Bronto Blog

A few weeks ago, we wrote a blog post titled First Name Personalization - The Debate Continues. We were pleasantly surprised at the traction it received (tweets, comments, blogs). Fellow Bronto Adam Covati wrote a follow up post about A|B splits and several clients tested personalization in their subsequent email campaign. Julie and I even tried a “mini-test” in our bi-weekly customer newsletter (scroll to bottom for results).

So, the $1,000,000 question: Do personalized subject lines work? Do they lead to more opens/renders, higher click-through rates, a bump in conversions? I hope you are sitting down for the answer.
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I have never been a big fan of personalizing any part of an email with the subscriber’s first name (subject line, salutation, etc). I think it is pointless and doesn’t really add value to the email. It doesn’t entice me to open the message. In fact, usually it has the opposite effect (”mark as junk”).

However, every time I bring it up amongst my peers at Bronto or in the email marketing ecosystem, a healthy - albeit heated - discussion ensues.

Yesterday, I was speaking with a client who was seeking my advice on first name personalization. I gave him my standard pitch against such a practice:

• Bad data in = bad data out (See Ken Magil’s post about “Dear Stupid” from Barack Obama)
• First name personalization can look spammy
• Some ISPs/email clients may consider it spam
• It can fail miserably when done poorly (See “When Personalization Goes…Odd.”)

This client came back at me hard. “But DJ, we used Bronto’s A|B split and the subject line with first name personalization had a much higher open rate.” Now if you know me, you know that I hate being wrong. Hate it. But in this case, there is not really a right or wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

In our quest to achieve business objectives and to increase ROI, we often lose sight of the customer experience. We’re caught over-sending, using personalization incorrectly, not utilizing segmentation, or not effectively tracking customer behavior. All of these things add to a poor customer experience. We’ve devalued how important the role of customer experience should be in email marketing.

Here are just a few examples of low hanging fruit that can improve the customer experience.

• Over-sending to your customer. Did your customer set preferences for frequency? If not, have you considered offering your subscriber that option? It’s key to allow your customers to tell you how often they are going to receive your marketing. If you have set frequency expectations, don’t abuse them. Respect your customer’s inbox, by doing so you will have a positive return.
• Personalization used incorrectly. A colleague recently received an email that addressed her with her last name only. It seems the sender didn’t verify that the personalization they were using in fact targeted the first name. It may seem small, but to the recipient, it’s the first tell-tale sign that your message isn’t going to be relevant to them.

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