One morning in the not too distant past, I returned to my desk, feeling well rested after a three-day weekend.  Upon opening my email inbox I groaned – there were 367 email messages about everything from prescriptions to vacations.  I had no choice but to plunk my finger down on the delete key and hold it there until they had all disappeared.  While I did this, I quickly scanned the “From” line for any names I might recognize.  If I didn’t recognize the name, out it went with the trash.

Does this sound familiar to you?  Chances are, it does to your subscribers.  Let’s face it – opening emails from strangers is about as common today in the business world as hitchhiking is in the world of travel.  Even if your readers aren’t receiving hundreds of SPAM emails at a time, they probably won’t open emails from names they don’t recognize.  An email from an unfamiliar or generic name is assumed to be a waste of their time, or worse, it might contain a virus.  The last thing you want is for your readers to delete your email without fully realizing it’s from you. 

Personalize and Stand Out from the Inbox Crowd 

As a marketer who wants to stand out from the crowds of spammers, it is always a good idea to pay some extra attention to your sender and subject lines.  Before your reader even has a chance to lay eyes on your content, they need to find and open your email.  Therefore, when it comes to sender and subject lines, recognition is key. 

I know what you’re thinking – “That’s great, Jess, but how am I supposed to get people to recognize my email?”  The most effective way to do this is to personalize your sender and subject lines.  By personalize, I mean that you can set up your emails so that each subscriber receives an email with sender and subject lines tailored specifically to them.  Let’s use an investment firm as an example and focus on the sender lines for now.  Each of the firm’s clients and prospects have been assigned a financial advisor and this assignment is tracked by their CRM application.  As long as the firm can import this information into their IMN subscriber list, they can set up, in a single email, customized sender lines, causing each subscriber’s email to appear as if it was sent by their own financial advisor.

Here’s how it’s done:

The first part of this process for the firm is to update their subscriber lists so that each subscriber’s record will include the name and email address of their financial advisor.  To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1.  From the Subscriber Menu, select “Change Custom Field Names.”

Step 2.  Rename two fields “Financial Advisor Email” and “Financial Advisor Name.”

 

Step 3.  Upload the updated subscriber list (which includes the financial advisor’s email and name) and match the appropriate fields in the database to the new custom fields.

The second part of this process involves sending out an email with what we call “Personalization Tokens” in the sender lines.  Here’s how that will be done:

1.  Click on the “Send As Email” link from the Main Menu.   On the “Send As Email” page, there are buttons that show the figure of a person next to the “From” name and email fields.  These buttons will add Personalization Tokens to the email.

2.  Click on the “Add Variable” button to add the “Financial Advisor Email” field to the sender line.  This way, the system will automatically populate this field with the Financial Advisor Email that is appropriate for each of the subscribers.  The “Default Value” will appear for any subscriber who does not have the “Financial Agent Email” field filled in as a part of their subscriber record.

3.    If the same is done with the “Full Name” field and the email is sent as usual, each subscriber will receive an email personalized with the email address and name of their Financial Advisor.  Our imaginary investment firm will most likely see a sudden rise in the number of emails that are opened.  Their subscribers will not only recognize the person who is sending them the email, but they will undoubtedly appreciate the personal touch.

We live in a world where you, as a marketer, can communicate with thousands of people with a single click of the mouse.  But that doesn’t mean you need to take all the human interaction out of these relationships. In fact, the more the reader feels that you are speaking to them as a person, the better!  So if you’re looking for a quick way to personalize your e-communication, the email itself is a great place to start.

If you have questions on this, please email me for more information.