Personalizing? I sure hope you know me

Recently I received a curious email, it was addressed to my dog Toto. Yes, you are reading correctly….MY DOG! I found it interesting that while I have never subscribed Toto to receive any mail of her own, she was receiving this highly personalized email with incentives for dog food and treats. Great design.  Interesting information.  Incentives that I might even use.  They even had a picture of her breed, which I am sure is just by coincidence.  While I am sure that Purina had very good intentions in selling and marketing their products, this left a bad impression with me.

FIRST, the email was personalized to some extent with sections for the dog’s birth date, breed, etc. What’s worse is that many of these fields were null and so instead of the robust personalization, it simply said Not Available.  Seeing Not Available or null fields tells me as a reader that you don’t really know me.

SECOND, the email was not something I subscribed to.  Since I did not subscribe and the personalized information was poorly done, this tells me that someone sold my information to a marketer somewhere.

I do subscribe to a lot of emails just to see what types of emails are out there.  I also subscribe to receive information from the organizations I want to receive updates from, but when I get one like this I know that my information has obviously been sold.  I receive emails like this all the time.  It’s just like the Pampers brand emails I receive.  Great emails with coupons and incentives, but the funniest part of it is that I have teenage daughters, not babies.  Land’s end on the other hand, implements their campaigns very well not with personalized emails, but with accurate backend data.  If you click on the shop now link in their emails, not only will it insert your coupon code automatically, but it also brings in your shopping preferences.

The two lessons to be learned here are this:

• If you personalize, do it right!  Make sure your data is accurate and complete.  Make sure your message fits the demographic audience you are mailing.   Otherwise the whole intention of the personalization gets lost with the missing or inaccurate data.
• Make sure that you are obtaining permission from your recipients.  There is nothing more of a brand detraction than to be sent information when you did not subscribe.  It’s very easy to incorporate a subscribe link in websites, landing pages, and other marketing.  Build your list in a way where you will have recipients that want to receive your emails.  Here’s a great example of an email signup page.

There you have it, two simple concepts that when done correctly will make your mailings more engaging and successful.  However, if they are done wrong they can not only disengage the very audience you are trying to attract, but they can also get you into trouble.

Carissa Newton | Marketing