Personalization\u00a0<\/strong>is<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0an essential element of effective email marketing.<\/strong>\u00a0Marketing messages and cold emails alike thrive when they’re personal, relevant, and solve a prospect’s pressing problem.<\/p>\n But… personalization usually requires customer or prospect data.<\/p>\n And\u00a0it’s entirely possible you don’t have the data you want or need<\/strong>\u00a0to tailor your messages to each recipient.<\/p>\n So what do you do when you’re not an enterprise-level eCommerce store? When your Shopify store isn’t collecting customers’ browsing history and shopping patterns? When you aren’t running machine learning algorithms that find out people who buy your coffee mugs are 71% more likely to buy your pillow cases?<\/p>\n And what do you do when you’re trying to reach out to business contacts but don’t have a sophisticated CRM in place? Or when you want to personalize, but using a\u00a0cold email AI line writer<\/a>\u00a0strikes you as more creepy than effective?<\/p>\n Here are\u00a0five techniques us normal people can use to personalize email outreach<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 and\u00a0personalize them\u00a0<\/strong>better<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0than most of those data hoarders can.<\/p>\n Because even with you\u00a0think<\/em>\u00a0you don’t have customer data… you’ve got more than you realize.<\/p>\n Before we get rolling on the strategies it’s important to clear up what “personalization” means.<\/p>\n And that is:\u00a0There’s more to personalization than reciting facts about a person.<\/strong><\/p>\n There’s certainly a value in that form of personalization \u2014 using someone’s name\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0make an impact. One of the techniques in this article focuses on names.<\/p>\n But regurgitating biographical information isn’t the end-all, be-all of\u00a0personalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead,\u00a0think of personalization as a hyper-targeted message that\u00a0<\/strong>understands<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0its recipient<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For instance, after I had a child, a marketing email promoting a crib that helps a baby sleep through the night\u00a0understood<\/em>\u00a0me. I couldn’t click through to buy that crib fast enough.<\/p>\n So that’s far more effective “personalization” than a marketing email saying, “Hi Sam, I enjoyed your\u00a0recent article<\/a>\u00a0on gmass.co and I see you live in California” which then goes on to try to sell me… well… anything.<\/p>\n The second email knows lots of facts about me. The first email understands me. And\u00a0that’s<\/em>\u00a0personalization.<\/p>\n So in this article, much of what we’re going to focus on is the first scenario. We’re not going to personalize with customer data (because we don’t have that!) \u2014 we’re going to personalize by using the simple tools at our disposal to best predict a recipient’s needs and mindset.<\/p>\n One of the best ways to figure out relevant info about your customers or potential customers is to analyze their past emails.<\/p>\n Some examples:<\/p>\n All the above emails are personalized without a CRM or any formal data collection.<\/p>\n Each of the emails shows you\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0the recipient and you’re sending them a unique, relevant message.<\/p>\n Here’s how to build targeted lists using GMass’s\u00a0email list builder<\/a>. Which is\u00a0by far<\/em>\u00a0the easiest way \u2014 since GMass can turn Google searches into new email lists automatically. (It would be a lot harder to do this in any manual way.)<\/p>\n Make sure you have GMass installed in Google Chrome.<\/p>\n Then\u00a0run your targeted search in Gmail<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You’ll notice GMass adds a magnifying glass icon next to the search box. Click that icon and\u00a0GMass will build a new list using the email addresses of everyone who turned up during your search<\/strong>.<\/p>\n GMass will open a\u00a0compose window<\/strong>, turning your list into one email alias to which you can send a new campaign.<\/p>\n As you can see here, I searched for everyone who bought an iPhone 14 Pro case in the pats six months.<\/p>\n GMass turned the 1,031 of them into a new list.<\/p>\n And now I’m sending that list a targeted promotional email for another iPhone 14 Pro accessory. (I could use nice HTML email templates for Gmail for an email like this as well.)<\/p>\n So I’ve created a new personalized campaign here without doing any data collection. Because, again, personalization is recognizing what your recipients want and need<\/b> \u2014 not showing off your data collection (or, well, stalking) skills.<\/p>\n Here’s another way you can use recipients’ prior email behavior to send relevant messages.