How to Implement Personalized Email Marketing at Scale [with SAP Emarsys]

Your customers’ inboxes are flooded with emails every single day. Most of them? Ignored. Deleted. Forgotten.

But what if your emails stood out—not just as another marketing message, but as something your customers actually want to read?

This is the power of personalized email marketing. Brands that customize emails based on customer behavior, preferences, and real-time data see:

• Higher open and click-through rates
• Increased conversions and revenue
• Stronger customer loyalty and retention

The problem? Many businesses still struggle with scaling personalization. Manually tailoring emails is impossible when you have thousands—or millions—of customers.

That’s where SAP Emarsys comes in.

With AI-driven automation, predictive analytics, and a powerful Visual Content Editor (VCE), Emarsys makes it effortless to create highly personalized email campaigns that drive engagement and revenue.

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to implement smarter, data-driven email personalization using SAP Emarsys—so you can move beyond generic messaging and start delivering emails that truly connect.

Let’s dive in.

Most marketers know that personalization is key to email success—but executing it at scale is a challenge.

Many businesses fall into one of two traps:

• Basic personalization – Simply adding a first name to an email isn’t enough. Customers expect relevant product recommendations, behavior-based content, and timely messages that align with their needs.
• Manual effort & data silos – Marketers often rely on disconnected tools, slow manual processes, and fragmented customer data. The result? Missed opportunities, generic emails, and low engagement.

The solution: AI-Driven, Automated Personalization

Instead of relying on basic name-based personalization or manually segmenting email lists, brands need an AI-powered, data-driven approach to ensure:

• Emails are dynamic and adapt to customer behavior in real time.
• Every email feels 1:1 personalized—without manual effort.
• Automation delivers the right message at the right time, boosting conversions.

With SAP Emarsys, brands can unlock scalable, hyper-personalized email marketing that automates recommendations, timing, and content—so every customer gets the right email at the perfect moment.

Scaling email personalization requires the right strategy, data, and automation. Here’s how SAP Emarsys helps businesses move beyond basic personalization to create high-converting email campaigns.

Step 1: Build data-driven customer segments

Successful email personalization starts with knowing your customers on a deeper level. Without accurate segmentation, emails become generic, failing to connect with recipients in a meaningful way.

By organizing customers into highly targeted segments, brands can:

• Deliver more relevant content that aligns with customer interests.
• Increase email engagement rates by sending messages tailored to real behaviors.
• Drive higher conversions by ensuring offers and recommendations match user intent.

But manually segmenting customer lists is time-consuming and inefficient. This is where SAP Emarsys simplifies the process by using AI-driven insights to automatically group customers based on:

• Past purchase behavior – What products or categories do they frequently buy?
• Browsing history – What are they searching for but haven’t purchased yet?
• Engagement patterns – How often do they open, click, or ignore emails?
• Predictive analytics – Who is likely to buy soon, churn, or need re-engagement?

Instead of relying on outdated email lists, SAP Emarsys enables brands to create dynamic, real-time customer segments that continuously update based on the latest user interactions. This ensures that every email sent is highly relevant and increases the likelihood of engagement.

With smart segmentation in place, the next step is delivering hyper-personalized email content—which we’ll explore in the next section.

Step 2: Automate hyper-personalized content

Once you have segmented your customers, the next challenge is delivering the right message to the right person at the right time—without manually crafting individual emails. Personalization isn’t just about inserting a first name; it’s about dynamically adjusting content to reflect customer behavior, preferences, and past interactions.

By automating hyper-personalized content, brands can:

• Increase customer engagement by making emails feel more relevant and valuable.
• Improve conversion rates by delivering product recommendations tailored to each recipient.
• Save time and resources by reducing the need for manual email customization.

SAP Emarsys simplifies this process with dynamic content blocks, which allow brands to automatically tailor emails based on:

• Browsing and purchase history – Customers see recommended products based on what they’ve recently viewed or bought.
• Real-time behavior – If a customer abandons a cart, they receive an email featuring the exact items left behind.
• Engagement level – Frequent buyers get VIP offers, while inactive customers receive re-engagement incentives.

Additionally, SAP Emarsys optimizes subject lines and CTAs based on customer data, ensuring each email resonates with its recipient. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, every email feels uniquely crafted—even though it’s fully automated.

With automated personalization in place, the next step is choosing the perfect time to send each email for maximum impact—which we’ll explore in the next section.

