How to Use Dynamic Email Content to Engage Your Customers

Do you use dynamic email content as a part of your marketing strategy? If not, now is the time to get on board with this trend. Dynamic content is the future of email — and more than that, it's the now.

What is dynamic content?

A good dynamic email definition is any marketing email that changes according to individual subscriber data. If you're sending a mass message to your email list and each subscriber's first name is used in their individual email, that's a basic example of dynamic email content. Statistics prove that dynamic emails work: segmented email campaigns can increase revenue by 760%, and 82% of consumers said they'd probably purchase more items from a company if they received emails that were more personalized.

Dynamic email content is all about personalization and segmentation. It can generally be approached in one of three ways:

• Demographics
• Preferences
• Email data

Dynamic content examples

Location

One of the easiest (and most effective) ways to create dynamic email content is according to location. Sending dynamic content that's based on location ensures that your emails are highly relevant to subscribers. For example, an email referencing rainy weather for boots would be much more relevant to somebody living in a rainy climate than a sunny one.

Interests

Work on personalizing your emails based on subscriber interests, sending relevant messages to people interested in specific topics. You could also share back-to-school sales with the people most likely to be interested in discounted school supplies — parents! Other parameters you can segment by include gender, income level, education level, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and family makeup.

Email preferences

Preferences

Segmenting your emails according to demographics is effective when it comes to getting more conversions. Learn this information about your subscribers by asking them a few basic questions when they initially opt in to your emails — for example, letting a pet store subscriber choose whether they want content about dogs, cats, or both, then sending them the content they ask for. If your opt-in form doesn't have those questions, you could also send an email asking subscribers to update their preferences.

Data

In addition to directly asking your subscribers which emails they'd like to receive, you can use your email service provider to keep track of your customers' opens and clicks. You can get a feel for what kind of content a certain customer prefers to see by tracking what they engage with and don't engage with. You might learn things about your customers that they don't even realize about themselves! For example, if one customer regularly engages with how-to content more than other types of emails, send them more of that type of content. Or if someone hasn't opted into a sale yet, keep sending them emails about that sale. If they do convert and make a purchase, they'd need to receive different emails, such as a "thanks for your purchase" message or recommendations of additional products they might like.

Dynamic email content coding

Once you've figured out the basics of your dynamic email content, it's time to get down to the nuts and bolts of creating the email itself. You can create dynamic emails using features like merge tags — when you add merge tags to an email, the system will replace that syntax with different text when the email is sent. From there you'll typically see a list of options (such as first name or last name) from various connectors. You can also merge content to add non-text elements, like a list of product recommendations, by dragging and dropping a dynamic content box into your email template.

Wrap-up: Create your own dynamic emails

You don't need a coding background to create dynamic HTML emails. Choose an email template and use a drag-and-drop editor to design beautiful and effective dynamic emails!