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






    • Recent Topics

    • Open Sans Font in Zoho Books is not Open Sans.

      Font choice in customising PDF Templates is very limited, we cannot upload custom fonts, and to make things worse, the font names are not accurate. I selected Open Sans, and thought the system was bugging, but no, Open Sans is not Open Sans. The real

    • Does Zoho Sheet Supports https://n8n.io ?

      Does Zoho Sheet Supports https://n8n.io ? If not, can we take this as an idea and deploy in future please? Thanks

    • Failing to generate Access and Refresh Token

      Hello.  I have two problems: First one when generating Access and Refresh Token I get this response:  As per the guide here : https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/#oauth (using server based application) I'm following all the steps. I have managed to get

    • Zeptomail 136.143.188.150 blocked by SpamCop

      Hi - it looks like this IP is being blocked, resulting in hard bounces unfortunately :( "Reason: uncategorized-bounceMessage: 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [136.143.188.150] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?136.143.188.150

    • Apply transaction rules to multiple banks

      Is there any way to make transaction rules for one bank apply to other banks? It seems cumbersome to have to re-enter the same date for every account.

    • How to bulk update records with Data Enrichment by Zia

      Hi, I want to bulk update my records with Data Enrichment by Zia. How can I do this?

    • Need Guidance on SPF Flattening for Zoho Mail Configuration

      Hi everyone, I'm hoping to get some advice on optimizing my SPF record for a Zoho Mail setup. I use Zoho Mail along with several other Zoho services, and as a result, my current SPF record has grown to include multiple include mechanisms. My Cloudflare

    • How do I split a large CSV file into smaller parts for import into Zoho?

      Hi everyone, I’m trying to upload a CSV file into Zoho, but the file is very large (millions of rows), and Zoho keeps giving me errors or takes forever to process. I think the file size is too big for a single import. Manually breaking the CSV into smaller

    • Client Script Payload Size Bug

      var createParams = { "data": [{ "Name": "PS for PR 4050082000024714556", "Price_Request": { "id": "4050082000024714556" }, "Account": { "id": "4050082000021345001" }, "Deal": { "id": "4050082000023972001" }, "Owner": { "id": "4050082000007223004" }, "Approval_Status":

    • Sync Issue Between Zoho Notebook Web App on Firefox (PC) and Android App

      Hi Zoho Notebook Community, I'm facing a sync problem with Zoho Notebook. When I use the web version on Mozilla Firefox browser on my PC, I create and save new notes, and I've synced them successfully. However, these new notes aren't showing up in my

    • Messages not displayed from personal LinkedIn profile

      Hello. I connected both our company profile and my personal profile to Zoho social. I do see all messages from our company page but none from my private page. not even the profile is being added on top to to switch between company or private profile,

    • lead convert between modules

      Hello, The workflow we set up to automatically transfer leads registered via Zapier into the Patients module to the Leads module started to malfunction unexpectedly on September 25, 2025, at 11:00 AM. Under normal circumstances, all fields filled in the

    • Flow Task Limits - How to Monitor, Understand Consumption?

      So, I got an email last night saying that I've exhausted 70% of my tasks for this month, and encouraging me to buy more tasks. I started to dig into this, and I cannot for the life of me figure out where to find any useful information for understanding,

    • Cross References Do Not Update Correctly

      I am using cross references to reference Figures and current am just using the label and number, i.e. Figure #. As seen here: When I need to update the field, I use the update field button. But it will change the cross reference to no longer only including

    • Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

      Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions

    • How to Track and Manage Schedule Changes in Zoho Projects

      Keeping projects on track requires meticulous planning. However, unforeseen circumstances can cause changes to schedules, leading to delays. It becomes important to capture the reason for such changes to avoid them in the future. Zoho Projects acknowledges

    • Is there a notification API when a new note is addeding

      Trying to push to Cliq, or email notification when there's a new note added in module. How to implement this?

    • Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline

      Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.

    • Collaborate Feature doesn't work

      Hello Team. It seems that the collaborate section is broken? I can post something but it all appears in "Discussions". In there is no way how I would mark something as Draft, Approval, post or any of the other filter categories? Also if I draft a post

    • Edit Permission during and after approval?

      When a record is sent for approval Can a user request for edit permission from the approver? We don't want to give edit permissions for all the records under approval Only on a case-by-case basis How can we achieve this?

    • Zoho web and mobile application not workingn

      Both zoho forms web and mobile application aren't working. I have checked my network connections and they are fine.

