How To Make Your Batch And Blast Emails Feel Hyper Local

When you have a list of 20,000 or 50,000 or even 100,000 people on your email list, it can be really hard to come up with ways to make them feel hyper-local and personalized.

It’s not the best use of your time, or even feasible, if we’re honest, to send out individual emails to everyone on your list. 

On the other hand, it’s just not smart business to send out one message to everyone on your list. If you do that, you’re missing out on a ton of potential to reach out to customers and readers on their terms with personalized information. 

So, where’s the middle ground?

Batch emails can provide a solution. Let’s look at how you can use batch emails for hyper-personalization. 

What are batch emails?

Batched emails are those sent to smaller groups or batches. You can send batch emails within a segment or even make a segment out of various batches. 

Keep in mind; you don’t want to send batch emails where some of your other campaigns are a better option. For example, whenever possible, you want to remove people who have abandoned their carts recently from a batch email because they’ll be much better served with an abandoned cart campaign instead.

There are plenty of uses for batch emails, including:

• Weekly or monthly check-ins
• Newsletters
• Market or product updates

The term ‘batch and blast’ makes it sound like batch emails are a bad thing. But, in most cases, the brands that aren’t seeing much success sending these are not focusing on ways to make them personalized. 

In the past, there wasn’t much thought put into personalizing these emails beyond maybe a few general data points. But, now, times have changed. 

In fact, there are many ways to use your batch emails in a way that can keep your brand top of mind and add value to every interaction you have with your customers.

Using geolocation data in your emails

You can use the localized data available from your customer relationship management (CRM) tools to send out batch emails that feel a lot more personal to your readers. 

With information that’s as simple as your subscriber’s zip code, you have all sorts of potential ways to approach your batch emails that are going to be both hyper-local and personalized.

Here are a few examples to consider. 

Local store information

Have you opened a new retail store in an area? Has one of your restaurants got a new item on the menu or just renovated the bar?

All of these are examples of cases where a localized batch email can come in handy.

If you send your entire email list news on a brand new patio space at your Portland location, the chances are pretty high that no one cares — except the people who live in Portland. 

So, in this case, you might have just unintentionally alienated a bunch of your subscribers because you sent them information that was totally irrelevant to them. 

What you can do instead is create a Portland segment in your list based on their geolocation data. Here, when you have something cool to share, like that new patio or the return of a summer burrito special, you can send that batch of people the email that matters to them. 

The chances of someone who is already on your list and lives in Portland taking advantage of your expanded outdoor space for a burrito are much higher if you batch strategically.

Weather data

When it comes to consumer behavior, the weather is one of the biggest drivers out there, so why not capitalize on it?

Here’s another area where geolocation data really comes in handy. With a zip code, you can create emails that batch a particular area and feature real-time weather updates and forecasts. 

You can use these types of emails to drive traffic to your local store, say highlight a beautiful upcoming weekend in Dallas for a sidewalk sale. Or, you can use bad weather to drive purchases for summer activities like a beach vacation or spa weekend. 

Once again, segmenting your batches to go hyper-local is an advantage here. It doesn’t get more personal to someone than looking out the window, right? So being able to grab that sort of data and craft smart quick campaigns around it can really make your brand stand out from the crowd. 

You only have a few chances to catch the attention of your subscribers and drive action, don’t waste them!