People want to get what they ask for, so why don’t we do that? Modern marketing speaks about one-to-one communication, about handling every person differently, according to their preferences and interests. Up to a certain point, marketers have tried to respond to this challenge by creating ever smaller and more refined segments, and have tried to communicate in this way with every subscriber separately, but this kind of technique involves a major inconvenience, which is generated by costs which are way too high for creating different messages for every segment (even in the case of large companies).

Nevertheless, technology has provided an answer to this issue, since it is highly adapted to the online environment: the dynamic content. DC involves the possibility to get individualized versions of an email message based on an email template, by automatically combining text, images, or products, depending on the specified criteria or on some probabilistic algorithms. So this will save you from creating a new message or new segments every time.

So, you got your layout and the information that you’ve collected about persons in your database from various sources, and you can use the dynamic content to personalize the message as much as you want, and to generate thousands of versions automatically. For example, male clients aged 35-50, who purchased the x and y products, may get a message containing an offer which is totally different from those who have purchased the “z” product and also totally different from those aged 18-25 who have purchased the very same product, etc. Everybody gets the information they have requested and that is relevant for them.

Also on the positive side, subscribers will believe that they have received messages created especially for them. And, at the end of the day, this is true…

What do they get? A relevant message, containing information which is accurate and relevant to them.
What’s in it for you? An increased commitment of subscribers to your messages and especially the so-much-desired conversion rates.


How to start?

If you want to enjoy the benefits of dynamic content, then you should start collecting information about people in your list and you can use any of the following means to do that:

- forms on your website – apart from the standard checkboxes, including name, address, you can also insert fields that subscribers can use to describe their preferences. It depends on the industry you’re covering.

- periodical surveys – communication with subscribers should also involve some surveys/questionnaires, which you should send out every now and then to get an update of their preferences. Some data about subscribers may change in time. Maybe subscribers have changed their preferences and would like to get something entirely new or some addition. That’s why you need to be one step ahead of the subscriber and request this kind of information in time.

- action of the people in the list – the data that you have about the subscriber also comes from the accessed links, the items they bought in the past. You can see quite easily what was of interest to them and based on that to build your future messages.
- from stores – the data which is collected in stores is essential to marketers. And you can get this data from visitors of the stores, regardless of whether they buy something or not. It all boils down to your own imagination.

- from catalogues – orders placed from catalogues must always be centralized in a database.
Any advanced communication technique relies on information. Those holding information have a benefit over the others. And what you have is a load of information which is aggregated by the dynamic content, which lets you individualize your emails.

Why the dynamic content?

Dynamic content lets you personalize messages much more accurately, depending on just about every need or preference your subscriber may have. On top of that, this kind of personalization goes for any elements that your message may contain: subject, pictures, content, call-to-action buttons, landing page.

And that principle goes for any other area too. For example, in the publishing industry, emails can only contain the category of news that recipients have ticked as relevant to them. And publishers should understand that sending all of the news to a reader who is only interested in IT&C will flurry that user, who will waste time while trying to get the information which is relevant to him or her only. And you can get to a situation where readers will ultimately quit searching and turn to sources that can only provide the information he is interested in. Don’t forget that dynamic content is an advanced marketing technique that involves an understanding of the fact that communication should go two ways.

When it comes to sports newsletters, the dynamic content enabled us to send out messages that were more than just personalized. We learned what the sports preferences of every subscriber were in terms of soccer, so we could customize every subscriber’s message. So George, who’s a fan of Dinamo, gets a message that carries the symbols of his favorite team. Fans of Steaua will get a message bearings Steaua’s logo, whereas fans of Universitatea Craiova will find the visual identification elements of their favorite team in the messages they get.

Dynamic content is the driver that personalizes messages, by referencing products that a recipient would most likely buy. Probably most of you have already purchased products or books on Amazon. You may have noticed that once you’ve purchased a product, you will also get offers for products that are closed to your interests. These messages rely on dynamic content and an algorithm that calculates what product a person will most probably buy next (this probabilistic approach relies on the collected data).

You get the messages right after you’ve bought something. And if the automatic thank-you message contains recommendations for complementary products, that is due to the dynamic content too.

The underlying idea of using dynamic content is to deliver to recipients the information that each of them has requested or needs, in order to maintain the loyalty of that particular person (loyalty may involve just more reading from the part of subscribers) and also in order to talk recipients into buying more products more quickly (in any industry, those offering first get a competitive advantages).

Well, yes, this is not a cheap method, but the outcome pays off, and you can quote me on that.