By Justin Premick, Education Marketing Director at AWeber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you receive emails from your favorite companies on a regular basis, you've probably seen your fair share of personalization. It's not hard to use a variable to place subscriber information in an email, and yet so often it doesn't feel personal at all.

Do personalized emails get more opens and clicks? Many marketers would say that they do, but that doesn't excuse us from continuing to test that theory. And even if personalization works in some cases, does that mean you should always use it? I think not.

For instance, here are some subject lines from emails I've received:

"Hi Justin –"

There’s technically nothing deceiving about saying hello in the subject line, but, in my opinion, this personalization is just too personal. I only use such an informal greeting with my family and close friends. Wouldn’t you be annoyed to get an email with that subject line, only to open it and find it was an email campaign?

"Exclusive Savings for Justin –"

Are the savings for all people with the name Justin? Is this National Justin Day? Why not just say “Exclusive Saving for You?” Personalization here, while it might get more opens, really makes no sense when you read it.

"JUSTIN, Save 30% For Two Days Only! –"

Don’t put names in ALL CAPS, even if that’s how they are displayed in your database. See if your email marketing software can automatically correct mis-capitalized names when it sends your campaigns.

None of these examples aim to suggest that personalization is a bad thing in general. A truly personal email addresses the subscriber’s needs, desires, fears, preferences and other aspects of their personality. Most emails never come close to being that precise.

Personalization alone is not enough to engage subscribers and invite them to open and click your emails. In order to make your email campaign personal, you need to implement segmentation and targeting strategies.

When you examine what different groups of subscribers are doing – where they go on your website, which emails and links they have opened and clicked through in the past – you can draw conclusions about their interests and use that knowledge to deliver more valuable messages to them.

That's far more personal than saying, “Hi NAME.”

 

Bio:

Justin Premick is the Education Marketing Director at AWeber. Read more at his blog, www.aweber.com/blog . Justin was just named as one of DMNews’ 30 Under 30, for the best and the brightest young superstars in the direct, database and interactive marketing industry.

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