Step 3: AI-powered send-time optimization

Even the most personalized email won’t drive results if it’s sent at the wrong time. Timing plays a crucial role in email engagement—send an email when your audience is active, and you’re more likely to get higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. But send it at the wrong time? It gets buried under a pile of unread messages.

So how do you determine the perfect send time for every customer when everyone has different habits?

This is where AI-powered send-time optimization (STO) comes in.

Why timing matters

• Inbox competition is fierce – Customers receive hundreds of emails daily, making timing a key differentiator.
• Engagement patterns vary – Some customers check emails first thing in the morning, while others engage late at night. One-size-fits-all scheduling doesn’t work anymore.
• Peak engagement boosts conversions – Emails sent at the right time drive more interactions and ultimately more revenue.

How SAP Emarsys optimizes send times

Instead of relying on guesswork or generic best practices, SAP Emarsys uses AI-driven analytics to determine when each individual customer is most likely to engage.

🚀 Here’s how it works:

1. Analyzes past behavior – SAP Emarsys tracks when each customer typically opens and clicks emails.
2. Learns from engagement trends – The AI continuously refines send-time predictions based on historical data and new interactions.
3. Delivers emails at peak moments – Each email is sent precisely when the recipient is most likely to engage, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

The impact of AI-driven send-time optimization

Optimizing your send times can yield powerful results. Here are a few of them:

📈 Higher open rates – Because emails arrive when customers are actually checking their inboxes.

⚡ Better engagement – When emails land at the right time, they feel more relevant and timely.

💰 Increased revenue – More engagement leads to more clicks, conversions, and higher ROI on every email campaign.

With SAP Emarsys’ AI-driven STO, brands can automate the process of sending emails at the right moment—ensuring every message has the best chance of being seen, read, and acted upon.

With timing perfected, the next step is leveraging automated behavioral triggers to engage customers at critical moments—which we’ll explore next.

Step 4: Automate behavioral triggers

Personalized emails aren’t just about who you’re messaging, but when and why you’re reaching out. The most effective email campaigns are triggered by customer behavior, ensuring that each message lands at the perfect moment—when engagement (and conversion) is most likely.

Many businesses, however, still rely on batch-and-blast email campaigns, sending promotional messages at arbitrary times instead of responding to real customer actions. The result? Missed opportunities, low engagement, and lost revenue.

Why behavioral triggers matter:

• Customers expect timely communication – Today’s consumers are used to brands anticipating their needs. When they abandon a cart, browse a product, or make a purchase, they expect follow-up emails that reflect those actions.
• Automation ensures you never miss a sales opportunity – A well-timed reminder can recover lost revenue, drive repeat purchases, and strengthen customer relationships.
• Behavior-based emails outperform bulk sends – Triggered emails consistently achieve higher open, click-through, and conversion rates compared to one-size-fits-all email blasts.

How SAP Emarsys makes behavioral triggers easy

Instead of manually scheduling follow-ups or guessing when to send, SAP Emarsys automates behavioral emails based on real-time customer actions.

🚀 Here’s how it works:

1. Detects key customer behaviors – Emarsys tracks when a customer abandons a cart, views a product, makes a purchase, or disengages.
2. Triggers the right email sequence – The platform automatically sends relevant emails based on what the customer did (or didn’t do).
3. Personalizes the content dynamically – Each triggered email adapts to the customer’s past behavior, preferences, and stage in the buying journey.

Examples of high-impact behavioral triggers

✅ Abandoned cart reminders – Recover lost sales by reminding customers about items they left behind.
✅ Re-engagement campaigns – Automatically reach out to inactive subscribers with special offers or content.
✅ Post-purchase follow-ups – Send order confirmations, product care tips, and relevant upsell offers.

✅ Back-in-stock and price-drop alerts – Notify customers when a product they viewed becomes available or goes on sale.
✅ Loyalty and rewards notifications – Keep customers engaged with milestone updates and redemption reminders.

By leveraging behavior-driven automation, SAP Emarsys ensures that your emails are always timely, relevant, and action-oriented, helping you maximize engagement and revenue without the manual workload.

With behavioral triggers in place, the next step is tracking, analyzing, and optimizing your email performance to drive even better results—which we’ll explore next.

Step 5: Measure, optimize, and refine

Even the best personalized email strategy isn’t complete without ongoing measurement and refinement. To maximize performance, brands need to continuously analyze key metrics, experiment with different approaches, and optimize their strategy based on real-world data.

Yet many businesses still take a set-it-and-forget-it approach to email marketing. They send out campaigns but don’t always track what’s working, what’s not, and where opportunities for growth exist.

