The Power of Hyper-Personalization in Email Marketing

Updated on May 16, 2023

The basic email was only the first “organism” in the evolutionary process of email marketing.

A whole new phenomenal era of communication was introduced when Ray Tomlinson sent the first email (ever!) in 1971. The grand-grand-grand parent of all emails ever sent was just a text message, plain and simple.

The phone communication system worked just fine, within its own limits. The person you were trying to reach had to be there to pick up the phone and available at that very moment to hear you out. And as we know, that’s not always the case… so the email was born.

One of the main purposes? To deliver a personal message from one person to another without the intrusion of an administrative assistant hearing and forwarding the message. 

It was always meant to be personal.

But let’s get back to the future.

Welcome to the New Era of Hyper-Personalization in Email Marketing!

Hyper-personalization in email marketing is the action of designing an email campaign to meet every recipient’s individual requirements, on an advanced personalized level. Usually, (depending on your business) with the aid of a few technologies, such as:

Big Data – the collection, analysis, and management of large datasets that aid your personalization efforts.

Business Intelligence (BI) – allows you to have accurate predictions of the return on investment (ROI) of your email marketing campaigns.

Machine Learning (ML) – uses predictive analytics and algorithms to analyze the retrieved data, learn from those insights, and decide what resonates best with a specific individual customer.

And only if your business really needs it,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – enables marketers and sales teams to engage with every individual customer in a more meaningful manner.

Being an upgrade to personalization, hyper-personalization is based on the same 3 main steps: data collection, data analysis, and data application. In other words, finding the people that are looking for you, getting to know them, and approaching them on a more personal level.

This leads to “delivering better customer experiences (89%), increasing loyalty (61%) and generating measurable lift/ ROI (59%) as top motivating factors in 2020.”

*According to the 7th annual study conducted by Evergage and Researchscape International, surveying 326 marketing professionals across industries and countries. 

And I will add one more thing. Email remains the most personalized of all marketing channels (78%) in 2020. 

With that in mind, let try to differentiate between old-school personalization and the new era of email hyper-personalization.

Personalization vs. Hyper-Personalization

Hyper-personalization in email marketing is practically leveling up your efforts to include not just the hard facts (the demographics), but real-time data that is constantly changing as your leads perform new actions related to your business.

In addition, it includes the psychographic, firmographics, and behavioral data in order to create personalization beyond the “company name” or “first name” in your email subject line.

Daniel Ndukwu, the CoFounder of UsefulPDF says “Personalization is like the internet at the turn of the century with templated sites like GeoCities. You could customize it a bit but you were still severely limited. Hyper-personalization is akin to the website builders of today and no-code platforms. You can create powerful and personal email campaigns that move the needle in your business with a fraction of the effort. Over time, it’s only going to get more personal and powerful. Keep in mind that It’s important not to go too far or you may spook your contacts with how much data you have about them.”

An example of personalization would be sending an email to a recipient including their first name in the subject line. Which is great and you should absolutely do it!

But let’s say you noticed a significant number of users spending more than 15 minutes on a page for a specific product that you offer. You can hyper-personalize their whole email experience with your brand by segmenting them under one umbrella. Then, prepare an email template just for them based on their interests and offer them a discount on that product!

Make it into a Christmas gift! (Or any seasonal holiday for that matter.)

1. Include an image of the product
2. Place a “discount tag” 🏷️ image as a layer on top of it
3. Using dynamic text insert a different discount code for each one of them into the “discount tag” image layer!

Nearly 79% of consumers will likely only engage with a brand’s offer if it is directly tied to their previous interactions with the brand. (instapage.com)

However, when it comes to email deliverability, you are only as good as your subscribers. This means that the more people who sign up for your list will actually receive your emails – even if they don’t reply or comment on any of them – you still have done an amazing job.

However, hyper-personalization remains open for interpretation depending on your industry, goals, and means of implementation. As every individual you are trying to reach with your email campaign is unique, in the same way, the best method and practices that will work for your business in your quest for email hyper-personalization will be unique.

Here is an example from Really Good Emails.

Well, this email won’t make any sense to you unless you are Smiles Davis.

And that is the whole idea behind hyper-personalization.

The 3 Steps Strategy to Email Hyper-Personalization

1. Collect the Right Data [the More of It, the Better]

Dive deeper into your data about your prospects. Find out what are the pain-points in their business, what are their company’s values, goals, interests, business growth strategy… how they behave online, how they interact with your brand? How best to approach them with your solution? You can do this by collecting higher-level data about them.


