Before you can personalize anything, you need data. First-party data (information your customers voluntarily provide or that you observe through their interactions with your brand) is the backbone of effective email personalization.

The best email personalization strategies combine three types of first-party information: Demographic and profile data, behavioral data, and stated preferences (sometimes called zero-party data). 

Each type tells you something different about your customer, and together they create a complete picture that powers individually-relevant campaigns. Let’s learn more about these types of data, and how to get them.

Basic Demographic and Profile Data

This is the foundational layer of customer information. It answers the question “who is this person?” – but in broad strokes that help group customers more effectively.

Name

While the marketing industry is moving away from {First Name} as the centrepiece of email personalization [1], names still have a role to play. Use them in the body copy of welcome emails, in personalized image overlays, and in post-purchase follow-ups.

The key is natural, contextual placement. Shoehorning names into every paragraph feels forced – and just wouldn’t happen in real life.

Location and City

Location data unlocks some of the most powerful and practical personalization tactics available. When you know where a subscriber lives, you can tailor content based on geography, local events, weather, and cultural references.

At its simplest, location data lets you optimize email send times, and most ESPs offer send-time optimization based on recipient time zone. This should be the standard for any serious email marketer.

At a more advanced level, location data enables weather-triggered campaigns, where an email dynamically changes based on the subscriber’s location and real-time weather data. It can also be triggered by local events or stock levels at their nearest store.

Date of Birth

Birthday campaigns are a classic personalization tactic for good reason – they work! Birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails, and generate 342% higher revenue per email [2].

Beyond the obvious birthday discount offers, date of birth data helps you determine age-appropriate offers and content. A skincare brand, for example, might promote anti-aging products to subscribers over 40 and acne solutions to those under 25 – not as a hard rule, but as a starting point for relevance.

Company Name and Job Title

For B2B marketers, company name and job title are essential personalization fields – not for including in email copy, but for tailoring content by industry, company size, and decision-making authority.

Each level of seniority has different priorities. A C-suite executive needs high-level strategic content; a practitioner needs tactical how-to guides. Job title tells you which content to serve each user. Even in B2C contexts, job titles can be useful for understanding your audience, their likely schedules, their attention, and their interests.

Behavioral Data

Demographic data tells you who your customer is. Behavioral data tells you what they do – and what they do is often more predictive of future actions than what they say.

Purchase History

Purchase history is arguably the most valuable data point for ecommerce personalization. It reveals what a customer actually buys (not just what they say they’re interested in), how much they spend, how often they buy, and what categories they prefer.

You can use purchase history to send personalized recommendations based on past purchases. More advanced use cases include replenishment reminders for consumable products (coffee, pet food, dietary supplements) and loyalty rewards that acknowledge a customer’s total spend.

Website Behavior

Website behavior data (pages viewed, products clicked, time spent on site, search terms used) gives you insight into a customer’s current interests and intent.

This data powers some of the most effective triggered email campaigns, like abandoned cart reminders, and price drop alerts for viewed products. A customer who spends ten minutes looking at running shoes but doesn’t buy is signalling strong intent – that’s a prime opportunity for a personalized follow-up email.

Email Engagement

Email engagement data (which messages a subscriber opens, which links they click, which campaigns they ignore) tells you what content resonates with each individual.

Use this data to group subscribers by their demonstrated preferences. Someone who always clicks your “new arrivals” emails but never opens “sale” emails is telling you what they value. Someone who clicks every “how to” guide but ignores product announcements is telling you they want education, not promotion.

This data can also inform frequency optimization. Subscribers who open every email might welcome a higher cadence. Those who open once a month might need a less frequent schedule or higher value content to stay engaged.

App and Website Engagement

Beyond what customers do on your website, how often they log in and which features they use provides valuable personalization signals. A frequent login suggests a highly engaged user who may be receptive to loyalty offers or upsells. An infrequent login might indicate a churn risk who needs an engagement campaign. Feature use tells you which product areas matter most to each customer.

Stated Preferences (Zero-Party Data)

Stated preferences – sometimes called zero-party data – is information customers intentionally and proactively share with you. Unlike behavioral data (which you observe) or demographic data (which you infer or collect passively), zero-party data is given explicitly.

