What is data personalisation?

Depending on your activity, you could say that personalisation is taking something generic and changing it in some way to make it different or unique.

You could say that taking a design template and changing the headline to your company motto or tagline, along with adding your company logo, could be considered personalising the mail piece; you could mail that out to 1,000 people but each person would receive the same content.

When we talk about personalising mailings for individuals using your mailing data, we mean changing each mailed item so that it is relevant for the specific person receiving the item, which means sending individuals relatable images and relevant copy based upon data insights you hold about that person, along with personal details such as their name in the headlines and main copy. Personalising a mailing like this allows you to speak to your recipients at a personal level, and has been shown to increase open rates by a massive 80%*.

Now this doesn’t mean that you need to design and create a brand new mail piece for each person you want to reach; instead it means using direct mail design software that will create an individual mail piece for each recipient based on rules you give it. You wouldn’t send a unique image to every single recipient, but you would select a series of images that fit the different demographics in your data that you are targeting.

For example, your business may appeal to people of all age groups, such as an opticians; you don’t want to send an image of a young girl getting her eyes tested to an older man, instead you would personalise your mailing so the older man receives an image of an older man being tested, and other genders and ages would receive similar appropriate images.

That sounds involved, but it’s quite simple when you use a mailing house who have experience with personalised mailings such as DMP, or you could create such a mailing yourself with a well designed online personalised mail solution such as Hello Market.

For a more in-depth look at data insights, see Insights on Data Insights, for more information about the types of data personalisation you can use see Data Explained – Part 2 which explains how you can drive your direct mail with your data.