E-mail Academy recap: You had me at Hi there [First Name]

July 1, 2025

In at present’s crowded digital panorama, standing out within the inbox is tougher than ever. In our newest E-mail Academy  session, “You Had Me at Hi there,” Mailjet’s Principal Product Supervisor, Natalie Lynch, and Senior E-mail Advertising and marketing Supervisor, Julia Ritter, delved deep into the transformative energy of electronic mail personalization and the affect it could actually have in your campaigns. 

They shared invaluable insights on transferring past fundamental salutations (that’s you, INSERT FIRST NAME) to really join along with your viewers. We’ve summarized these key factors for you under, however for those who’d like to leap to straight to the complete video, merely scroll to the tip of the article.

True personalization is about relevance

True personalization transcends merely inserting a recipient’s first title into an electronic mail. As Julia emphasised, it’s about tailoring their expertise and using the knowledge and the information it’s important to ship content material that’s related. This implies transferring past generic blasts to extremely focused messages that resonate with every particular person.

Natalie underscored this level by showcasing the ability of segmentation and dynamic content material blocks inside a single electronic mail, tailored utilizing recipients’ information. For instance, take into consideration a journey or tourism firm seeking to alter their content material primarily based on subscriber preferences. Wouldn’t it’s nice for those who might tailor obtainable inns, peer-reviewed eating places, and must-see monuments primarily based on their location? With out having to create a number of totally different campaigns…

Not solely wouldn’t it save senders time, however this strategy ensures that (whereas your message is broad sufficient for a big viewers) particular sections turn out to be extremely related to the person.

Consideration is earned by means of relevance, timing, and empathy

In a world the place 26% of electronic mail entrepreneurs obtain as many as 50 emails a day, incomes consideration is essential. You see, electronic mail engagement will not be a given; it have to be earned by demonstrating a deep understanding of your viewers’s wants and preferences. Julia succinctly put it:

This giving them what they need is achieved by means of a mix of relevance, timing, and empathy. A great instance shared in the course of the webinar was from the airline Lufthansa – particularly an electronic mail despatched 48 hours earlier than a buyer’s flight. 

Now, this wasn’t only a “hey, keep in mind that flight you’ve bought tomorrow” however a superbly timed message that anticipates the recipient’s fast wants, offering important info like affirmation numbers, flight particulars, and hyperlinks to different channels. As Natalie highlighted, this strategy will be utilized past airways to any occasion or service the place essential directions, parking particulars, or different related info precisely when the consumer wants it most. 

It reveals empathy by understanding and addressing potential ache factors earlier than they even come up.

Leverage various information factors for deeper personalization

To actually personalize, that you must transcend fundamental demographic information. Julia and Natalie highlighted a number of classes of knowledge factors that may be leveraged for efficient segmentation and content material tailoring:

• Primary info: Sure, we stated that you must transcend the fundamentals for deeper personalization, nevertheless it’s vital to begin with the basics like title, firm, location, and most well-liked language, and so on. You may seize all this information on sign-up with a type builder. 
• Behavioral cues: Monitor how customers work together along with your emails (opens, clicks, inactivity) and your web site (buy habits, looking historical past, deserted carts, and so on.). As an illustration, a “recap electronic mail” from a service like Loom that summarizes how a lot time you’ve saved is a unbelievable instance of behavioral personalization. Equally, a clothes model sending “curated kinds primarily based on what you’ve seen” after an deserted cart is utilizing behavioral information to re-engage. 
• Acknowledged preferences: Data customers explicitly present, like their favourite shade or communication frequency. OK, possibly not their favourite shade (until you’re working for a Dulux – however you get the thought).
• Inferred intent and lifecycle stage: Perceive the place a contact is of their journey along with your model. This might vary from onboarding for a brand new trial to sending anniversary emails primarily based on their signup date. The Duolingo “duoversary” electronic mail, celebrating how lengthy a consumer has been with the platform, is a good “set and neglect” instance of this. 
• Contextual info: Think about the time of day, day of the week, or system kind a consumer usually engages along with your content material. 

Julia additionally illustrated how she used ballot responses from a earlier webinar to ship follow-up emails with content material particularly addressing every participant’s largest deliverability problem, once more showcasing personalization primarily based on acknowledged preferences and engagement.

Automate for scale, personalize for affect

E-mail automation will not be the enemy of personalization; somewhat, it’s the important thing to scaling it effectively. As Natalie clarified

This implies organising automated workflows for frequent recurring communications, similar to annual anniversaries, onboarding sequences, or academic collection. 

Inside these automated emails, you possibly can then embed dynamic fields, attributes, properties, and conditional logic. This enables a single automation to ship extremely customized content material to totally different segments of your viewers with out guide intervention. 

This strategy, as demonstrated with the location-based content material, considerably reduces guide effort whereas maximizing relevance. The best is to “set it, watch it, then alter it” and permit for steady optimization. We devoted a whole E-mail Academy session to it for those who’d prefer to know extra.

Take a look at all the things and keep away from over-personalization

Constant and thorough testing is paramount to profitable personalization.

Concentrate on A/B testing one variable at a time (e.g., topic strains, content material, timing) to precisely assess its affect. It’s because it’s vital to ascertain trigger and impact. In case you check 5 totally different variables at a time, how are you to find out what precisely is impacting the outcomes? It may very well be any one of many applied modifications.

Lastly, be conscious of over-personalization, which might come throughout as creepy or “large brothery.” At all times think about privateness legal guidelines and solely use information that enhances the consumer expertise, somewhat than making them uncomfortable.

Full video: E-mail Academy – You had me at Hi there [First Name]

You may watch the recording of the dwell webinar under:

Creator:
Dale Hart

Content material Supervisor at Sinch Mailjet