Personally, if I don’t recognise the sender, I automatically flag these emails as spam. And to be honest, even when I do, the fact that they have my name on file just doesn’t make a difference to me.

In fairness, this used to work. Maybe only a few years ago the use of personalisation in the subject line still increased open rates. But the wow-factor has definitely subsided. These days anyone using a mail merge function can send an email with my name on it. It’s just too easy.

If you really want to build a relationship and engage with your audience, tuning your content for the recipient will see a far greater return on your investment.

I’m not suggesting that you need to stop using your customers’ names altogether. I still really enjoy those emails saying “Happy Birthday, Caroline!”; or the postcard of a beach, with my name written in the sand, to remind me about the holiday insurance I bought this time last year. But the message is still tailored to me – making it personal.

We’’e always encouraging our clients to be sensitive to their recipient’s interests – and that applies to any form of communication. What will they want to hear about? Whether you’re updating them on their account with you, letting them know about an event local to them, or tailoring your content based on the interests they’ve exhibited in previous interactions, make it relevant. Genuinely put yourself in your recipients’ shoes. If you can’t think of at least one very good
scenario in which this content is the answer to a customer’s prayer, don’t send it.

At the end of the day, the best personalisation is relevancy; without it you’re really just a polite spammer.

The post Personalisation: does it still work? appeared first on HN Marketing.

After a long period of social networking news being dominated by stellar valuations of Facebook, recent days have seen many reports about a flood of funding going to their competitors. So what’s turned the tide? Bebo is shutting down and Twitter’s 3000%+ growth has slowed to double digits. The answer is not external, it’s Facebook’s own hubris and failure to appreciate their members’ privacy concerns.

No doubt Facebook’s management are very well aware of the cautionary tale presented by MySpace. It was the dominant force in social networking and their position seemed unassailable too. Back in 2005 they were bought by Rupert Murdoch for $327m. Last summer it was forced to lay off a third of its staff after failing to meet the audience figures in an advertising deal with Google.

Privacy issues aren’t new to Facebook, they’ve had several past indiscretions. Over the years, Facebook has opened up access to more and more of its users’ information (see this fascinating infographic). The problem is that social networking isn’t just about your friends anymore. We’ve all seen the stories of people being caught out when they’ve claimed to be ill, or saying something derogatory about their company. And who would want their gran to see those photos from that big night out?

Social networking has created the personal brand. A great example of the dangers is the parliamentary candidate the Labour party ditched during the election due to some crude tweets sent as a student. I’m glad it didn’t exist when I was a student! But there are good examples too. Columnists such as David Mitchell (@RealDMitchell) and Victoria Coren (@VictoriaCoren) have become publicists, promoting their own work and by extension the publications in which they appear – the Guardian and Observer newspapers in this case. And it’s not just those in the media, tweeters and bloggers like Allen Kelly (@AllenKelly) of VeriSign mixes news on the security products offered by the company that he works for and personal opinions and updates.

And that’s good! Too many companies have felt obliged to have a social networking presence, but instead of learning the new media just mechanically churn out dull updates linking to their staid press releases. If you want to make a success of social networking, you have to have a genuine commitment to engaging with your audience. This has to have executive support as social networking needs to be timely, it can’t be subject to a laborious approval process. You can just tweet/facebook links to your website, but that’s no more than an RSS feed. Give your presence a personality, have an opinion, and you’ll see much better results.

The post 3 in 1: social networking appeared first on HN Marketing.