Now you know that using advanced personalization can deliver upwards of $20 in added revenue for every $1 you spend on the technology – and that’s on top of the $44 in average ROI your email program could already be earning.

We’re excited to finally see that benefit quantified for the first time. But maybe your initial reaction to The Relevancy Group’s new report, The Value of Personalization Optimization for Retailers, isn’t “Wow! How can I get in on that?” 

But many marketers are understandably skeptical about claims such as this. Maybe you’re thinking, “Yeah, right. You’re going to have to show me.”

If you’re the kind of marketer that needs to see to believe, Tactics Matter: Real Results from Advanced Personalization, shows how two well-known brands capitalized on advanced email personalization techniques and ended up not just meeting the higher revenues and conversions from advanced personalization, but smashing past them.

How 2 top brands made big gains from advanced personalization

You’ll have to download the report to learn which brands claimed the spotlight. But here’s a quick look at six of the needle-moving tactics they used to push past the usual gains and to solve some nagging email issues.

The Relevancy Group’s report found the basic personalization (personalizing the subject line or adding the customer’s name to the email content) has little to no effect on added revenue. Purchase-based personalization performs better. But the tactics that have the greatest potential for increasing sales are:

• Message content based on click behavior (10% revenue lift over basic)
• Message content reflecting inventory levels ( 13% lift over basic)
• Message content using real-time data (21% lift over basic)

What’s the true value of advanced personalization? It uses real-time data to deliver superior email experiences tailored to each individual customer. See what innovative brands are doing to level up their relevance, and test their tactics to improve your own KPIs.

1. One-click tap-to-text makes buying easier

A digital television entertainment service with customers throughout the United States and Latin America used real-time email to make buying subscriptions to its premium sports programming package easier and also to build brand awareness in a hotly contested field.

The brand used a one-click tap-to-text function that automatically updated an email message opened on a mobile device with a tap-to-text link. Customers could tap that link to buy or upgrade their entertainment packages. 

Result: This one-click tactic helped the brand double sales in just about five weeks. Download the report to get the brand name and see sales numbers.

2. Tactics combination boosts click-to-open, conversion rates

One tactic can be enough to generate sizable results, like those for our first brand. But, when you combine five tactics to carry out a strategy, the results can be nothing short of amazing.

An international entertainment company that operates theme parks around the world uses real-time data in email to build awareness, increase interactivity to prompt immediate responses and smooth the pathway to ticket sales.

Here’s what this brand used in its emails:

• Real-time countdown timer to build excitement and urgency toward an event
• Embedded video to promote interest in a new hotel
• Scratch-to-reveal to deliver special offers 
• Add-to-calendar option to deliver a second purchase reminder
• Live polls to generate customer activity and heighten brand engagement 

Results: The brand saw a significant increase in the click-to-open rate, which is a more specific measure of customer engagement than a basic open or click rate, and a double-digit increase in conversions. Download the report to learn the brand name and see the results in detail. 

Bonus: Using the countdown timer module cut the campaign production time for countdown emails!

Wrapping up 

Two caveats about using these tactics: The brands chose them strategically to achieve specific marketing goals, not just at random because they’re cool tools. Each brand also measured success with metrics that were tied to those goals. Both steps are essential to achieve success with advanced email personalization.

Want to learn more? Download Tactics Matter: Real Results from Advanced Personalization to get more background information about using real-time data in personalizing emails.