EPISODE 41 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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In today’s episode, we’re exploring the concept of hyper-personalization, and how you can create a standout customer journey using the email platform you’re already using.
This episode answers a brilliant listener question:
“I would love to personalize my customer experience, but I feel I’m missing the tech tools to make it happen.”
The good news? You don’t need a fancy tech stack or a marketing team to make personalization work for you. All you need is a strategic mindset, your email platform, and a willingness to go one step further than most.
From segmenting your list based on behavior and past purchases to setting up simple but powerful trigger links and conditional content, I’ll show you how to turn basic tools into a personalized customer experience engine.
What we cover:
What true personalization really means
Why personalization boosts conversions, loyalty, and engagement
How to set up segmentation so it actually drives results
Trigger links, custom fields, and saved segments explained
Real-life examples of how I personalize emails within my business
Soundbites:
“Why should we get caught up on personalizing every subscriber’s experience? It boosts your engagement because people know what you sent them is highly relevant and highly specific to what they’re interested in. It boosts loyalty and it also encourages people to purchase because they know you know them and you only deliver highly relevant stuff.”
“Personalization means you are leveraging the customer mindset, their preferences, their past behavior and purchase patterns and you’re using all those signals to tailor your content, your recommendations, your interactions, your emails to their specific needs and their specific situation.”
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Episode Transcript:
Nadine Nethery (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am super grateful that you decided to tune in. This one again, bite size, I know we’re all busy. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. We are going to look at personalization because I received a question. I would love to personalize my customer experience, but I feel I’m missing the tech tools to make it happen.
So in this episode, I’m going to break down what personalisation really means, why it matters a great deal in your business. And I’m going to give you simple ways to make you think and get you started with the tools you likely already have in your business, meaning your email platform. So what is personalisation? Let’s first up clarify that personalisation does not mean starting your email with high first name.
using the subscribers first thing. That in today’s world is not personalization. We all know this is all automated. This is happening on the back end. True personalization means you are leveraging the customer mindset, their preferences, their past behavior and purchase patterns and you’re using all those signals to tailor your content, your recommendations, your interactions, your emails to their specific.
needs and their specific situation. Sounds complex. It really isn’t that complex if you approach it strategically. So that could include, for example, just to scratch the surface here, sending product suggestions based on past purchases. It could include sharing content that’s highly relevant to their interests because they told you via their actions that this is something they’re super interested in. It could also mean that you are adding them
automatically or removing them automatically from Evergreen sequences based on the signals they’re sending you. So you are anticipating their needs. You are hyper-personalizing the journey they are taking through your offer suite Why does it matter? Why should we get caught up on personalizing every subscriber’s experience? Well,
Personalization creates a feeling of belonging. People feel like you actually count about them and they’re not just a subscriber. It boosts your engagement because people know what you sent them is highly relevant and highly specific to what they’re interested in. It boosts loyalty and it also encourage people to purchase because they know you know them and you only deliver highly relevant stuff. So tailoring your customer experience and messaging because that needs to go with it.
helps you stand out from everyone else who’s too hesitant, too overwhelmed, too busy, because we all have lots on our plate to go to this length, to actually just go that extra step and incorporate personalization into their marketing.
Obviously, we don’t have all the time in the world to dive into every single possibility in this episode, but what I want to do is hopefully spark your ideas, spark what’s possible in your business. Again, how you approach this depends on your offer lineup, but
these are examples taken from my business and hopefully they can give you ideas to embrace personalization and overcome that hesitation and fear that often comes with going down that path. Everything starts with segmenting your list. You really need to be strategic when it comes to your subscriber list. Rather than just lumping everyone into the same group of people, you…
really need to pay attention to their purchase history, to their customer lifetime value. If your email platform allows you to do that. I personally use Drip. Drip is amazing for insights, data analysis, tagging, et cetera. But Kit, ActiveCampaign, they have similar capabilities. So have a look what’s on offer for you. But yeah, purchase history, engagement level, also interest.
gathered based on how they came into your world. So the lead magnet that attracted them into your world and then based on all this complex blend of signals, of data, of insights, of traits, you can then send them targeted emails based on who they are, what they’re interested in and what they’ve done previously within your business.
A great way to start implementing that and automating that on the backend is using trigger links. Again, those things are called something different in every email platform, Drip calls them TriggerLinks. So these are regular links infused with superpowers, as I like to call it. So your subscriber has no idea that there’s something magical happening in the background. But these rules or links with superpowers, they can take actions in your email platform.
in the subscriber profile when they take an action. So if they click, it can add them to a segment, it can remove them from a segment, it can update a custom field which I’ve been loving lately. So with a bit of code, you can actually count how many times someone has clicked on a certain link. You can also take action and integrate things with Zapier for example. You know, I connect my Airtable via Zapier with Drip to take count of
my membership submissions. So I take count of how many times someone has actually taken advantage of the membership inclusions. And I use that to incentivize action. You can also remove people from launch sequences so give them the opportunity to tell you, I’m not interested in this. Remove them from future launch emails about this product, which means rather than unsubscribing, they’re just not hearing about it until the next launch. So these things are magical.
