It has long been referenced that including first name personalisation in an email subject line is a great way to increase open rates – and for quite some time, this has been true. However, just as all digital trends grow and evolve, so too has this trend. As people are now used to receiving personalised emails, they no longer have the impact they once had. The trend has passed its expiration date.So what do we do now that that’s no longer working? Instead of personalising, we localise.Based on a 2013 MailChimp study of over 200 million email campaigns, including first or last name personalisation in an email subject line is shown to have no significant impact on open rates. Providing localisation, however, such as including a city name, can increase open rates by up to 25%.This is fantastic – but what if you don’t have the location data of your subscribers? This is where Missile Mail’s newest feature comes in: geolocation segments.The new feature allows you to create segments of your subscriber database, even if you don’t know where they’re from.“Wait… how is this possible?” I hear you ask. Good question. The geolocation feature automatically identifies the location of a subscriber based on previous campaigns you've sent that user. Missile Mail can calculate a subscriber’s location using their IP address, then by storing the IP address of subscribers that sign up from a form, or open or click a link in a campaign. It will then look that up against an IP-to-location database. So basically, once we know the IP address used by a subscriber, we can tell roughly where they are located. It then fills in the blanks for you, allowing you to target specific locations from a country, state or even town level.

Once you have this information, you can start to target locations using your email campaigns. The new feature will also allow you to search your subscribers and work out where most of your database is located, giving you valuable insights. Use this information to strengthen your already strong location bases, or build up others.This feature will be rolling out over the next couple of weeks. If you’d like to start targeting your email campaigns with pinpoint accuracy, or for more information on the email marketing best practices and benchmarks of 2014, talk to us today.