Psychographics are much more complex data points and consequently more difficult to get a hold of. They are your target audience’s personality in general, their beliefs, aspirations, goals, and opinions. They include their:

By gaining an understanding of them, you can speak to your recipients in the language that they understand. It is very important not to make assumptions. Get to know who they really are prior to addressing them. You can do this by conducting audience research at the very start of your email strategy. It will guide you in the right direction and help you implement hyper-personalization effectively.

Behavioral data is your customer’s online behavior in relation to your product, brand, and business. This includes your competitors as well. Where on your site do they spend the most time reading or browsing? Are they new into the market or they have already used a competitor’s product and are looking for something else? Do they visit your social media channels as well? What day of the week or time of the day they usually open/respond to your emails? This data can tell you a lot about your customers and will improve your segmentation processes. It includes:

• Online activities (browsing history)
• Website visits
• Product and content use
• Buying habits (purchases made)
• Brand preferences
• Social media interaction

By observing how they behave online and how they use your product or your competitors’ products you will be able to see the limitations of their experience and use this to your advantage to improve your messaging.

But How Will You Collect All That Data?

You can collect your data manually using forms and surveys filled with questions for your subscribers. You can tweak and adapt the questions depending on the type of data you are looking to get. But then again, they will only tell you the hard-facts. To get to those behavioral data points you will have to use website behavior tracking. Google Analytics is the master in this field. Collect all the juicy behavioral data about your prospects, their interests, and preferences, by monitoring their activity on your website.

Or automatically – using third-party apps that bring all data sources together. The data enrichment platforms base their whole existence to help your business grow. Especially when you are looking for new partners, businesses, and customers who are in the need of your solution, but still don’t know that you exist.

The data enrichment platforms:

– Are built upon a huge database containing the data you need;
– Seamlessly integrate with your ESP and many CRM software;
– Provide email and phone verifiers so you are 100% you have the right contact;
– Let you build your drip campaigns like it’s a piece of cake!

Above all, these platforms encourage you to preserve the human touch while automating all your marketing and sales processes. Indeed, they offer advanced options for hyper-personalization in email marketing. Sales.Rocks is just one of them. We will come back to them later.

2. Analyze and Segment the Collected Data

Hyper-personalization in email automation is only possible with the right segmentation.

On the positive side, if you were following my advice, by now you have collected a pretty large heap of useful data. Finally, you have all the information you will ever need about your prospects, subscribers, leads, MQLs, SQLs, customers… everyone.

On the negative side, all that data now will have to be scrutinized. Examined closely and thoroughly! Performed an autopsy on it! By you.

Statistics show that 42% of email marketers still struggle with segmenting their mailing lists, while 35% have a hard time with message personalization. (smartinsights.com)

You will have to segment the data under different groups/umbrellas/variables, you name it. Dividing them by demographics (gender, age, income level, occupation, location, education, generation etc.) will be easy. On the other hand, dividing them by their interest shown in a specific SaaS product-page on your website will be determined by the amount of time they spent there (user activity). Similarly, segmenting them under one umbrella based on what stage they are in the buyer’s journey, won’t be so easy.

But why struggle?

Why Segmentation is Key for Hyper-Personalization?

Because you won’t send the same email template to the whole galaxy! Simply you will need to create different email templates to address a Mandalorian vs. a Jedi. Because they are differently engaged with your brand, and they have different pain-points, their business growth is on a different level, and so on. Too many differences that you can use to your advantage to improve your email approach.

Speak to your subscribers with the information they care to hear.

This is the way.

To demonstrate, you can segment them by job positions, teams, and roles.

After all, an email that is designated for a founder or CEO probably won’t look and feel like one addressing someone in the sales department of the same company.

We already wrote a very detailed article on how best you can segment your data, so feel free to dive deeper into the subject.

3. Implement the Data and Hyper-Personalize Every Email Automatically!

Use the collected data to create tailor-made emails to each recipient of your segmented lists and put your best intentions forward.

In reality, if it is not meaningful to you, why should it be to them?

Prove to them that you really mean it. That you are not shooting in the dark but you have actually done your homework and took the time to get to know them. You have carefully considered their interests, needs, values, online behaviors. Now is the time to show off all the work you have done for them. Boast with all that data you have gathered – while at the same time making them feel extra special.

Since incorporating hyper-personalization into Toyota’s emails, we have seen open rates rise to 46% – a huge difference from the industry average of 12.6%. (jellyfish.com)

One way to achieve this goal in email automation is by creating hyper-personalized email campaigns using dynamic content.

That leads us to the next question. What is dynamic content in email marketing and how you can use it?

