Personalised Images: A quick win to increase impact of your email marketing campaigns

Inboxes are overloaded, and although you may have spent the whole day painstakingly crafting an email, the average marketing email is read for just 11 seconds.

If you can get your reader to open your email and keep reading for longer than a few seconds, you’ve done well.

It’s at this point that personalised images provide the potential of a quick win: although they are by no means the be-all and end-all of personalised marketing, it’s an introduction to it and one way of holding your reader’s attention for longer.

What is a personalised image?

A personalised image is an image that is unique to each recipient, because it displays some personalised data about the reader, such as their name, in a highly creative way, the goal of which is to create attention and increase the impact of the message.

How do personalised images work?

Personalised images are a quick win because they are so easy to use: simply design your image as normal, but add placeholders for where the variable data goes.

Then when you add the image source code into your email template, all you do is add the merge fields from your email platform into the image URL. When the email is sent, each image URL will include the reader’s personal data, such as their name.

Why businesses use personalised images

Quick and easy

Personalised images do not require an IT team or highly skilled resources, and they do not involve additional effort over and above designing images without the personal element.

Higher click rates

When they are used strategically, a personalised image improves read time and draws the audience in. You should expect to see higher click-rates.

Memorable

They make a normal email pop; because of the personalised element, they are memorable and create a lasting impression, boosting engagement.

Solve creative challenges

With HTML for email, you are limited with fonts, formatting and overall design of text. This is not the case with personalised images which allow for any font including your own brand fonts, plus you can add it at an angle, drop shadows or any other whole array of creative ways of displaying text.

3 inspirational examples of personalised images

The crucial part of using personalised images is finding the design concept that works with your brand. To give you some ideas, here are 3 real-life examples of brands that have included personalised images in their email marketing campaigns, and increased their impact:

Jones Bootmaker

As part of their data capture programme to convert in store shoppers online, Jones Bootmaker used an image of the customer’s name inside a shoe as if it was part of the brand label. This helped achieve a 1 in 60 purchase rate (1.66%) from the promotion.

Considering just 2% were converting to online without any activity, these additional conversions create a huge uplift, and shows the cut through the creative gave.

Cruising Excursions.com

Cruising Excursions.com added the customer’s name to a paddle that they would be looking for as they disembarked the ship to meet their excursion guide. This created heightened anticipation and excitement for their upcoming trip.

Frame

Fitness brand Frame used more than just their member’s name; instead, they used a whole series of personalised data points and even a chart to show the member’s key stats from the prior month, helping them celebrate recent achievements.

This encourages a high share rate on Instagram, which in turn has led to members that didn’t attend enough classes to receive one to ask where their email is.

Take-home

While personalised images on their own will not make or break any email marketing campaign, when used properly, they are useful to make emails stand out and keep the reader’s attention.

They should also increase click rates. For this reason, they’re a great way to introduce personalisation to emails.

Want more easy email marketing quick wins? Download this whitepaper, or request a demo of personalised images by Reignite.

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