Driving marketing growth is often as simple as tweaking your email campaign, and a little personalization goes a long way towards targeted lead generation. According to Experian, personalized emails receive 29 percent higher unique open rates and 41 percent higher click-through rates when compared to traditional emails.

But personalizing your emails goes beyond slapping the customer name in your email greeting. Let’s look at a few ways you can gain insight into the behaviors, wants and needs of your prospects, and how that information can help you create targeted lead generation emails moving forward.

It Starts With the Subject Line

The email subject line is where you bait the hook. And according to Experian’s data, personalization is definitely the right bait—personalized email subject lines increase unique open rates by 26 percent.

Tell Them Who It’s From

Recipients pay attention to who the email is from. Often, B2B emails show a company name in the “from” field of the email, which isn’t very personal. Seeing the name of an individual makes the connection more real. When a prospect sees that someone has taken the time to reach out personally, they’re more likely to give that person a chance. You can also follow your name with the company name to add a bit of context and credibility.

Personalize the Content

Personalize the body of your email to have more targeted lead generation. Including the customer’s first name in the greeting is a start, but you can also use a more conversational tone. Writing in the second person helps you create targeted lead generation by creating a more direct sense of connection, whereas third person may come off as a bit detached, or even pretentious. Depending on your data, you may be able to work in more specific information, such as past transactions, to show you know exactly who you’re speaking to.

Personalization should carry over to the CTA (“Sign up for a free demo.”) and landing pages. This helps create a unified user experience. Since your offerings are based on actual data, your chances of conversion increased, too.

Remember: A/B testing can be used to test email personalization, determine which strategies are resonating with your audience, and fine-tune your process for targeted lead generation efforts.

Segment Your Email Lists

It’s hard to create a personalized message that will resonate with your entire database, so you’re going to need to segment your lists for more targeted lead generation. Segmentation can be done in multiple ways, depending on your end goals, but a recipient’s position in the buying cycle is a good starting point. You can also have targeted lead generation based on customer interests and behavioral segmentation. This requires monitoring multiple campaigns and gathering data and insight on how your recipients engage with your emails and website.

However you get there, email list segmentation has shown to be worth the effort. Consider these stats from HubSpot. Email segmentation:

• Increases open rates by 39 percent
• Reduces opt-outs and unsubscribes by 28 percent
• Increases sales leads by 24 percent

Use Triggered Emails

Automated behavioral trigger campaigns take advantage of real-time information for targeted lead generation and provide greater results. For example, open rates for triggered emails are 152 percent (source: Kissmetrics) higher than that of traditional emails, and click-through rates are 33 percent higher. If you’re not familiar with behavioral triggers, think about the emails you often receive after leaving an item in your online shopping cart. These “cart abandonment emails” are a great example of how an action (or non-action) can trigger a personalized email.

Request a free demo to learn how our ELG software can help you create targeted lead generation.