In this e-mail Netflix is not only addressing the customer by her name, but it’s also offering her with a valuable content recommendation based on her past viewing behavior. The point is, get creative with how you use your customer behavior data to build engaging email campaigns that actually work.

2. By Special Occasion

There’s no better way to build a relationship with your customers than to remember their important occasions. Birthdays are the easiest way to do this - in fact, studies show that promotional birthday emails tend to generate 324% higher revenue than standard promotional emails (campaignmonitor).

If your intake process gathers birth date information, then this is too easy an opportunity to pass up. For starters, consumers are more likely to spend around their birthdays, so positioning your brand as part of their celebration is a great way to build momentum with your customers. 

Here’s a great example of a personalized birthday email from Chandon. The product itself lends itself to the topic of celebration, but the added touch of addressing the customer by name and offering a birthday discount takes this email to the next level. It’s also noteworthy that they extended the offer to the whole month instead of one day, as this gives the customer some flexibility to apply the code at a time that works best for them.

3. By Customer Milestones

Customer milestones are a great way to keep up engagement for products or investments that are more high-maintenance. Take cars, for example. Vehicles require regular maintenance in order to retain their value and functionality. Keeping this in mind, a smart way for dealerships to continue their relationship with past customers is to track maintenance milestones and send reminders when customers are due for their next tune up. 

Another example is a pet grooming business - customers are generally highly invested in the well-being of their pets and will appreciate brands that help them provide the best care possible. By tracking past appointment dates, pet grooming businesses can stay top of mind for their customers by sending reminder emails for upcoming grooming needs.

Perhaps the most recognizable example of this is the yearly playlist that Spotify sends its users at the end of every year. These personalized emails have gone viral and mark a major milestone for music listeners all over the world who look forward to the breakdown of their listening habits over the past year. A big takeaway here is that customers are interested in their own behavior data, and sharing insights about themselves can be a great way to boost interest in how they engage with your brand.