    • Introducing the revamped What's New page

      Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main

    • Prevent stripping of custom CSS when creating an email template?

      Anyone have a workaround for this? Zoho really needs to hire new designers - templates are terrible. A custom template has been created, but every time we try to use it, it strips out all the CSS from the head.  IE, we'll define the styles right in the <head> (simple example below) and everything gets stripped (initially, it saves fine, but when you browse away and come back to the template, all the custom css is removed). <style type="text/css"> .footerContent a{display:block !important;} </style>

    • Bulk Moving Images into Folders in the Library

      I can't seem to select multiple images to move into a folder in order to clean up my image library and organize it. Instead, I have to move each individual image into the folder and sometimes it takes MULTIPLE tries to get it to go in there. Am I missing

    • Latest updates in Zoho Meeting | Breakout rooms and End to end encryption

      Hello everyone, We’re excited to share a few updates for Zoho Meeting. Here's what we've been working on lately: Introducing Breakout Rooms for enhanced collaboration in your online meetings and End-to-end encryption to ensure that the data is encrypted

    • Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains

      Analysis Period: August 19 - September 1, 2025 PROBLEM SUMMARY Multiple Zoho services are causing systematic SPF authentication failures in DMARC reports from major email providers (Google, Microsoft, Zoho). While emails are successfully delivered due

    • Accidentally deleted a meeting recording -- can it be recovered?

      Hi, I accidentally deleted the recording for a meeting I had today. Is there a way I can recover it?

    • To Zoho customers and partners: how do you use Linked Workspaces?

      Hello, I'm exploring how we can set up and use Linked Workspaces and would like to hear from customers and partners about your use cases and experience with them. I have a Zoho ticket open, because my workspace creation fails. In the meantime, how is

    • How to access email templates using Desk API?

      Trying to send an email to the customer associated to the ticket for an after hours notification and can't find the API endpoint to grab the email template. Found an example stating it should be: "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/emailtemplates/" + templateID;

    • How to render either thumbnail_url or preview_url or preview_data_url

      I get 401 Unauthorised when using these urls in the <img> tag src attribute. Guide me on how to use them!

    • Update Portal User Name using Deluge?

      Hey everyone. I have a basic intake form that gathers some general information. Our team then has a consultation with the person. If the person wants to move forward, the team pushes a CRM button that adds the user to a creator portal. That process is

    • Zoho Bookings No Sync with Outlook

      Zoho Bookings appointments are showing on my Outlook Calendar but Outlook events are not showing on Zoho Bookings. How do I fix this?

    • Unable to retrieve Contact_Name field contents using Web API in javascript function

      Hello, I've added a field in the Purchase Order form to select and associate a Sales Order (Orden_de_venta, lookup field). I've also created a client script to complete some fields from the Sales Order (and the Quote), when the user specifies the related

    • Updating Woocommerce Variation Products Prices Via Zoho CRM

      I can update product prices with this flow: But I can't update variant products. I got a code from Zoho for this, but I couldn't get it to work. It needs to find the product in the CRM from the SKU field and update the variation with the price there.

    • Emails Disappearing From Inbox

      I am experiencing the unnerving problem of having some of the messages in my inbox just disappear.  It seems to happen to messages that have been in there for longer than a certain amount of time (not sure how long exactly). They are usually messages that I have flagged and know I need to act on, but have not gotten around to doing so yet.  I leave them in my inbox so I will see them and be reminded that I still need to do something about them, but at least twice now I have opened my inbox and found

    • Power of Automation :: Automatic removal of project users once the project status is changed.

      A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and

    • Customizing Form Questions per Recipient Group in Zoho Campaigns/Forms

      Hello everyone, I would like to ask if it’s possible in Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Forms to send out a campaign where the form questions can be customized based on the group of recipients. Use case example: I have prepared 20 questionnaire questions. For

    • Automatic category assignment

      Hi, I’d like to ask if there is a way to automatically assign an expense category based on the recognized Merchant. What would be the simplest way to set up automatic category assignment? Alternatively, is there an option to first choose the category

    • Zoho Books - France

      L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

    • Every time an event is updated, all participants receive an update email. How can I deactivate this?

      Every time an event is updated in Zoho CRM (e.g. change description, link to Lead) every participant of this meeting gets an update email. Another customer noticed this problem years ago in the Japanese community: https://help.zoho.com/portal/ja/community/topic/any-time-an-event-is-updated-on-zohocrm-calendar-it-sends-multiple-invites-to-the-participants-how-do-i-stop-that-from-happening

    • Next Page