By Bob LeDrew
I am going to suggest something that may seem heretical: Don't personalize your emails. Instead, spray and pray.
Why would I say this? Because it's just so darned time-consuming reading up on and researching the people your company wants to get in touch with.
You have to set up Twitter searches, look at LinkedIn groups, build a bunch of feeds on your RSS reader.
Seems like a lot of work, when you can just buy a list.
If You Personalize Your Email Marketing…
But that's just the beginning of the work. When you personalize, people are actually going to want to engage with your content. They'll email you back. They'll ask questions. It's frankly a big pain in the butt. So don't bother.
Don't use merge codes to put people's names in. Don't reference their content. Every opening you give people to look for attention from you is just another thing you're going to have to end up doing. What a pain.
Just last week, I got an email from someone named Becca. She told me I was an expert, and that she'd been enjoying my tweets. So, of course, I wanted to know what tweets in particular had turned her into a Bob fan.
I emailed her back, and six days later I'm still waiting. See, Becca is just so busy responding to her personalized emails she's just not gotten to mine yet.
And this morning, I got an email from someone from the "Ottawa Media Team" for a particular company. She was suggesting a "fascinating story for [me] on 'The 5 Steps Any Advertiser, Brand, or Agency Can Take to Make Their Ad Go Viral.'"
It was a little odd to see a 310 area code on the signature line right below "Ottawa Media Team", since that area code covers Los Angeles. Of course, I wouldn't be a bit surprised that an LA agency would send a crack agency rep up here to court me.
But I'd have preferred a gin-soaked lunch to the e-mail.
They WILL Come…So Be Ready for It
Okay, I'm not going to continue with my poor Jonathan Swift parody any longer. I am going to quite seriously tell you that personalization without follow-through is possibly worse than simply spraying and praying. If you personalize an email blast well, I'm going to have higher expectations of you than if you didn't personalize it at all.
The expectations are the problem now. Or more specifically, they're YOUR problem. When you execute step one of your marketing initiative well, you tell me that the rest of the initiative is going to match that level of execution.
So if you're going into this with the goal of just getting through; if you just want to get it out so your boss gets off your back; if the goal is the just get it out the door — don't bother raising the bar.
Keep it low, so that you can keep the recipients' expectations low too. I see these emails coming into my inbox everyday, only to be deleted with a bare second's examination.
On the other hand, if you want to actually make an IMPACT with your email marketing, and your goal is to inspire an action: Be ready to receive – and act on – those actions.
Otherwise, why bother?
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