Subject lines IV: Personalization

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 18, 2008

Part I: Length
Part II: Objectives
Part III: Branding

As we work our way through the key attributes of a winning subject line, we reach the issue of personalization: do you put the recipient's name in there or not?

You know the answer is going to be "it depends," don't you?

But what are the issues here?

The premise and the problem

You may be familiar with the cocktail party effect, where your attention swivels immediately to a conversation elsewhere if you hear your name mentioned.

Potentially, seeing your name in the subject line gets your attention, arouses interest and implies relevancy. Which is why there is much interest in subject line personalization.

But there are two problems...

First, personal email (i.e. a single message from one person to another) rarely includes the receiver's name in the subject line.

Second, lots of spam puts first names in the subject line.

So the stimulus of seeing your name is counterbalanced by a perception (based on experience) that such emails are either spam or marketing messages.

Many believe this perception problem outweighs any likely benefits.

Jeanniey Mullen, for example, writes:

"...nothing screams out 'marketing message' more than a personalized first name. Would your mom ever e-mail you with a subject line of Jeanniey, I have good news?"

Anne P. Mitchell agrees:

"Even if the recipient recognizes your 'From' address, and realizes that you aren't a spammer - they know that any email with their name on it is likely to be a bulk commercial message."

What do surveys tell us?

Some ESPs have reviewed subject lines to draw out correlations between performance and personalization.

Dialog-Mail found (note: in German) that personalized subject lines were correlated with a much higher open rate, but warned that this is likely due to the novelty factor of the tactic.

MailerMailer discovered the opposite, with open and click rates for emails with only the subject line personalized lower than those for non-personalized emails.

As with subject line length, there seem to be various factors at play...

Culture and audience

A lot depends on your audience and the nature of your "relationship" to recipients. Kath Pay, for example, mentions tests showing that personalized subject lines worked with Brits, but not with Americans or Germans.

The more "personal" the relationship, the more positive the likely impact of name use. And vice versa. As Kath writes in the above post:

"If you haven't got a real 'relationship' with your subscriber as such then maybe personalizing isn't the way to go as they may see it as being artificial or spammy."

Perhaps, then, subject line personalization might work for small B2B lists where the sender is personally known to recipients?

The relationship to message content

Another facet of the idea of context is the relationship to the rest of the email.

The authors of the dialog-Mail metrics report, for example, suggest that personalized subject lines would backfire if the actual email content is clearly broadcast in nature and not specific to the recipient.

That theory gets anecdotal support from two sources.

MailerMailer's numbers reveal that open rates (but not click rates) were higher for messages with subject and message personalization than for message or subject personalization alone.

And research on broader personalization by the University of Illinois discovered that the "...use of personal data in a commercial email can have a negative impact where there is no clear justification for it."

The suggestion is that the more targeted and specific the email, the more likely you are to get a positive response from subject line personalization.

It's a theory supported by Stefan Pollard. He writes:

"Consumer messages that lend themselves better to subject-line personalization are birthday greetings, reminders, surveys, and similar messages: 'A Special Birthday Wish for Stefan from Brand Name Company.'"

"That connection makes sense, tells me what's inside, who it's from, and who the message is about."

Trigger and transactional emails seem better prospects for subject line personalization, then.

If you do decide your emails might benefit, the only true way to find out is - of course - to test. But even if the theory looks promising, there's one more issue to consider...

Data

Adding names to the subject line (or anywhere else for that matter) requires accurate name data. There is little worse than addressing the wrong person in the subject line, or as Stefan puts it:

"If your data is inaccurate or unreliable, your failure will make it clear to readers that you really don't know who they are. That's worse than no personalization."

There are additional problems here. People can input name data during sign-up that really shouldn't appear in subsequent emails (see when email personalization goes wrong).

Equally, you need to think more carefully about placeholder text for those email addresses with no associated name.

Traditionally, marketers use replacement text like "reader" or "valued customer" when names are missing from the database. That looks OK in an email salutation:

Dear reader,
Dear valued customer,

...but looks lame in a personalized subject line:

"Hey reader, it's your birthday!"
"Special birthday wishes for valued customer"

Then there is the question of which name? First, last, username? What's most appropriate? Writing on that very topic, DJ Waldow offers sensible advice:

"Know thy audience"

And, finally, there is the issue of space. As with subject line branding, a name takes away space you might use to greater effect with other copy.

The Scottish football club Celtic famously employ a striker whose name is a challenge for those printing replica shirts: Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. If I was to use a branded subject line with personalization, it would have 52 characters before it even started...

(Email Marketing Reports) Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink

As with length and branding, you need to evaluate the above issues in the light of your own unique situation and decide whether personalization is worth trying. And then use tests to see if you're right.

Now it's time to move on to action words and other elements that define a winning subject line: Part V.

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

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