Please Don’t Treat Me Like a Stranger
Posted by Dave McCue on July 1st, 2009
Earlier this year, SubscriberMail engaged a vendor to assist with an online advertising initiative. Just a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from this vendor that—despite containing elements of personalization, such as my name and company name—amounted to little more than a “canned” message that may as well have been aimed at a total stranger.
Even worse than the “infomercial” style of writing used in the message was the fact that it’s From address was that of a representative I had spent quite a bit of time working with before, both via email and over the phone. Having already established this relationship months before, I was a bit insulted to be given such a generic sales pitch—as if I had never heard of or been in contact with the vendor in question.
A week or so later, this same representative sent me a follow-up email that, while still a bit generic, seemed as though it was actually written to me. So I wrote back and we had a normal email exchange over the next couple of days.
The moral of this story is pretty simple: don’t treat email recipients as if they are all the same. The original message I received was sent through an email service provider (indicated by the ESP logo in the footer), so it’s safe to assume that at least basic segmentation tools were at this sender’s disposal. How then, could a completely generic sales pitch end up in the inbox of one of their former clients (i.e. me)?
There is a reason the second message prompted me to take action, while the first message left me cold. While elements of personalization—such as addressing recipients by name—are a nice touch, they can’t make the heart of the message itself any more relevant when it is way off the mark. Combining personalization with segmentation gives your message a much better chance of achieving the level of relevancy it needs. At the very least, some basic list segmentation—separating clients, former clients, prospects, etc. into their own lists—could have prevented this type of irrelevant communication now and in the future.
It can be easy to overlook the basics sometimes, but it’s also easy to see why it’s never a good idea.
Dave,
I receive messages of a similar style from the ESPs/Sales reps of said ESPs of which I had many conversations about our email marketing needs. I found it interesting that I would get messages like that in an automated trigger-based campaign from ESPs of that nature.
It is easy to “set it and forget it” with automated campaigns. Never a wise thing to do.
Exactly. One of the things I like about my job is the “both sides of the fence” perspective it provides with regards to email practices. On one hand, I can definitely appreciate the convenience and time-saving benefits of automated processes, but on the other, as a recipient I can usually spot such messages a mile away and usually don’t pay them nearly as much mind as I would a more targeted message. I don’t think automated messages have to be impersonal, it just takes a more strategic approach to ensure relevance.