First the Why...
If you listen to the water cooler chat, in almost any sales or marketing team, you'll hear time and again, that user engagement is getting harder...
We all have the same amount of minutes and hours in the day, but the demand for those is becoming fierce and overcrowded to say the least. So the question becomes how can we overcome this, how can we cut through the noise and wrestle back our prospects focus.
...and now for the Science...
There have been numerous scientific studies on how the human brain processes information, and the overwhelming outcome is that visually communicated information is far more effective.
Visualization works from a human perspective because we respond to and process visual data better than any other type of data.
In fact, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
Since we are visual by nature, we can use this skill to enhance data information processing and organizational effectiveness.
Lets make it Personal
Personalized Images are super effective at grabbing prospects attention in your outreach messages, but why is that...?
As we just read above the answer is rooted in science, because of the speed that the human brain process images, when the image includes personalized elements within the image, it triggers what is called a "Pattern Interrupt".
A Pattern interrupt is a technique to change a particular thought, behaviour or situation. Behavioural psychology and neuro linguistic programming (NLP) use this technique to interrupt and change thought patterns and behaviours.
It's like putting a brake on the brain, with the brain shouting out "STOP, PAY MORE ATTENTION THIS".
This increased mind-share, leads to more engagement, which in-turn leads to more people engaging in your outreach and taking your call to action (CTA).
Hyperise clients on average achieve a doubling of engagement when using personalization pattern interrupts in their images.
The key is to make it Purposeful
So we now know the power of image personalization, so lets delve down into some examples to make sure we're hitting the mark and making them purposeful.
Making your images purposeful and visualising your CTA is actually easier than you think, below are 5 ways you can do this:
1. Humanized GIFs
If the purpose of your outreach is to get the prospect to book a call with you, then humanizing your outreach, with an animated image of yourself, with some personalization to make it pop, can have a huge impact.
A simple smile and a wave in your personalized GIF will go beyond triggering a pattern interrupt, but also Leverage the law of reciprocity.
The reciprocity principle is one of the basic laws of social psychology: It says that in many social situations we pay back what we received from others. In other words, if John does you a favor, you're likely to return it to him
With Hyperise you can record GIFs directly within the platform, so it takes seconds to create personalized GIF templates and start leveraging them in your outreach message templates.
2. Visualize Success
Creating an aspirational image, that shows what success will look like, in an easy digestible format really helps. The example below is from our client G2, who extend their product output, direct into prospects inbox.
In G2's case, using the personalized image to reinforce the narrative "if you work with G2, you could become a category leader".
G2 were able to triple engagement in their outreach campaign, going from a 15% to 48% reply rate, a 3X uplift!
3. Personalize your Product
If you're a SaaS business, using your product screenshots and adding in personalized layers, is a great way to visualize the product discovery process and put the product in the prospects hands as they'll see it once they sign-up.
In Hubstaff's case, they were able to increase the click-through rate from 3% to 11% when they added personalized product images to their cold outreach, a massive 3.5X uplift!
4. Create Virality and Referrals
If you're running an event, create a moment of delight for your attendees by sharing with them their own personalized event ticket. This not only makes them feel special, but incentivising them to share on Twitter or Instagram, in return for prize draws etc, helps create a wave of virality with attendees own audience.
These examples from EcomWorld and AdWorld events helped generate 100s of shares from attendees and create a much wider impact on the awareness of the event.
5. Diagrammatically tell the Story
The example below from Reply.io really helps to visualize the story they are telling to their prospects. Using the concept of pleasure and pain, they're showing in a very simple and easy to grasp way, the difference of having their product.
In Replie's case they were able to increase the amount of prospects responding to their outreach campaigns from 11% to 21%, simply by making one simple change and personalization in their explanation images.
Ready to learn more..?
If you the above five personalized image examples peaked your interest and you want to see more examples and learn how you can seamlessly implement this in your own outreach, checkout the video below for a more examples and details on how to get started.