In marketing we often talk about personalising our marketing activities – which is a good thing.
We all want to be like Amazon – those emails all seem like they have been personally curated for my interests and tastes.
That’s a good thing.
But often the extent of personalisation in corporate email stops at: inserting the person’s first name in the email subject line
Which as you may know is usually what all spam emails look like.
As soon as I see my name in an email subject line I ignore it – you’re probably the same.
So why do so many marketers think doing the same for their corporate email nurtures is a good thing?
It’s because they don’t understand that personalisation is actually about relevance.
We all like to hear people use our name, I get that, but what we really like is when the conversation is relevant.
Next time you get a cold call from some poor telemarketer trying to sell you on switching energy providers, listen to how much they overuse your first name. It’s an instant red flag.
That said, my final comment is: always test and measure. YMMV
