What is Email Localization and Why should your Emails be localized?

In email localization, email content is designed according to your target audience. Running email marketing campaigns in the international market is kind of a scary prospect. 

So, email localization helps to replicate your campaigns for international audiences. Translating and localizing emails helps to get in touch with people from all over the world by increasing brand awareness, and getting more subscriptions.

That is why in this article, you will be able to know about email localization and why your emails should be localized. 

What Is Email Localization?

Email localization is the process of adapting content in your email marketing campaign to meet the needs of their international market such as their culture and language. This provides a relevant experience to recipients.

Moreover, word-to-word translation of email messages captures the attention of an international audience and encourages them to take action. Always remember that no one will open your email that is lost in translation. 

Email localization helps the audience to read an appealing and catchy email in the right language. 

Email Localization For Marketers 

To understand how important email translation is for marketers, consider an example of a UK-based business that focuses on fitness clothing for men ages 20-30.

So, in the UK, many men in this age group have a specific clothing trend in mind for their workout such as minimalistic designs with stylish cutouts. These designs can be ideal for email marketing as they cater to the desires of their customer.

On the other hand, if this brand has a following in a Middle Eastern region, then there would be a need to pay attention to cultural differences. People in the Middle Eastern region will be focused more on conservative values.

So, clothing lines full of cutouts won’t work for this market and email marketers have to focus on displaying fashions with more coverage.

Aspects that email marketers should include in localization:

• Language Translation
• Cultural differences according to geography
• Time zone differences

Why Email Localization Segmentation is Important?

Well, only 19.36% of retail emails are opened. This is because only about 25% of companies focus on the regional preferences of their consumers. Always focus on the thought of where the information is going. 

English contributes to 25% of the common languages used on the internet as of January 2020. Another 75% of worldwide internet users don’t speak native English.

And more than half of the customers prefer to make their purchasing decision if the product or service description is in their native language. 

When You Should Localize Emails

Email localization is necessary for several types of marketing emails such as:

• Newsletters- Before sending a newsletter or a digital magazine to an international audience, make sure to localize your emails to meet the readers’ expectations. 
• Lead Nurturing Emails- These emails develop a connection between your brand and the audience. So, deliver them in the right language based on the audience’s preference. 
• Transactional Emails- It is always recommended to have a localized version of your website. This helps the website visitors to communicate further while receiving welcome, promotional, or confirmation emails. 
• Informational Emails- These types of emails will provide product updates to your international audiences. So, localize these emails according to the native user language. 

Challenges In Email Localization

The biggest hurdle that comes while sending campaigns is to understand your audience and make content accordingly. Also, the theme and tone need adjustment based on the region. 

For instance, Coca-Cola has partnerships in 90 developing markets that help them design their message and visual template based on people, languages, clothing, and events. 

Let’s take a look at some other challenges that need to be focused on. 

Local Email List Management

It is always better to segment your email subscriber list by language. You can survey your customers to ensure you have accurate data before you send it. Always display all your language versions in a single email campaign otherwise, you can target subscribers by language. 

Length of Subject Lines

Every subject line should have the right length. Prefer to include fifty characters or less for displaying without truncation. Internationalization increases the difficulty of email localization. For instance, while translating English to Italian you would need more characters to express the same concept.

Also, the preheaders should be up to 22 characters that could fit entirely in the email preview or inbox. So, A/B tests different subject lines and preheaders for campaigns sent in different languages. 

Localized Email Copy

Prefer to include a call to action in your email template. Using buttons or images can pose a problem when translated. Words can be significantly longer. Use a one-column email layout, to best compensate for variable content widths based on languages.

 

Localize Visuals/Images

Use appropriate images, photos, graphics, or other visual elements and localize them for your international audience. Without localization, your audience can generate a misunderstanding with mild confusion resulting in a grave offense. 

Different people have different cultural backgrounds. So, make sure your content meets the recipients’ expectations. The best option is to use more symbols-based images that have a flexible sign-off process. 

Character Encoding

Most email designers and coders prefer to use UTF-8 character encoding for HTML email documents. This is the default encoding for many email clients. 

Stay in Line with Local Laws 

An anti-spam policy or permission policy is sufficient to keep you out of any legal trouble. But always make sure that you provide an option of unsubscribing and your contact details in your emails. Also, resolve the unsubscribe requests within a set number of days.

Let’s take a look at country-by-country laws.

United States

The CAN-SPAM Act has mentioned guidelines on sending emails into the US from US servers.

European Union

The European Union is creating new legislation day by day to help better protect its citizens from data breaches. The General Data Protection Regulation was created by the European Commission, the Council of the EU, and the European Parliament, which has been enforced since 2018.

Under this, companies must notify citizens of a data breach within 72 hours, take prior consent to use a citizen’s information, provide a simple opt-out option to revoke consent and protect consumer data. 

Australia

The Spam Act describes commercial emails and includes provisions such as identifying the correct legal name of the individual/organization sending the email and the Australian Business Number if applicable. 

Canada

CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation) provides strict guidelines for gaining opt-in consent from email subscribers.

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