Marketer's Space: The Power of Personalization - Crafting SMS Messages that Resonate using Zoho Campaigns

Marketer's Space: The Power of Personalization - Crafting SMS Messages that Resonate using Zoho Campaigns

Hello Marketers, 

This week's Marketer's Space will focus on personalization, how it enhances customer engagement and retention, and how you can personalize your SMS content using Zoho Campaigns.

What is Personalization?

Personalization is tailoring your messages in a way that it resonates with your customers. It uses customer data to create targeted SMS campaigns.

Personalisation gif

Why it helps:

SMS inboxes are exploding today with generic messages, and personalization helps you stand out in this pile. Personalized messages feel genuine, human-to-human, and less like bots. It develops trust, enabling higher click-through rates, open rates, retention rates, and purchase rates. 

Ways to Personalize Your SMS Messages:

Personalization relies on data. It's vital to collect data ethically using methods that respect your customers' privacy and adhere to legal regulations. 

  • Zoho Campaigns allows you to ethically collect customer data through signup forms, service integrations, and even manual entry.

  • This data is used for segmentation, with Merge Tags, and Automation for a personalized SMS campaign.

Let's look at how you can add this data to personalize your SMS content.

1. Personalizing using Merge Tags and Custom Fields:

Zoho Campaigns has an inbuilt feature - "Merge Tags" that allow you to personalize your messages with specific customer information. For example, you can use the "$[UD:FIRST_NAME]$" merge tag to insert the customer's first name into the message. Zoho Campaigns offers a vast library of pre-built merge tags, but you can also create your own custom fields to capture specific customer data. Learn about Merge tags.

- Name

By using merge tags, you can replace "Dear Customer" with recipients' names, making your campaigns feel less like a mass blast and more like a direct conversation.

Consider this use case:

You're sending a birthday discount message to your customers. A generic message works, however you can use the name merge tag to personalize.

  • Generic message: "Happy Birthday! Enjoy your discount!"

  • Personalized message: "Happy Birthday, Emily! Get your special discount" 

- Location

You can send SMS campaigns to your customers based on cities, regions, or even specific areas. 


Say you have a huge subscriber list, but only want to invite customers to a launch event in New York. You can create a segment with customers from New York then use the city merge tag "$[UD:CITY]$" in your SMS content when you run the SMS campaign.

2. Personalizing by creating Segments in Zoho Campaigns

Segmentation allows you to divide your contact list into smaller groups based on specific criteria. This enables you to create targeted SMS campaigns that are relevant for each segment. Learn more about segments. 

You can segment your audience based on factors like:

- Webinar Attendees

With Zoho Campaigns, you can create a segment with customers who attended the webinar you conducted. After segmenting these customers, you can send a personalized thank you SMS to these attendees or offer a discount on a related product. Webinar attendees have already shown interest in your brand, so by sending a personalized thank you SMS, you can potentially convert them into paying customers.

Zoho Campaigns has more built-in segmentation options. You can also create custom fields for even more precise targeting.

3. Personalization through Automation:

Automation not only saves time, but also lets you personalize your customer interactions. By setting up automated workflows, you can trigger targeted SMS messages based on specific customer actions and behaviours. Learn about Automation.

Here are some examples of how you can send personalized messages by setting up an automated workflow:

- Birthdays & Anniversaries 

An automated birthday message can help your business engage with the customer. They might visit your website to see the birthday offer, or even make a purchase.

- Abandoned Cart messages

Reminding your customers about abandoned carts can give you a chance to recover lost sales while also helping customers overcome purchase hurdles. 

Personalization can be a powerful tool to increase engagement for your SMS campaigns. By taking the above factors into account, you can draft SMS messages that resonate with your customers and use Zoho Campaigns' SMS gateway to send campaigns. This leads to increased brand loyalty and a more successful marketing strategy. Stay tuned to this space for more marketing tips.

Regards,
Pearlin Nitika
User Education | Zoho Campaigns






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