The Pontiflex Blog

When personalization goes wrong

March 19, 2010 at 8:00 am Jason Penta Leave a comment

Usually, personalization in email marketing is a good thing.  It helps connect you to a subscriber by adding a “we’re on a first name basis” feel to your message.   And we all know that more tailored your message is to the recipient, the more likely that user will click through and further engage with your brand.

That is, until the personalization goes wrong.

Take a look at this recent email from OpenTable.com that was sent to a friend of mine.  His name is Ryan…remember that.

Who's Claudio?

It looks like the first name personalization isn’t working quite as OpenTable had anticipated.  Or maybe Ryan’s name used to be Claudio and he forgot to update his OpenTable account when he changed his name.  I tend to lean towards the former.

So what does this mean to our fellow email marketers?  Test. Test. Test.  Then test again.  Whenever you are sending out an email blast (particularly when you are using dynamic elements that are specific to a subscriber), testing is essential to ensuring the success of your mailing.   Have several co-workers from your company on your testing list and make sure personalization is working properly for everyone.  If possible, use a tool like Return Path’s Campaign Preview to see what your email will look like in different mail clients and identify spelling mistakes, HTML coding errors, and potential spam issues.

Lastly, if you think your database has been compromised (i.e. names not matching up with email addresses), then it’s best not to include dynamic parameters in your email until you can resolve the issue.  Think about the last time you ran into an old colleague and didn’t remember their name.  It might be uncomfortable not remembering their name, but it’s downright embarrassing if you call them by the wrong name.

Entry filed under: Best Practices, Email. Tags: .