Personalize Emails for Better Response Rates
Every once in a while I need to send out a message to some or all of our contacts, both clients and prospects. Maybe I'm telling all of our Maine contacts about the Web Marketing course I'm teaching at USM, or today I announced that we're moving to a new office this weekend and I wanted to share our new contact information.
In the past I'd send out these email blasts with all the recipients in the BCC file to protect everyone's email info. The "response rate"--the people who actually emailed me back--was always a sickly zero percent. Plus, a number of people didn't receive the emails since their corporate network blocks emails without an employee address in the To or CC fields. Lastly, if the list of recipients was too long, my SMTP server would reject the outgoing email as possible spam.
I recently started using a program called Email Merge X for the Macintosh. (I'm sure there are equally good products for Windows.) It allows me to import any contact list and generates personalized emails to each recipient. So, instead of one email with 300 recipients in the BCC field, it will generate 300 personalized emails based on whatever criteria I have in my contact database.
I did this to avoid the BCC blackout and get a higher delivery rate. What I discovered was that people started replying to these emails and taking action.
When the opening salvo is "Howdy!" or "All," no one cares. But when people see an email addressed to their name, they pay more attention.
It seems like a small thing, but if you're trying to engage people, try using their name. Already my missive about our impending move has generated a dozen congratulatory notes just a few minutes after it was sent.
For the curious and bored, here's what I said...
Dear Rich,
This weekend flyte will be moving into bigger digs so we can add a conference room, roller disco and herb garden...all part of an employee perks program I'm putting into action. Because of this we will be difficult to reach on Friday and early Monday.
All mail should continue to go to our PO Box:
flyte new media
PO 17711
Portland, ME 04112All deliveries, humans and pets should go to our new offices:
flyte new media
136 Commercial St. Ste. 201
Portland, ME 04101All surfers, robots and search engines should continue to visit our Web site:
or our blog:
Our phone number will continue to be 207.871.7921, although we will be adding direct lines in the near future.
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