Open up your personal email and you likely have dozens of unread emails promising the best-ever promotions, sales, articles, reports, and more. Dozens of companies are vying for your attention, especially with the upcoming holiday season.

Whether you’re a B2B or B2c company, you’re likely asking yourself, how in the world can our message stand out during such a crowded, busy season?

At Futurety, we’re all about personalization. Each customer has different preferences, purchasing habits, and behavior, so email marketing should be personalized, as much as possible, to break through the inbox. We understand that personalization strategies can vary from something small like including a first name in an email subject line or as large as building out a robust preference center to segment communication preferences.

Here are four key personalization strategies to consider for your 2019 email marketing to break through the noisy inbox.

1. Website behavior

Did a customer visit your website,  sign up for an account, add two items to their shopping cart and then leave? No problem. A triggered email can be deployed to that customer to remind them of the items they left behind. This could also be a perfect opportunity to use a small promotion to build additional trust.

2. Purchasing behavior

Just like website behavior, purchasing behavior can be tracked online and offline. This is the perfect opportunity to engage with customers based on their specific and known preferences. If a customer prefers to dine with you over dinner, send them an email when your new seasonal dinner menu rolls out.

3. Topic interests

For all you B2B companies out there, you can send personalized email based on the content your website visitors are consuming. Did they download a report on the Top 5 Email Marketing Trends of 2019 last week? Send an email 3-5 days later with a similar report on how they can use data to power smarter email marketing. You deliver value based on what you know they need help with.

4. Time of Day

The time of day an email is deployed can drastically influence open and click-through rates depending on your product, service, and industry. Have a lunch promotion? Deploy the supporting email at 10:30 AM, right around the time the mid-morning hunger kicks in.

According to Experian, brands that personalize promotional marketing emails experience 27% higher unique click rates and 11% higher open rates than those who do not personalize.

So whether you’re a Fortune 100 company with 1 million plus contacts or a startup with a small but mightly list of 1,000 contacts, email personalization has the power to connect deeper, engage further, and convert higher. Smarter marketing is all about next-level customer engagement