Dear User1026: Personalization in Newsletters
Have you ever received an email that started out with “Hi [FirstName]”? Those are interesting because it means there was 1) a glitch, 2) the final proofreader missed something, and 3) a mistake happened. Mistakes are a part of life, author (as I’m sure you’ve heard about).
But even a mistake like that will still gain a little bit of interest from the recipient, because you don’t see that happen very often. Now I’m not saying go out there and load up your newsletters with errors and typos, but instead consider the type of effect something like has.
Personalization is everywhere these days. Some sites don’t require you to put your information in because they can pull it from your email, social media, or your browsing history. A little scary, but effective. We are more likely to pay attention to things that say our name rather than a generic hello.
You can also forgo the name personalization and start out each newsletter with a unique greeting that falls into a theme of the type of books you write. Think “What’s cooking, good looking?” if you write cookbooks, or “It is a dark and stormy Thursday in March” if you write mysteries (obviously you can come up with something better, there’s a reason you’re an author!).
When in doubt, just think about the type of header you’d like to see in your inbox from your favorite author and go from there.
