In a digital age brimming with communication channels, email remains a cornerstone for building brand devotion. In fact, 87% of brands consider email marketing a critical component of their success. But what makes an email foster genuine loyalty rather than just fill an inbox? Personalization and connection.
The average person receives 121 emails a day. Given that volume, it’s not surprising that many go unread. Carefully crafted messages can set your brand’s communications apart in this cluttered and ubiquitous channel. Tailoring messages to your audience’s individual preferences and behaviors is the best way to improve email performance. Creating a sense of shared values and opportunities for customers to interact with the brand (and, potentially, other customers) can transform casual email subscribers into devoted brand advocates.
Email, when crafted thoughtfully, can transcend its functional purpose and become a powerful tool for building brand devotion. Let’s explore some best practices for forging a relationship that goes beyond the screen.
Personalize beyond name and transactions
Fostering emotional loyalty through personalization is crucial for building lasting relationships with customers. Personalization goes beyond merely addressing customers by name or referencing past transactions. Instead, it delves into understanding customers’ unique preferences, behaviors, and needs.
By tailoring communications, offers, and experiences to individual customers, brands can show their appreciation and offer a sense of exclusivity. Both help nurture a deeper emotional connection, loyalty, and advocacy—all characteristics of the kind of brand love that supports what we at The Lacek Group call total loyalty.
Some brands already excel at creating personalized interactions for their customers.
Spotify
With a 70% email open rate, Wrapped—a yearly campaign the music-streaming platform Spotify has conducted since 2016—is widely regarded as a best-in-class example of email personalization. The brand leverages data, insights, user engagement, and a thoughtful presentation to craft hyper-customized videos that showcase users’ activity on Spotify.
Each video is built on a curated playlist of users’ top songs from the year. The playlist is enhanced with listening data presented in a fun, quirky, colorful, and engaging way. In 2023 Spotify took Wrapped to the next level by including special artist thank-yous and access to exclusive merchandise. Users are encouraged to share their Wrapped videos on their own social channels.
Spotify Wrapped isn’t just about presenting data. It creates an emotional, personalized experience people anticipate year after year. By crafting an engaging customer narrative for each user, Spotify taps into the power of nostalgia, self-reflection, and the joy of discovering new music. This annual campaign fuels a cultural moment that centers Spotify in the social conversation and resonates deeply with users.
Strava
Another brand successfully leveraging email personalization is Strava, an online service for tracking exercise and connecting athletes to one another through the sports they love. Strava leverages activity data in e-statements that serve as true milestone celebrations. The brand acknowledges athletes’ personal achievements and completed challenges.
A “view your stats” button within the e-statement header redirects members to the Strava app for an even more detailed look at their monthly activity. Members can choose to set an activity goal for the next month, and they can celebrate their accomplishments with friends and family by sharing their monthly recap on social media.
Strava’s personalized emails go beyond recognizing individual accomplishments. They reinforce the brand’s core promise of building a supportive athletic community. By celebrating personal milestones and encouraging users to share their achievements, Strava transforms what could be a solitary fitness journey into a collective experience. Every personalized e-statement builds on the sense of camaraderie that’s central to Strava’s services.
Create a sense of belonging
Supporting a sense of customer community or creating a brand fan base is a powerful strategy for developing emotional brand connections. For most industries, email click-through rates (CTRs) average 2% to 5%. However, personalized and community-based emails often see a CTR boost, with some studies suggesting rates increase as much as 73% for emails featuring user-generated content or social sharing opportunities.
A community atmosphere encourages customers to engage with a brand and cultivates camaraderie with other brand enthusiasts. Additionally, connecting directly with a customer community reveals valuable feedback and ideas that can help brands improve their products and services.
Lincoln
Auto brand Lincoln sends personalized year-in-review emails that foster a sense of belonging within the Lincoln community. The campaign highlights not only how members individually earned and redeemed in the past 12 months but also provides insights into the preferences and behaviors of the entire member base, creating a sense of connection among customers.
Lincoln takes this a step further by celebrating its most engaged members. The brand recognizes winners of its social media photo contest, showcasing user-generated images and including direct quotes from members. This approach allows Lincoln to spotlight the community itself, elevating customers into active participants and brand advocates.
Arby’s and PetSmart
Two brands nurturing a sense of collaboration and shared decision-making to build deeper emotional connections with customers are fast food staple Arby’s and pet retailer PetSmart. Both brands show members their opinions matter by establishing a two-way communication channel and collecting feedback through surveys, polls, or direct invitations.
Arby’s Rewards gamified its year-in-review email by inviting members to vote for their favorite menu items in a bracket-style competition. Meanwhile, PetSmart invites program members to vote in monthly polls and shares the results in the next month’s e-statement.
This two-way engagement fosters a sense of belonging while reinforcing both brands’ commitment to listening and evolving alongside their customers and transforming passive email recipients into active participants in the brands’ journeys.
Share your brand values
Email offers ongoing opportunities to deliver your brand story, mission, and values directly into your customers’ inboxes wherever they are. Brands that clearly communicate what they stand for—and why—create a sense of shared purpose and connection with customers who have similar values.
Yeti
In its Year in Preview campaign, Yeti flips the year-in-review script by focusing on the future rather than on past accomplishments. Known for its rugged outdoor gear, Yeti leverages this opportunity to inspire customers to plan their next wilderness adventures. Rather than showcasing highlights from the previous year, the brand invites members to generate a custom adventure calendar, complete with a personalized hype video to encourage goal setting for the year ahead.
The campaign begins with a personalized email featuring product recommendations tailored to each user’s needs, seamlessly integrating commerce with inspiration. Yeti directs members to a microsite, where they can curate a list of recommended outdoor events based on their interests. This experience not only promotes adventure but reinforces Yeti’s brand mission to support outdoor exploration.
By launching its Year in Preview campaign at the start of the calendar year, Yeti strategically inserts itself into the lives of customers during a time when many are focused on setting personal goals and embracing new adventures. Rather than simply selling products, Yeti taps into the emotional and aspirational mindset of its audience, positioning itself as a trusted companion in their journey to explore the outdoors.
McDonald’s
Perhaps inspired by Spotify’s yearly Wrapped campaign, fast food giant McDonald’s released Unbagged in 2023. The campaign extends beyond typical transactional data by assigning members a personalized “Member Style” based on their loyalty points activity and showcasing their favorite menu items from the year. This playful take on personalization transformed routine purchases into something fun and unique, conveying to customers that McDonald’s aims to understand their preferences on an individual level.
But Unbagged isn’t just about personal stats. The campaign also reinforces McDonald’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) by highlighting its work with Ronald McDonald House Charities. In that way, the personalized year-in-review messaging becomes an opportunity to connect users’ personal experiences with the brand’s larger impact on communities.
This seamless pairing of personal and community data—such as a breakdown of popular sauces—creates a shared experience while reminding customers that McDonald’s is about more than just burgers and fries.
As you refine your brand’s email marketing strategy, remember that personalization and connection aren’t just an option—they’re the key to turning your subscribers into loyal advocates. Brands that master this art can use emails to nurture relationships, build trust, and foster deeper brand devotion.
Madison Fisher is a manager, Strategic Services, with The Lacek Group. For more than 30 years, The Lacek Group has been perfecting the art and algorithms of brand devotion. We help world-class brands identify their highest-potential customers, engage them across channels throughout their lifecycles, personalize each relationship for optimal long-term results, and measure the true effectiveness of those efforts. The Lacek Group is an Ogilvy One company.