This is the most trustworthy and accurate data you can collect because the customer provides it directly.

Content Preferences

Content preferences tell you what topics, product categories, or types of information a customer wants to receive. A fashion retailer might use polling to ask which styles interest their customers, and a B2B software company might ask which topics are most relevant to their recipients’ roles (product updates, industry trends, case studies, technical documentation, etc.).

Once collected, these preferences can be used to dynamically select which content blocks, images, or offers appear in each customer’s email.

Frequency and Channel Preferences

Not every customer wants to hear from you at the same frequency or through the same channels. Giving subscribers control over how often they receive emails and which types of messages they receive reduces unsubscribes and improves long-term engagement [3].

Ask subscribers how often they want to hear from you (weekly, monthly, only major updates), and which channels work best for them (email, SMS, app push notifications).

How to Collect This Data

You can’t just hope customers will tell you what you need to know – you have to ask, and you have to make asking worth their while. You don’t even need to offer anything or give anything away, you just have to promise a better experience.

Collecting first-party data requires intentional design and tools – starting with the stuff you can directly control.

Sign-up Forms and Preference Centers

Your email sign-up form is the first opportunity to collect data. Keep it simple at the point of subscription (email address is the only absolute requirement), and use progressive profiling to collect additional data over time.

A preference center (a page where subscribers can update their settings at any time) is essential for ongoing data collection. Include options for content preferences, frequency, and channels. Link to your preference center in every email footer, to keep users onboard.

Website and App Tracking

With proper consent and privacy compliance (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), you can track customer behavior across your website and app using tracking pixels, cookies, and analytics platforms.

This data is automatically collected – the customer doesn’t have to do anything except use your website. The key is connecting this anonymous behavior data to known email addresses. Most ESPs offer tracking scripts placed on your website that can achieve this.

Be transparent about what you’re tracking and why. A clear, simple privacy notice builds trust, especially if users are given an opt-out.

Purchase Data

Your ecommerce platform or CRM is a goldmine of first-party data. Every transaction tells you what a customer bought, when they bought it, how much they spent, and (often) what they used to pay.

Extract and analyze this data regularly. Look for patterns: which products are often bought together? Which customers buy on a predictable schedule? Which products have high repeat purchase rates? 

These patterns become personalization rules. Use them to power replenishment campaigns, for businesses like coffee roasters, products like deodorant or makeup, and for other consumables.

Surveys and Polls

Sometimes, the best way to get data is to ask directly.

Email is an excellent channel for simple, effective polls. Sendtric’s poll widget lets you add yes/no questions, 1 to 5 ratings, and unlimited multiple-choice questions directly into emails [4]. Responses are collected automatically, and can be fed back into your segmentation.

Keep your polls extremely short: one question, three to five answer options, and a clear call-to-action. A two-minute survey belongs on a landing page, not in an email. If you have more to ask, include a link to a deeper survey.

Feeding Data Into Your Email Tools

Collecting data is only half the battle. The other half is getting that data into your email personalization tools. Your ESP or enterprise marketing platform should be the central repository for customer data [5]. Use integrations or APIs to connect your ecommerce platform, CRM, analytics tools, and preference center to your email system.

With Sendtric, you can pull data from your ESP or directly from your ecommerce platform to power personalized images, weather widgets, and countdown timers. A customer’s name, location, purchase history, and even live inventory levels can determine which image they see when they open your email.

To explore the specific tools that turn this data into personalized email experiences at scale, read our post on the best email personalization tools.

Real-world Examples of Email Personalization in Action

The best email personalization uses multiple tactics, drawing on location data, behavior, and user preferences, all working together. Here are some of the best

Spotify’s Wrapped Campaign

Spotify Wrapped uses personalization really effectively, in a campaign that spans app notifications and email, to create an annual viral sensation. Each user gets a personalized email, with a teaser of their listening stats (behavioral data), their ranking in their region (location), and even things like how their app settings affect the listening experience (preferences). This data is pooled together and used to generate GIFs and images dynamically, to insert into each user’s unique Wrapped email.