To get the best open and reply rates, you need to personalise your messages for the recipient. Dynamic and static placeholders can be used to do that. So, in this post, I am going to show you a few impactful placeholders and why should you personalise your messages in the first place.

Note: the information presented is based on countless campaigns we and our customers have run.

Before I start breaking down each topic, here is the list of them for reference:

Advantages of sending personalised messages

Dynamic placeholders and how they affect a message

• gender
• department
• industry
• title
• months in current
• position
• prospect’s country
• number of employees

Advantages of sending personalised messages

Going over the daily limit of 100 emails per mailbox and sending identical emails will trigger the spam signals of ISPs. That will reduce the inboxing rate and fewer prospects will look at your email.

The advantages of sending personalised messages under the maximum daily limit are:

• higher inboxing and lower spam detection – since the messages are not the same, the service provider will inbox a lot more of them without triggering the spam sensors
• messages resonate better with the prospect – dynamic messages result in higher open and reply rates because they are tailored for the recipient

You must have realised that it is, in fact, better to send personalised messages to a prospect. However, it would take too much of a salesperson’s time to send so many of those per day. So, you need a feature-rich software to automate that part of sales.

Next, I will look at how placeholders have an effect on the recipient’s reaction to the message received.

Dynamic placeholders and how they affect a message

Automated outreach messages can have two main types of placeholders, static and dynamic. Static placeholders are simple substitutions of one word/few words (e.g.: ). Dynamic placeholders, add another level of depth to the automation (e.g.: if the department is Sales then ‘TEXT’). They use an if-this-then-that logic to allow for message variations based on the prospect’s data points.

Let’s dive into the most common placeholders our customers use and why they have such a big impact on campaigns:

First name

The first name placeholder is common in any message automation software. It is simple to use and it is the first and basic step in message personalisation.

Reasons to use it:

indicates that the message was ‘written’ for the particular prospect
everyone likes to hear or see their name; it makes them feel important
E.g.:

‘Hi ’

‘Therefore, I believe your company, , …’

Gender

The gender placeholder is valuable in messages written in languages that have different pronouns based on gender. Messages written in English would not need the placeholder. But, messages in Latin or Germanic languages can use it to their benefit.

Reason to use it:

impresses the prospect because you are able to use the gender pronouns instead of the neutral ones
E.g.:

‘{