I’m obsessed with them and yeah, I use them all the time in my launches, but also in regular emails to then funnel people into Evergreen sequences based on things they checked out and based on things they clicked. Safe segments is another great thing that Drip offers. I don’t think Kit or ActiveCampaign have this feature, but Drip allows you to create automatically updating segments
on the backend. They’re called saved segments and based on parameters you set, automatically monitors all your subscribers and once they meet all those parameters, it adds people to this segment and you can trigger automated email funnels if someone enters the saved segment. So I’m using that for my remote program for example, if someone meets all those criteria, they’re automatically added to this email flow and receive a surprise reward.
You can also, use it where you want certain criteria to be met. let’s say they have a minimum spend of X, they also have checked out the sales page five times, they haven’t been part of this funnel in the last three months, and they also need to not have purchased the product. So there are all sorts of complexities, but…
Drip makes it super easy to have all this happening on the back end. So you can tell, huge fan of Drip, I’ve linked Drip up in the show notes if you want to check it out if your in search of a email platform that can give you all the abilities to personalize things, really understand your subscribers and take them on a hyper-personalized customer journey. This also is something that I’m exploring heavily inside Retention Lab, my membership.
There are countless formulas as I like to call them. So monthly execution of bite-sized strategies that you can implement in your business to start personalising your customer journey in an automated manner. So it just happens on the back end and it is this beautiful long-term strategy that you implement once and it keeps working for you in the background.
You can also use conditional content in emails. If your email platform allows you to use code and have conditions for components of your emails to only display, again, if people meet certain criteria, that allows you to go even further. So rather than just sending a specific email,
to people, you can personalize the things they see inside this email. So you can, for example, show different content to different tiers of your membership. So in my membership Retention Lab there is the starter tier and the incubator tier. And in my emails, I send one email to members twice a month, so they get a mid-month update and a beginning of the month update. And in those updates, I have link
footers. So one section that sends them all the links they need to submit copy critiques, for example, to request their quarterly audit, that’s for incubators. In the starter tier, those members don’t get the one-on-one support. So they have two different sections.
And that means I can send one email to all my members, but then personalize the content in those emails. You can also reference past purchases in the emails, for example. So if you don’t want to exclude people who already own a particular product.
from an email because you think it’s highly relevant for them, there’s a valuable lesson in there. Rather than pitching the product to them, asking them to buy it for $49, you can have the sales message on the display for people who aren’t tagged with that particular product. And then people who are already tagged with the product, you can remind them, you already own product XYZ, why don’t you go revisit it and take action today?
So that again acknowledges this email is meant specifically for you. Have a look at your content, have a look at your purchases. I want you to take action. You can also tailor your emails based on where people came from. So I speak at a lot of summits and what I do on the Thrivecart backend is I, for my freebies, create a certain coupon code or if the freebie doesn’t live on Thrivecart I create a custom.
sign up form where people are tagged with the source of the summit they came from or the collaboration opportunity they came from. And then with conditional content, I can thank them for tuning into my session at the XYZ Summit. Hope you loved it. it just reminds people how they tracked you down.
and it personalizes that whole journey. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It can be in a particular flow and only people who came from this particular summit see this message. Again, you need to be intentional about it. You need to think about how you can add value to everyone reading this email and then just take a little bit of extra time. But it makes all the difference for your customer experience and customer journey.
I have so many more ways I’m using personalisation in my business. But if you want help creating a custom personalisation strategy for your business, for your various offers, reach out. I’d love to chat with you to see how we can set you up for success on that personalisation journey.
And if you take one thing away from this episode, I would love you to make it this one. Hyper-personalization really doesn’t require a lot of fancy tech, as you could see. I’m pulling this all off with my email platform, my Airtable for my membership, and I connect those with Zapier on a free plan. It really isn’t that complex. It’s really about knowing your customer, tailoring your communication to their needs, taking that extra step and always asking yourself.
How can I add even more value in every brand touch point I send out into the world? So if you want to take action after this episode, I would love you to stop sending out emails without paying attention to what it can do for you and the bigger picture of your business. So look at custom events, custom fields and tags in your business and how they can…
support you on that personalization journey. And if you enjoyed this episode, please give me a follow, subscribe, leave a review. It all helps to spread the word and get this podcasts in front of even more.
savvy online business owners just like you. So thanks so much for listening and I will see you next week.