<\/p>\n Every email marketing platform should give you at least\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0campaign analytics. And you can\u00a0send new messages based on how your recipients interacted with a prior campaign<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For instance:<\/p>\n In every case you’re speculating on why the person took a behavior with your past email.<\/p>\n Your new campaign is “personalized” because now you have a campaign’s worth of behavioral info from which you’re drawing. And\u00a0you’re using that info to attempted to better address the recipient’s specific need<\/strong>.<\/p>\n GMass has a built-in\u00a0segmented campaign builder<\/a>\u00a0you can use to send these follow-up campaigns.<\/p>\n Head to Gmail and hit the\u00a0envelope icon<\/strong>\u00a0next to the search bar.<\/p>\n Choose your previous campaign from the dropdown menu. Then pick the behavioral segment of that campaign you want to retarget. Then click the\u00a0Compose follow-up<\/strong>\u00a0button.<\/p>\n GMass will put everyone from your selected segment into a new list. You can now\u00a0compose a warmer email to them<\/strong>\u00a0with your more relevant offer.<\/p>\n As I mentioned earlier, you may want to\u00a0send these emails as\u00a0<\/strong>replies<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0to the previous message<\/strong>. That means they’ll appear in the same thread and, as a result, really feel like one-on-one follow-ups.<\/p>\n You can\u00a0send as replies<\/a>\u00a0by going into the GMass settings box for your segmented follow-up campaign.<\/p>\n Open the Advanced section. For the\u00a0Send as:<\/strong>\u00a0option, choose\u00a0Replies<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You can choose to send as replies to your last conversation with the recipient<\/b>, or to any specific campaign. (Like, say, the campaign from which you built this segmented list.)<\/p>\n As I said earlier, there’s more to personalization than using someone’s first name.<\/p>\n But…\u00a0using someone’s name never hurts<\/strong>. And if you’re pairing their name with another technique from this article, the email feels even\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0personal. As a result, it should be even more effective.<\/p>\n GMass’s\u00a0first name detection<\/a>\u00a0algorithm analyzes a recipient’s email address and attempts to extract the first name.<\/p>\n You can use first name detection like you’d use any other\u00a0fallback values<\/a>\u00a0in your email.<\/p>\n For this example, I\u00a0connected to a Google Sheet<\/a>\u00a0of random email addresses.<\/p>\n I used\u00a0GMass’s auto-first feature<\/strong> I created drafts of all these articles by choosing the\u00a0create drafts option<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0GMass settings box<\/a>. Then I hit the GMass button. Now looking at my Drafts folder I can see how the first name detection feature performed.<\/p>\n It analyzed the emails and found first names in each, which it inserted into the drafts.<\/p>\n And I’ll expect the first names will boost the personalized feel of my campaign<\/b>.<\/p>\n If you’re sending cold email (and not spam), you build your list of targeted prospects who should be interested in what you’re offering.<\/p>\n So instead of personalizing with things like LinkedIn bio details… pretending you read an article\/listened to an interview of theirs and liked it… or made a demo you’ll show them if they reply \u2014\u00a0personalize with a near-universal pain point<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And that is:\u00a0Staying ahead of their competitors<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Which only your product or service can help with, of course.<\/p>\n Even if you don’t know\u00a0anything<\/em>\u00a0else about your prospects, you should be able to figure out one or more of their top competitors. And you can personalize around that.<\/p>\n For this example, let’s say you’re selling local SEO services to plumbers.<\/p>\n Today, you’re targeting plumbers in Topeka, Kansas. You have an entire list of every plumber in the city.<\/p>\n Google something like “best plumber Topeka.” Find the top business result. Then send an email like this:<\/p>\n This email is\u00a0100% personalized and targeted without mentioning anything more than an industry, a city, and a competitor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I could’ve spent hours researching the plumbing companies’ owner names and bios, best blog posts, company history, and so on.<\/p>\n But personalizing with all that stuff is\u00a0clearly<\/em>\u00a0less effective than personalizing as I did in this email. Because\u00a0this is personalization that understands a prospect’s top need<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I’m not a fan of marketing emails that say they’re “just for me” when they’re obviously not.<\/p>\n Not a single one of these emails is actually unique to me. I know that because this is the email address I use to study marketing emails. I subscribe to a bunch of lists but never make purchases. No one here knows anything about me.<\/p>\n It hurts their credibility to say the offer is just for me when that’s not true. Now they’ll have to work harder to get me to open an email next time.