Making your emails smart is the best way to increase engagement with your database and ensure they receive a personalised approach.
We often use smart content in our emails, and have written various other hacks based off of list membership for job descriptions, how to A/B test using smart content and how we use our 'Related content' module. But there is actually something you can do really easily with smart content rules to deliver a better email experience improve your click-through rate.
In this hack we will show you how you can create lists based off of a contacts interest area and then use them to display different CTAs or images in your emails.
1. Build your lists
Firstly, you want to define what determines your contacts interest area. Think of things such as:
- Recent downloads
- Recent engagements
- Any events they have attended
Now, there are two ways you can set up your lists. The first and simplest way is to create the lists purely based off of the criteria above. If you are only interested in recording interest areas for the purposes putting into lists for smart content, then this works well.
But, if you want to be able to report on interest areas, or use them as personalisation tokens for example, then we'd suggest creating an 'Interest area' property and set up automation which updates the record of all historical contacts and new ones going forward (make sure your contacts only have one interest area at a time, this can change but multiple can mess with the smart content). You can then create your lists based on this property.
2. Steps to get smart
Once you have built your lists, it's time to dive into your email to start creating a personalised experience. Select the image module in your email and drop where you want it in your email.
Once you have done this then you want to select the module and select 'smart rules'. Here you have the choice between lifecycle stage and list membership. I'm focusing on lists here but below you can see the lifecycle stages you can target by. For MQLs you could include a CTA which points them towards a download. For SQLs, you may want the CTA to encourage them to book a meeting. For customers, you could highlight special customer-only offers.
But, back on track, for todays hack we will select 'List membership', where you will be able to see the lists you created earlier. Once you have selected a smart rule for each list then its time to edit the image in the email.
You will want to set a default image and link for your email just in case there are any potential gaps, but here you will select and edit each rule to contain an image and link relevant to the interest area.
Once you have done this it's time to go live.
3. Other ideas using this hack.
To take it a step further you could include smart rules for text and other CTAs or replace the interest area with other properties such as:
- Industry
- Job title
- Persona
- Company Tech stack
The list is endless depending on the type of data you collect and target your marketing contacts by and offer a more personalised experience, which in turn will help to increase your click-through rate.
