Mirificam Press

Automated Mass Emails With a Nauseating Personal Touch

December 10th, 2007 in Web Design Culture

by: Matthew Griffin

We've all seen it before and we've all rolled our eyes. We get a suspicious looking letter in the mail—it could be junk or it might be real. We decide it's better to be safe than sorry so we rip open the envelope for a quick look. It's junk alright, but there at the top it reads, "You've been chosen, MATTHEW, to receive a special 0% introductory rate!" This tactic got old the minute we had the technology to do it. Is it really any better to do the same thing to our legitimate subscribers?

Here's a little tip about managing an email newsletter that I stress to all my clients. Don't make it personal—don't greet someone by their first name if you've never met them. I've heard all the reasons why mass emails should be personalized but I'm not impressed. Maybe our interaction through the computer has caused us to forget there is a human on the other end. I don't know. The bottom line is it's a cheap tactic that insults rather than endears the recipient . At best they will blaze past the greeting to get right to the good stuff. Remember that the "good stuff" is why they subscribed in the first place.

So why not start out with the good stuff? I don't think any of your subscribers are under the delusion that you hand write every email so don't pretend like you do. The way to reach people on a personal level is to take the time to send them something useful. If you want to add a personal touch, add it in your writing style, not by flaunting your ability to do a mail merge in MS Word. Also, remember to ask for your subscribers' feed back. And when they give it, try adding a selection or two to your next email.

People are created with relationships hard-wired into their system and they can smell a machine trying to do a person's job a mile away. When you forget this and buy into the theory that people are complex computers, you lose business. Let the machine send out your newsletter—you do the writing.

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