<\/p>\n So…\u00a0why not make it true<\/strong>?<\/p>\n Rather than\u00a0saying<\/em>\u00a0an offer is exclusive, create a unique coupon code for each recipient. That way you really\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0giving everyone something “just for them.”<\/p>\n Which could make them more likely to use the promo code \u2014\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0to trust future “exclusive” offers from you.<\/p>\n Since we’re saying we have\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0customer data other than email addresses, I gave myself that restriction for this example.<\/p>\n I put everyone from my email list into a Google Sheet. Then I created a column of random numbers with the (And then I copied that list and did Edit > Paste Special > Values Only<\/strong> in another column to\u00a0keep Google from recalculating<\/a>\u00a0my random numbers. The result is my\u00a0CouponCode<\/strong>\u00a0column.)<\/p>\n My goal was to make the coupon codes look both personalized and undeniably random. That’s why I used the first four letters of each email address followed by a long random string.<\/p>\n Now I head over to Gmail and create a new campaign by\u00a0connecting this spreadsheet<\/a>.<\/p>\n I can bring in each recipient’s code using\u00a0mail merge<\/a>.<\/p>\n I created drafts of this email and here’s what the customer will see:<\/p>\n The last step is now to import my coupon codes into my eCommerce platform. Both Shopify and WooCommerce have add-ons you can use to import a CSV or list of coupon codes. I’ve used\u00a0Matrixify<\/a>\u00a0for Shopify and\u00a0WP All Import<\/a>\u00a0for WooCommerce in the past with success.<\/p>\n Bonus idea: You could\u00a0pair this technique with the email list builder<\/strong>\u00a0earlier in this article for even more personalization.<\/p>\n For example, you could build a list of everyone who spent $200+ in a transaction in the past year and send them all a unique discount code as a thank you.<\/p>\n There’s a misconception that personalization in email marketing and cold email involves your repository of customer data.<\/p>\n But\u00a0personalization goes so much further than that<\/strong>. In fact, personalization can be far more effective when you move away from regurgitating customer data and instead identify prospects’ individual needs.<\/p>\n The best part: You don’t need a fancy CRM, a sophisticated website, or prospecting software to do it.<\/p>\n The techniques in this list will help you send powerful personalized campaigns \u2014 even when the only data you’ve got is someone’s email address.<\/p>\nPersonalization Without Data: Table of Contents<\/h2>\n
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Preliminary Note: Reframing What You Consider “Personalization”<\/h2>\n
1. Build Targeted Lists from Gmail Searches<\/h2>\n
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How to build targeted lists from Gmail searches<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-targetedsearch-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Build](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-magbutton-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-listbuildcompose-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n2. Send Segmented Campaigns Based on Recipient Behavior in a Prior Campaign<\/h2>\n
\n
How to send segmented campaigns<\/h3>\n
![\"Build](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-segmentbuilder-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Choose](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-choosesegment-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Send](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-sendasreplies-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n3. Use First Name Detection<\/h2>\n
How to use first name detection<\/h3>\n
{auto-first}<\/code> (plus a fallback value in case GMass can’t detect a name).<\/p>\n![\"Using](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-autofirst-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-autofirstresults-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n4. Mention a Competitor in a Cold Email<\/h2>\n
How to find competitors<\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-coldemailcompetitor-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n5. Use Randomly Generated Coupon Codes<\/h2>\n
![\"Emails](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-justforyou-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHow to generate random coupon codes<\/h3>\n
RANDBETWEEN()<\/code>, LEFT()<\/code>, and CONCATENATE()<\/code> functions.<\/p>\n![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-randomcodes-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Using](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-codemerge-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/nodata-couponcodeexample-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPersonalization Without Data: Conclusion and Takeaways<\/h2>\n