How to Personalize Drip Campaigns With Contact Data

Types of Personalization

Basic Field Personalization

The simplest form: inserting contact data fields into your message. Using the contact's first name in the subject line or greeting ("Hi Sarah, here is your weekly tip") is the most common example. Other fields you can insert include company name, city, last purchase date, or any custom field stored in your contact record in the Email Broadcast or SMS Broadcast app.

Behavioral Personalization

Referencing what the contact has done: "Since you downloaded our pricing guide last week..." or "You have not logged in since March 5." This requires tracking actions and storing them as contact data. Use workflows to update contact records when they take specific actions, then reference those actions in your drip messages.

Segment-Based Personalization

Different drip sequences for different audience segments. Instead of one generic welcome sequence, create separate sequences for each customer type. A real estate agent might have one welcome drip for buyers and a different one for sellers. See How to Segment Your Audience for implementation details.

How to Personalize on This Platform

Contact records in the Email Broadcast and SMS Broadcast apps store fields like name, email, phone, carrier, signup date, and custom data. When composing messages, you can reference these fields using placeholder syntax. The system replaces placeholders with actual contact data at send time.

For more advanced personalization, use workflow automations to enrich contact records with behavioral data. For example, a workflow triggered by a chatbot interaction can tag the contact with their area of interest, which you then use to send different follow-up content.

Personalization Best Practices

• Always set fallback values. If a contact's name is empty, your message should not say "Hi ," with a dangling comma. Set a fallback like "Hi there" for cases where data is missing.
• Do not over-personalize. Using someone's name once per email feels natural. Using it five times feels robotic. Referencing their exact browsing history can feel invasive. Find the balance where personalization feels helpful, not creepy.
• Personalize the content, not just the greeting. Inserting a name is easy but has limited impact. Personalizing which products, tips, or offers you show based on their interests has a much bigger effect on engagement and conversion.
• Keep data clean. Personalization only works if the data is accurate. Calling someone by the wrong name is worse than not personalizing at all. See How to Clean Your Lead Database.