If you market your business using email you probably already use some form of personalization in your emails. If you don't you really should. If you DO use personalization you might not be doing as much as you should.

The most common form of "personalization" in email marketing is to include your recipient's first name in the Subject Line of your email, and also in your "salutation", as well as repeating it at least once in the first few lines of your message.

You probably use personalization because you know that it increases both "open rates" and "click through rates" substantially.

But there are other forms of "personalization" that can improve your results even further.

You might, for instance, send out an email that in some way references their most recent product purchase, and the date. You do that using your autoresponder software, and the "automatic merge" function. You store the info you need in your database, and then construct a message that "merges" the information right into the email.

Each customer then gets a "customized" email that refers to what product they purchased, or how long it has been since they purchased from you, or how long they've been a subscriber to your newsletter.

To do this, you need to collect as much information as you can about your subscribers. You might do so using a survey which asks about their most pressing problems in their business. Or you might simply try to gather the information right on your subscription form.

Another way to do this is to gather and store information about your customers ... what products they've bought,the dates of their purchases, etc.

Once you have that information, you can take your efforts at personalizing your messages to a whole new level. You must keep in mind that people prefer to feel that you know something about them, and personalizing your emails to them is a great way to accomplish this.

Studies have shown that merely personalizing with your recipient's name increases response substantially. Studies have also shown that adding other personalizing information will sometimes exponentially increase response rates even further.