. So it’s only evident that your call-to-action is also tailored according to your dynamic content.
Dynamic content will make your customers feel valuable and unique. Eventually, it will improve engagement. According to Aberdeen Group, personalized e-mails increase click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. So do not miss out on this great chance to make your e-mails more engaging.
If you want to go further and think outside the box, you have to use external dynamic content to make your e-mails more attractive. Do not restrict yourself to use only your company information.
For example, you can use a weather forecast if you are trying to sell something that has to do with the weather (like beach products and trips). Any data could be relevant for your target audience, so do your research and make your offer a little more tempting.
The Various Types of Dynamic Content
There are various ways to segment your audience, make tailored campaigns, and achieve better results. Here are a few of them:
- Demographics: gender, age, income, education, and ethnicity.
- Firmographics: company field, location, services/products, and several employees.
- Behavior: products searched, links clicked, products purchased, and conversion rate.
- Psychographics: attitudes, lifestyle, and interests.
Once you have accurately segmented your customers, consider a few places to use dynamic content. These can be:
- Interests. in case your customer has shown interest in a particular product or type of material (checklists, ebooks, webinars), customize your e-mail marketing to fit their dynamic interests. If your customer is a denim lover, make sure that all your denim news is sent to them regularly.
- Location. Think seasonal needs, language, and dialects. If you have customers worldwide, they speak different languages, are facing different weather conditions, and have very different needs. You can personalize your e-mail marketing to fit your customer’s location and build a sense of familiarity. This will increase e-mail relevance and help you to engage and retain customers.
- Persona. Who exactly is your customer? A full-time stay at home mom? A student? A high-level executive? Do they know your product/service well? What kind of problems are they trying to solve? You have to think about different strategies for your products, content, or services. Every persona will have to use what you’re selling different from your competitors.
- Lifecycle. In what stage of the buying cycle is your customer? How many e-mails have you sent? One, ten, twenty? Consider this when writing your e-mail. This has a significant impact on the offers you’re sending, for example. The way you speak to your customers has to be different for each e-mail. Is he already familiar with your e-mails? Certain engagements are only achieved once your customer is already accustomed to your e-mails.
Dynamic content will improve the quality of your customer’s experience at a low-cost. It will act as a lead nurturing strategy. Providing adaptable and relevant content will make your company more trustable When the conversion process starts, it will be beneficial.
56% of people unsubscribed from e-mails due to content that’s no longer relevant to them
Common Mistakes
Strategic errors can jeopardize the success of your marketing campaigns. So take a closer look at our short tips to avoid any pitfalls:
- Wrong data: this is the worst mistake that anyone can make. The whole concept of dynamic content is based on data, so ensure that your source is very trustworthy. Remember to have an update option link in your e-mail, in case your customer needs to change their info.
- Acquiring info that is not permission-based: although geolocation can be bought using an anonymous IP, all other customer’s data should be received by opt-in and conversion forms. As per a Harris Interactive/Janrain survey, 60 percent of people would be happy to give their info if the data they provided was used responsibly for their benefit.
- Over personalization: over-personalizing can be rather ineffective. Don’t customize everything on the first e-mail you send to a customer; you might scare him. They might like relevance, but no one wants to feel stalked and cataloged. So be subtle. Be casual, but don’t be informal: you are not your customer’s best friend or wife. You can use your customer’s data once you build your relationship.
DC: the Sky is the Limit
When thinking about dynamic content, the sky’s the limit. For example, you’re hosting a seminar, and people from different backgrounds and places attend your event. To keep track of attendees, you can make them fill a form containing their names, e-mails addresses and have their pictures taken to be placed on a badge at the arrival.
In any event, especially the ones focused on knowledge like seminars and conferences, feedbacks are critical, so why not send a personalized e-mail to your attendees to find out their impressions, reviews, and critics of the event?
Think about it. You already have their names, e-mail addresses, and photos. You can use this info to ask them for feedback in an incredibly personal way. If you had attendees from different cultures, you can either consider sending the e-mail in their native language. The idea may sound rather complicated, but once you have all the necessary data, all you have to do is create dynamic content and send the e-mails. In such a situation, I am pretty sure that your open rates and click-through rates will go through the roof.
It might sound a little time-consuming initially, but going that extra mile will drive more results and increase revenues in the long run. Planning your content is compulsory when working with dynamic content, so take your time to create new material. Remember that, even though the content is distinct, your e-mails should be consistent with your overall brand strategy.