By consistently measuring performance and making data-driven improvements, brands can:

✅ Increase engagement rates by understanding what resonates with their audience.

✅ Boost conversions by refining messaging, timing, and offers.

✅ Maximize ROI by allocating resources toward the highest-performing strategies.

Key metrics to track

SAP Emarsys provides in-depth reporting and analytics to help businesses measure success. Here are the most important email marketing metrics to monitor:

📩 Open rates – Measure how many recipients are actually opening emails. Low open rates might indicate timing issues, weak subject lines, or deliverability problems.

📌 Click-through rates (CTR) – Track how many recipients click on links within an email. If CTR is low, it could be a sign that the email content or CTA isn’t compelling enough.

💰 Conversion rates – The ultimate measure of success—how many email recipients actually take action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up, or engaging further.

🔄 Engagement over time – Analyze trends in customer activity, response rates, and preferences to identify when audiences are most engaged.

⚠️ Unsubscribe and spam rates – A spike in unsubscribes or spam complaints could mean emails aren’t relevant or are being sent too frequently.

How SAP Emarsys helps brands optimize email performance

Instead of manually reviewing campaign results, SAP Emarsys automates performance tracking, provides AI-driven recommendations, and enables real-time optimization.

🚀 Here’s how it works:

1. Real-time analytics dashboard – Get a complete overview of email performance, customer engagement trends, and revenue impact in one place.
2. Automated A/B testing – SAP Emarsys helps brands test subject lines, content variations, CTAs, and send times to determine what works best.
3. AI-powered insights – The platform automatically identifies high-performing email elements and suggests areas for improvement.
4. Predictive analytics – Instead of just analyzing past data, SAP Emarsys predicts future customer behavior, helping brands stay ahead.

While implementing AI-driven email personalization sounds great in theory, what does it look like in practice? Here are two brands that have successfully leveraged SAP Emarsys to drive engagement, increase revenue, and build stronger customer relationships.

Home Depot Mexico: Maximizing engagement during peak sales

Home Depot Mexico needed a way to improve their email marketing strategy during “Hot Sale,” one of the biggest online shopping events in Mexico. They turned to SAP Emarsys to help create a data-driven, automated, and highly personalized email campaign that would maximize engagement.

🚀 Key personalization tactics used:

• Personalized welcome series – Automated email sequences introduced new customers to Home Depot’s brand values, special promotions, and recommended products.
• Progressive profiling – Customers were encouraged to share their interests, enabling Home Depot to deliver even more relevant content.
• AI-powered product recommendations – Emails dynamically adjusted product suggestions based on real-time customer behavior.

📈 The results:

• 8x increase in conversions during the “Hot Sale” event.
• 5% increase in conversion rates during regular promotional periods.
• Home Depot became one of the top six retailers in searches during peak seasons.

City Beach: Boosting revenue through AI-powered personalization

City Beach, a leading Australian youth fashion retailer, wanted to enhance customer engagement and increase revenue through smarter, automated email marketing. Using SAP Emarsys, they implemented a fully automated, AI-driven personalization strategy that worked across multiple channels.

🚀 Key personalization tactics used:

• Unified customer data – SAP Emarsys consolidated customer data, giving City Beach a complete view of shopping behaviors.
• Targeted, behavior-driven email campaigns – Automated segmentation enabled City Beach to send the right email at the right time.
• Omnichannel integration – Emails were seamlessly connected to social media, SMS, and web interactions for a consistent customer experience.

📈 The results:

• 105% increase in email revenue year-over-year.
• 38% increase in active customers and a 36% retention rate.
• 14x return on ad spend (ROAS) on Facebook and 11x ROAS on Google through CRM-driven ads.

Personalized email marketing isn’t just about using a customer’s first name—it’s about creating a seamless, relevant, and engaging experience at every touchpoint. As consumer expectations continue to rise, businesses that fail to personalize will struggle to retain and convert customers.

By implementing AI-powered personalization, behavior-based triggers, and predictive analytics, brands can ensure that every email feels timely and relevant, leading to:

• Higher engagement and open rates
• Improved conversions and increased revenue
• Stronger customer loyalty and retention

SAP Emarsys makes it easy to execute a scalable, data-driven email marketing strategy that delivers real results. From AI-powered send-time optimization to automated content personalization, Emarsys provides everything you need to engage customers effectively.

🚀 Now it’s your turn! Book a demo with SAP Emarsys today and discover how AI-driven personalization can transform your email marketing strategy.