Use Dynamic Content for Email Hyper-Personalization

Playing around with dynamic content in email marketing automation is an easy process. Of course, after you have successfully completed the first two steps (data collection & data segmentation). The time has come to implement that data, and this is where the fun begins.

When using dynamic content you are building your email templates with specific areas left blank in the form of dynamic text, images, explainer videos or even landing pages. These areas will be filled automatically with the relevant information about each of your recipients, based on the segmentation you have done earlier.

It allows you to automate your email efforts, while at the same time each recipient receives a hyper-personalized email experience. To clarify: Sees a picture with their own name written on an unwrapped gift. Followed by a free e-book bellow about the product they were checking out on your website. Feel free to use your own imagination, the possibilities are endless.

Dynamic content is based on using variables. You will fill that specific area of content that changes (therefore it is dynamic) with the right variable. Of course, it will depend on the information you have about the person receiving your email. Coupled with your main purpose for reaching out to them.

A variable can be a business logo, a company’s location, a birth date, or practically any kind of data you have gathered and segmented into a specific variable. Then you can apply it in your email template in the form of dynamic content.

Equip Your Team for Success with the Right Tools

Platforms that work with hyper-personalization tools like Sales.Rocks can offer many options for implementing dynamic content straight into the drip campaigns module. They help you simplify every step in your sales and marketing processes with email automation.

These kinds of platforms bring all the data sources together as you can search and filter them from their enormous database, then segment your data directly into the platform and start your drip-campaigns using dynamic content all from one place. It has the inception effect! So many data points to use on so many levels. What more can you ask for?

Dynamic Text

You can use the dynamic text tags for the first level of personalization, such as inserting the first name of your recipient into your subject line. But with hyper-personalization, you can use the dynamic text variables (job title, company name, the product used, birth date, or any information you have in the form of a text) to add it into a specific part of your email body. Or perhaps into a layer over an image. Or pretty much in all the different elements that your dynamic landing pages will be consisted of.

Dynamic Images [For up to 12x Better Email Engagement]

The effective email involves using strong visuals about as much as a great copy. Some things simply make better sense when they are seen rather than read. And images in general tend to liven up the whole email. The thing is – you need to make them personal as well.

Create dynamic personalized images for each recipient on your list.

You can use Sales.Rocks image builder, integrated into the platform, to create and display different visuals for every recipient. Catch their attention by adding dynamic and personalized layers over your base image using:

• Dynamic text – Wish Merry Christmas to your whole contact database at once with a lovely, Christmasy picture of a greeting card – and their name on it. You can do this for their birthday. You can do pretty much anything.

• Company logos – In the Logo tab, you can control the type of the logo’s design – round or square. But where you will find all their business logo images? No worries, you can extract them from our database. Or, you can also use an additional logo creator if that’s what you need.

Play around with different ideas, explore the power of these tools, and send unique emails to all your prospects at scale.

Dynamic Landing Pages

Now the links in your emails can lead your recipients to hyper-personalized landing pages specifically for them. They can be product pages based on their interests, containing customized call-to-action buttons, and more.

Imagine a landing page that welcomes your recipient by their name, and then takes them on “a product journey”. That same product that they were previously looking at! Or that service which is just what they need at the moment! But they are still considering options and gathering more insights so they can make the right choice.

While on the journey they see their company logo inserted in the picture of the product. The content is addressing their business-specific needs and is offering them unique solutions to their own pain-points. Down the road, they find out that this service integrates with the {exact CRM mentioned as a dynamic text} they are already using. Furthermore, they find the specific pricing for your service according to the number of teammates, or employees in their company. And so on…

All of this is possible with Sales.Rocks. It provides the data (the technographics in this case – tools & apps used by a certain company. Or the image of their logo! Yes, you can extract this data directly from our platform. And what’s more, with the tools to implement all this data and to excel at hyper-personalization!

Create a landing page that converts by choosing from our pre-built templates or build a page from scratch. The choice is yours.

Is Email Hyper-Personalization Worth It?

Definitely. Because it works.

An outstanding 98% of marketers agree that hyper-personalization helps improve customer relationships, with 74% claiming it has a “strong” or “extreme” impact. (instapage.com)

After all, small teams and solopreneurs have limited time, and resources in general, to devote to their marketing strategies. Crafting a completely personal experience for your leads and customers takes more time and effort than sending a one-size-fits-all email. But hyper-personalization is absolutely worth it for mid-size and small businesses on the rise.

If you are going to it anyway, why not do it the right way? …Work is fun when you are getting the desired outcome. Good luck!