Hello: Four Simple Ways to Customise Your Email Marketing

Four Simple Ways to Customise Your Email Marketing

Customising email marketing is the practice of using subscriber data to tailor message content, timing, and audience targeting so that each communication feels relevant to the individual recipient. Done well, it is one of the highest-return levers available to any email programme. The four methods below — merge tags, segmentation, customer personas, and behaviour triggers — are practical starting points that any brand can implement today.

What Is Email Marketing Customisation and Why Does It Matter?

Data has been pivotal in key improvements within email marketing, from A/B split testing to mobile-aware design. Yet using customer data to directly customise email marketing remains hugely under-developed in comparison to those technical advances. There is no simpler way to focus your communications and improve open and conversion rates.

Customised email marketing is a proven method for increasing open rates, click-through rates, and downstream conversions by matching message content to what a subscriber actually cares about.

Generic “batch-and-blast” email is not an effective long-term strategy — broadcasts addressed to “Hello everyone” consistently produce lower engagement than personalised equivalents.

How Do Merge Tags Help You Customise Email Marketing?

Merge tags are the simplest way to customise email marketing at scale. They allow you to insert dynamic content — such as a subscriber’s first name, city, or account details — directly into the subject line or body of an email. According to MailChimp, the range of available merge tags is extensive: if you have a data field stored against a contact, there is almost certainly a merge tag for it.

Merge tags are a low-effort, high-impact personalisation tool that requires no additional integrations beyond what most email service providers already include.

• Insert a subscriber’s first name into the subject line to increase open rates.
• Reference a subscriber’s city or region to add local relevance.
• Pull in account-specific data such as loyalty points or order history.
• Combine multiple merge tags to build fully dynamic content blocks.

According to MailChimp’s merge tag cheat sheet, there is a broad library of available tags covering everything from contact details to campaign-specific variables. Reviewing that list before building a campaign is a practical first step.

How Does Segmentation Allow You to Customise Email Marketing?

Segmentation is an effective way of focusing your email marketing activity. It starts by identifying the key divisions that already exist within your audience, then using those divisions to send distinctly relevant content to each group rather than a single catch-all broadcast.

Consider an FMCG food brand with a mixture of retail and trade customers. These two groups have very different points of interest:

• Retail customers — competitions, recipe content, links to social media channels.
• Trade customers — industry-specific news, bulk-order offers, distributor updates.

Segmenting that audience into two groups allows the brand to produce two focused newsletters, each speaking directly to what those subscribers care about. The result is higher relevance, stronger engagement, and lower unsubscribe rates.

To begin segmenting, follow these steps:

1. Audit the data fields already stored against your contacts in your email service provider.
2. Identify the most commercially meaningful divide in your list — for example, customer type, geography, or purchase frequency.
3. Create named segments or lists within your ESP to reflect those divisions.
4. Draft separate content briefs for each segment before your next send.
5. Review open and click data per segment after the first campaign to validate your groupings.

What Are Customer Personas and How Do They Customise Email Marketing?

Customer personas are a more advanced form of segmentation that allows you to customise email marketing based on a fuller picture of subscriber behaviour and motivation. Personas can be built from a range of data points, including website browsing behaviour, download history, purchase patterns, and age or location demographics.

Once personas are defined, you can group your audience within them and build separate content schedules for each. For example:

• A subscriber who frequently visits your blog and reads trend-led articles is a strong candidate for content-heavy newsletters.
• A subscriber who repeatedly adds items to their basket without completing a purchase is more likely to respond to a personalised offer — such as free shipping valid for a limited time window.

Customer personas are a practical planning tool: giving each persona a human name (such as “Emily”) makes it far easier to brief content and creative teams than referencing abstract data labels such as data-marketing-behaviour-2018-01.

Personas are not rigid boxes — they should be reviewed and updated as new behavioural data accumulates over time.

Emails sent in response to specific on-site actions are known as behaviour-triggered communications, which is covered in detail in the next section.

How Do Behaviour Triggers Enable Personalised Email Marketing Automation?

Behaviour triggers are automated emails sent in direct response to a specific subscriber action — or inaction. According to Smart Insights, triggered email campaigns perform significantly better than standard broadcast emails across open rate, click-through rate, and revenue-per-email metrics.

A well-known example is the re-engagement email sent by Facebook when a user has not logged in for several days. The email is clearly automated, yet it is highly targeted because it is tied to a specific behaviour pattern rather than a calendar schedule.

To implement behaviour-triggered emails for an e-commerce site, follow these steps:

1. Identify the key on-site actions that indicate purchase intent — product page views, basket additions, wishlist saves.
2. Set trigger conditions in your email service provider or marketing automation platform (for example: “user viewed product category X but did not purchase within 24 hours”).
3. Write a concise triggered email that references the relevant product or category, includes your current relevant offer, and includes a clear call to action.
4. Test subject lines and send-time delays to find the combination that maximises conversion.
5. Monitor triggered campaign performance separately from broadcast campaigns — the benchmarks are different.

These emails can be written in a light, self-aware tone that acknowledges the automated nature of the message without undermining its relevance. A touch of personality makes a straightforward automation feel like a thoughtful nudge rather than a system-generated alert.

Frequently Asked Questions: Customising Email Marketing

What is the easiest way to start customising email marketing?

Merge tags are the simplest starting point. Most email service providers include them natively. Adding a subscriber’s first name to the subject line or opening sentence requires no additional data infrastructure and typically produces an immediate improvement in open rates.

How much data do I need to customise email marketing effectively?

Even a single additional data field — such as customer type or geographic region — is enough to begin segmentation. More sophisticated personalisation methods such as personas and behaviour triggers require richer behavioural data, but basic customisation can begin with data you almost certainly already hold.

What is a behaviour-triggered email?

A behaviour-triggered email is an automated message sent in response to a specific subscriber action or inaction, such as viewing a product page, abandoning a basket, or not logging in for a defined period. According to Smart Insights, triggered campaigns consistently outperform standard batch broadcasts in engagement and revenue metrics.

What is the difference between segmentation and customer personas in email marketing?

Segmentation divides your list into groups based on a single shared characteristic — such as customer type or location. Customer personas go further by combining multiple data points (behaviour, demographics, purchase history) to build a rounded profile of a subscriber’s motivations, allowing for more nuanced content scheduling and targeting.

How do I know if my email marketing customisation is working?

Compare open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates between customised sends and your previous broadcast averages. Segment-level and trigger campaign reporting, available in most email service providers, will show clearly whether targeted sends are outperforming generic ones. Review results after each campaign and refine your segments or trigger conditions accordingly.