These are the times of communicating over social media and other instant messaging apps. Be it a simple query to a stranger or an informal chat with a potential customer, chats and messaging provide a quick and direct response. But much as you might prefer this communication platform, writing a personalized email that makes the customer smile with expectation is tricky but a game-changer for your business. Yes, customers’ personalized email marketing experience can make or break your business in this digital era.

So, how do you do that? Well, automated emails that segment and funnel various types and levels of customers are one thing. But if yours is a small business, you can maintain a segmented email database all by yourself, too. You will need to chart out a few basic information about your customer and add that personal touch to the emails.

Picture this: you walk into a store to purchase something. One of the staff members instantly recognizes you and says, “Hey, Peter, we have just got a pair of sunglasses that will go well with the black trouser that you brought last month!” Will it not make you feel warm and special?

Well, a personalized email is supposed to do just that! Read on to know how to ace writing customized emails, but before that, let’s take a quick look at what are the things about the regular marketing emails that irk a customer:

• Receiving too many frequently: No one wants to be spammed. Imagine regularly finding an email selling something you don’t want in your inbox and you having to delete it. You will soon unsubscribe. So, send emails sparingly; tell what you want to tell in as few words as possible. Never send more than one email per fortnight.
• Communication without personalization: A Forbes study said personalized emails have a 26% higher chance of being opened, and 71% of respondents said personalization affected their buying decision.
• Topics that do not interest them: We all know that irrelevant mails are the bane of our inbox, and often we route it to spam. When you send an irrelevant mail to your customer, it’s like telling them we don’t know you at all; however, we’re hoping you’d want one of our products or services! 

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So, how can you add that much-needed personal touch to your customer success emails?

If you run a large company or have the technical expertise, you can even let the customer control how and when they receive the email. You can look at giving email subscribers keyword-level control over what appears in your emails. You can even offer variant choices of emails (HTML, plain text, newsletter, etc.). You can let them choose the frequency with which they receive your emails (daily, weekly) and even the time (day or night). Over and above all this, you can word your customer success emails in a warm, empathetic manner that makes customers want to read them.

• Choose your subject line appropriately: This is the best way to stand out in a crowded inbox. Use the customer’s name instead of random groupings or company names to build familiarity. 
• Start with your customer’s name in the email: Try to do this both in the subject line and body copy – the reason being that the human brain is wired to be pleased upon seeing their own name. So emails that address us on a personal level always catch our eye. Even if you have an automated email, you can add these personalization points using your CRM data. 
• Personalize email based on buyer’s persona: This is one of the most important email tactics. Using customer health score segmentation data here would be a great idea. It will give you a fair idea of how far your customer has reached using your product/service and what are his pain points. You can then tailor emails as per the exact needs of the customer. If a customer is reaching renewal, for instance, but hasn’t had much success with your product, you would know how to word the email to stop him from churning. 
• Write personalized pronouns throughout your copy: Build empathy and identify with the customer  using ‘I’, ‘us’ and ‘we’. Keep the email conversational, ask questions, lead them to think. Address them by name, and ‘you’, ‘yourself’, etc. This will make the customer feel like an active participant rather than a passive recipient of the mail.
• Always sign off as a real person: This will make the email more human and warm. Try not to sign off as a department or company or designated head.
• Include visual and resources wherever necessary: You could include personalized pictures or videos to show further your client you care. It’s all about that extra effort. You can also attach or hyperlink to added resources of your brand to engage with the customer and help him explore your brand further. But this doesn’t mean you overload the mail with stock pics. You can think about a combination of personalized writing and an HTML format for sending emails.  

How to strategize and send impactful customer success emails?

With email automation helping both CSMs and customers send out and receive amazing emails, a bit of strategizing can go a long way in getting better opening rates for your emails and even driving business through it. Also, it is important to protect emails and provide good deliverability with the DMARC report. A couple of things you could do further to personalize the emails would be:

• Understand your customers: Ask yourself: Who will this email benefit the most! Then look through your customers’ persona and decide the optimal recipient. Understand their background, lifestyle, working style and leisure activities. This will help you immensely in writing personalized emails.
• Sending emails at key customer milestones: This will help you target your emails better, instead of blasting mail indiscriminately to all your customers. Maybe your customer has enabled a new feature – time for an email explaining its features. Or a customer hasn’t used your product for a while – an email urging him to try out something else? Renewal emails, birthday and anniversary wishes with a special discount/offer are also personalized milestone mails!
• Segment your customers: Customer segmentation is the best way to ensure you’re sending the right emails to customers. Segment them by age, gender, geographical location, job title, company size, industry, hobbies, lifestyle preferences, etc. Segment them according to their relevance to what you are selling, too. This will help you write out as targeted and specific mails as you can. It will also help you forge a lifetime relationship with your customers.

To wrap up

Personalization is the key to high opening rates when it comes to customer success emails. Get a feel of your target audience and then adjust your writing strategy to meet their expectations. For example, suppose you segment your customers correctly. In that case, you can send emails in American English to Americans and add cultural inferences to emails you send to a customer at another location.

Research shows people have a strong dislike of unwanted information overload. So, the personalization of emails will address this issue. It shows that you care about them and respect their time. Plus, they’ll get the feeling that you know them and what they want. And once you reach this level of bonding with a customer, you and your product will become a habit with him. And that’s exactly what you want!

WRITTEN BYRakhin V

Rakhin has over 10 years of experience driving business development and client services. In his prior roles, he stayed close to customers to understand their requirements and help them achieve their business goals. He is passionate about customer success.

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