Bridget Holland, a marketer out of Sydney, Australia, who runs a content marketing agency called NoBull Marketing, writes in with a question:
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I did a presentation for a business networking group yesterday about email marketing, and I used one of your emails as an example. (Frequency, formatting and results more than content. I was comparing it to a nicely formatted monthly email with stacks of articles, and arguing that either could work but you have to find out what was right for you and your market.)
For the first time ever – oops, embarrassing – I realised that you don’t use those first names you collect when people subscribed. (I had to go check that you collected them!) That you have no opening greeting at all.
So the question is:
* Why don’t you use greetings? Did you ever? If you did and you’ve stopped, has it made a difference? Either for the entire list, or for new subscriber behaviour?
* Why don’t you use personalisation? And since you don’t, why do you collect first names?
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I never used personalization in my emails because, like I wrote a few days ago in the context of calibration, it feels fake to me.
I don’t like it when people do it in emails I read, particularly in the body of the email. You know what I mean, [firstname]?
In the words of David Ogilvy, “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Or your mom, or your college roommate from UC Santa Cruz, or your ex-flatmate from Budapest, or an ex-girlfriend.
(The only person I’ve seen using personalization well is Daniel Throssell, who gets creative with it. However, in order to make that work, you have to police new subscribers to make sure they put in their real name when they sign up, which I don’t feel like doing.)
So like Bridget asks, why still ask for a name, if I’m never going to use it in an email?
Two reasons:
1. Most people do fill it out, and honestly. I make an occasional habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers, and this bit of info can be helpful.
2. Filling in a first name is a commitment and give for those who choose to make it. It’s a tiny commitment, but I figure it’s important. The work of training strangers of the internet to become dedicated readers and customers starts early, with such baby steps.
With all that said:
I remember the early days of my own marketing education. I put a lot of time and thought into topics like “First name on optin form, or no first name???” I now largely feel it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. Really, it’s just personal preference, and then inertia.
I’m not sure if anybody will profit from this in-depth discussion. But Bridget wrote in to ask, and I figured others might be wondering the same. In any case, I’m grateful to Bridget for sending in her question, and I wanted to highlight it here.
And since I’m busy writing my upcoming and new and still highly unfinished book, and since my self-imposed March 24 deadline is nearing, I would like to invite further reader questions.
Because answering reader questions makes for particularly easy and yet engaging emails.
So if you got small questions, big questions, questions about influence, copywriting, or how to style your hair, then I invite you to hit reply and let me know.
There’s a fair a chance I will answer your question in one of these emails over the next week or so, and will be grateful to you in any case.