Comments on: Do Personalized Subject Lines Work? (Finally, An Answer)

By: Subject Lines and Personalisation

Subject Lines and Personalisation — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:36:54 +0000

[...] http://blog.bronto.com/2008/10/10/do-personalized-subject-lines-work-finally-an-answer/ [...]

By: 6 Reasons Why US Airways Understands Email Marketing | Bronto Blog

6 Reasons Why US Airways Understands Email Marketing | Bronto Blog — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:46:03 +0000

[...] Personalized Content: I’m not always a fan of personalization, but the US Airways emails use it effectively. I could care less that they use my name (bugs me [...]

By: Subject lines IV: Personalization | The Marketr

Subject lines IV: Personalization | The Marketr — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:20:04 +0000

[...] name? First, last, username? What’s most appropriate? Writing on that very topic, DJ Waldow offers sensible [...]

By: Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » Subject lines IV: Personalization

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:15:49 +0000

[...] name? First, last, username? What’s most appropriate? Writing on that very topic, DJ Waldow offers sensible [...]

By: Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » Do Personalized Subject Lines Work?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:27:11 +0000

[...] from blog.bronto.com Do personalized subject lines work? Do they lead to more opens/renders, higher click-through rates, [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:08:52 +0000

Matt V – Username personalization worked for our artists, because they identify strongly with their band’s name. Think about it like this – When Paul McCartney sees “The Beatles” in a headline, he’s very likely to check it out and see what people are saying about him and his work! The association may be even stronger than his first name, since lots of people have that name and he’s used to being spammed with messages for Paul. When he sees something with The Beatles in it though… he knows it’s something for him and him alone. Open rates on messages for artists that included their band’s name skyrocketed. Our fans don’t identify the same way – “hellokitty23″ for example doesn’t have the same ring to it :)

Brian Whalley
Community Manager
OurStage.com

By: Drew

Drew — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:38:33 +0000

I think when you use personalization consistently it loses its appeal. I noticed this when I changed my subject lines after about 6 straight months of using personalization. After running a series of A/B test, I learned that not using first name in this case actually increased opens and clicks.

I think consumers wised up and realized it was perhaps gimmicky?

By: DJ Waldow

DJ Waldow — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:13:33 +0000

@Matt aka EmailKarma –

That is an excellent point. I think it is almost worthy of an entirely new blog post.

The general idea behind “Know Thy Audience” is to be cognizant of who you are sending to and adjust your personalization accordingly. This may mean no personalization OR personalization by first name OR personalization by username OR some other type of personalization.

Overall, the better you know and understand the open/render/click/conversion behavior of your targeted segments, the better you will be able to send relevant, timely, meaningful emails.

Hope this helps clarify (a bit).

By: Matt V

Matt V — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:05:03 +0000

DJ,

Can you clarify item 1 “Know Thy Audience” – User names vs a Persons actual name are significantly different.

Sending me email with the personalization using Matt, vs. EmailKarma are completely different things and how I treat each of those messages would vary immensely.

Cheers,
Matt
@emailkarma