Boost Engagement with Segments + Personalization

When segmentation and personalization join forces, it can make a huge difference in your engagement metrics. This is an often overlooked deliverability strategy, but establishing a strong track record of engagement and interest from your contacts is one of the best ways you can improve your inbox placement. 

There’s many different approaches to this strategy, so in this article we’ll walk you through a few ideas and how you can execute them.

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How to personalize emails

Your emails can be personalized by using Merge Tags in either your content or Subject Line. The most common personalization businesses use is a contact’s first name. You can reference all supported Merge Tags and how to insert them into your content in this guide.

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How to build Custom Segments

You can build a Custom Segment by heading to Contacts > Segments**** in your dashboard. You can segment your audience by Shopping Activity, Website Activity, Attributes, Email Engagement…or a combination of these! Here’s a full guide walking through all the conditions you can use in segmentation, and how to build one.

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Use Cases and Examples

If you’re looking for some inspiration, the following use cases would be a great place to start with leveraging segments and personalization:

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VIPs and Repeat Customers

By default, your VIP and Repeat Customers are going to be the most likely to engage with your content, so we highly recommend leveraging this segment often! You want to connect with these contacts so that they feel like more than an order number. Make your emails feel like an exclusive invitation, like the example below.

A VIP customer can look different to every business, but the example is a great place to start — it targets contacts who have placed at least 1 order with you + have recently shown interest in your content!

If your VIP segment includes Order Count as shown above, you can rest assured that you’ve got these contacts’ names since they’ve had to provide billing and shipping information. You can copy and paste {{ contact.first_name }} into your Subject Line to include their first name and really stand out in their inbox, like these examples:

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By Purchase History

One of the easiest ways to tailor your messaging to feel more personalized is by using Purchase History segmentation. You can target customers based on whether or not their order history includes certain Products or Collections.

Defining a segment’s common purchasing activity allows you to better understand who you’re speaking to and what type of language to use with them. Here’s some great use cases along with examples to follow:

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By Order Date

There are a few different scenarios where it might be useful to segment by Last Order. Here’s a couple use cases and examples to follow:

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Re-Engagement Emails

Re-engaging cold contacts can be a challenge, but a great way to combat this is by personalizing their subject line.

You can use your Unengaged Smart Segment to easily target contacts who haven’t opened an email in over 3 months:

With an unengaged audience, there’s more of a chance that you might not have their first name. To account for this, copy and paste {{ contact.first_name|default:'there' }} in your subject line and email body to ensure you have a fallback!

Check out this example of a re-engagement offer from Bag-all: