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Hi friend,

Last Sunday I did something I rarely do - I went shopping in person. Even though Amazon hasn’t killed malls (yet) and a lot of us still shop in person frequently, I am not one of those people. 

From the back-to-school packed Target, to the BestBuy headphone section that had no headphones to try, to the shoe store that had plenty of Birkenstocks I wanted but none in my size, I was quickly reminded why I shop online 99% of the time. 

The thing about online shopping I missed the most?

The personalization. I love when I add an item to my cart and see styling recommendations from the same site. I love when I see recommended similar items so I can price compare. I love when Amazon tells me I might be running low on Pepcid based on my buying habits so I can avoid heartburn. 

Personalization makes so many experiences better. Online shopping is one of them, and so is email.

How we created a personalized experience

When people sign up for AWeber, there’s a short survey where we gather more information about their business. With that survey, we do two things:

1. We generate a “Getting Started” checklist in AWeber with personalized tasks based on the responses to that survey.
2. We then personalize the onboarding emails to show a person’s progress against those tasks. (Check out an example of that real-time task list ⬇️)

What we found 👀: More than half of clicks were on the personalized checklists, rather than the generic links everyone saw.

So why is this happening:

• When competing for a reader’s attention, a personalized experience cuts through the noise. See our above story time ☝️.
• Re-engages people in their journey. This is similar to how abandoned cart reminders can re-engage shoppers - who doesn’t need a reminder sometimes to finish what they started? 
• You’re more likely to catch up with a friend over coffee than a stranger. Same thing, but different: Brands that know their audience are more likely to build a relationship with them than those that don’t.

“Personalization” means more than just first names

Don’t get me wrong, greeting your subscribers with their first name is great. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg! 

To start building that relationship with your audience - here are some ideas:

• Upsell meaningfully. Make recommendations for complementary products or services, based on a customer’s past purchases. 
• Be relevant. Talk about your most recent event: thank those who attended, and recap the event for your subscribers who didn’t make it.
• Relate to your audience. I can guarantee you the people who make up your audience are not all the same. A nutritionist may write a newsletter on healthy eating habits, with some on a weight loss journey and others in recovery from an ED. Each audience could use a slightly different spin on that messaging. 
• Convert prospects. Purchase phase matters. Your prospects might need to build more trust from you before making a purchase, and your customers don’t need to hear your sign-up pitch every time they open your emails.
• Re-engage those who need it. AWeber tracks how engaged your subscribers are. Thank your most engaged subscribers, and mix it up with your less engaged.

How to personalize your messages

When in doubt, think of Macklemore when he goes thrift shopping (hint: the magic is in the tags).

1. Tag your subscribers

First, let’s make sure the information you need is appropriately tagged to your subscribers. 

There’s lots of ways to get tags on your subscribers. Here’s a few:

• Tag on list sign up on your landing pages.
• From any subscriber search with bulk tagging.
• On custom fields on your web forms (& just on your web form in general).
• Through most integrations - on purchase or sign up via integration.
• When subscribers click on content in your messages.
• By re-importing your subscribers with columns for fields you’d like to tag.

2. Use dynamic content to create one message for multiple audiences

There’s a whole set of commands you can use to dynamically display different content in a message, based on custom fields or tags on your subscribers. 

The real value: 1 broadcast or 1 campaign message that actually serves multiple audiences. 

Here’s a sample command you can type into your next email, swapping out the tag name for one of yours.

🔎What did we do there? We’re assuming this list has 2 tags on their subscribers - one to indicate if someone “likes dogs” (likes_dogs), and a second to indicate if someone “likes cats” (likes_cats). We’re customizing a sentence, based on those two tags to either say:

1. Thanks for attending our volunteer event! Now we know you’re a 🐶❤️, and interested in adopting dogs.
2. Thanks for attending our volunteer event! Now we know you’re a 🐱❤️, and interested in adopting cats.

Don’t let the “programming language” scare you - it’s simple once you’re familiar. Here’s a menu of conditional statements you can use to write dynamic content.

3. See the magic in the real-time preview

The best part? You can see the satisfying results of your personalization in real time from the message preview in the message editor, and also test the conditional statement you wrote for accuracy. Here’s how our checklist items looked as we were testing them in real-time 👀.

This week I challenge you to personalize one thing:

1. Make sure your subscribers are tagged based on what you’d like to personalize them with.
2. Add a line in your next newsletter that’s targeted to that audience.
3. Preview the results of that message by toggling tags in the message preview.

Good luck, and happy personalizing!

What did you think of this email?

❤️❤️❤️ Loved it. Can't wait to get the next one.

💔 I didn't like it.

As always, thanks for reading!

- Cathryn O. and the rest of the AWeber team

AI Writing Assistant can help you personalize

Not sure how to effectively personalize your messages? Not sure where to even start? 

Ask AI  when you’re writing in the message editor! Try a similar prompt to the below, and be amazed with the results. 

Instagram Reel of the Week:

Check out this awesome Instagram Reel we created based on last weeks newsletter where we talked about getting ready for the holiday season (I know - already).

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