3 Email Personalization Mistakes and How Not To Make Them

So, you realize that personalization is vital to your email marketing success. Coming to that realization is your first step to transforming your business. But be careful, because you can in fact do personalization wrong.

Talking to your customers by name is awesome, but what if you get their names wrong? And showing them what you think you know they are interested in is of course cool, but what if you screw up your recommendations?

Believe it or not, there are pitfalls to this whole email personalization thing. Avoiding them is critical, lest you look like a fool and compromise your brand’s reputation.

So here are our three most common email mistakes and how you can avoid making them.

What’s in a Name?

Ever been called the wrong name? It happens, right? And when it does — maybe when you’re introduced to someone — it can be awkward at best, and potentially even a little hurtful.

But think about that same scenario when you’re addressing a customer. If you’re going to go through the trouble of calling them by name, you damn sure better get that name correct. Because if not, that customer is, at best, going to be confused. And more likely? They’re going to be annoyed. And possibly, they are going to be offended.

Whatever the result, getting a customer’s name wrong leads to feelings of mistrust. Your customer is far less likely to believe whatever it is you’re saying if you couldn’t even get their name right. It compromises your credibility.

This problem can occur when you’re collecting customer data from multiple sources. Unfortunately, that data can sometimes get messed up.

The best way to solve this problem is by using an email service provider that has personalization tags. Then, you can set a default tag that will automatically inject whenever you don’t have the customer’s name, or when your information is incomplete.

Now, instead of calling someone by their wrong name, you can instead call them “valued customer” “friend” or anything else you can think of. Any alternative is better than a wrong name!

Narrow Your Focus

One issue with attempting to personalize your emails comes when you try to cast too wide a net. The point of personalization is to make the content relevant to the individual — not necessarily to a large group. You want excellent filtration that allows you to get hyper-focused.

Zembula gives you the power to work in segments of one. Now you can totally refine your messaging so that you’re nailing the very specific interests of your very individual customers.

Use the Zembula Campaign Decision Engine to organize and optimize. You can run experiments to improve ROI with our AI optimization and set up rules to prioritize your content display.

Failing To Send Targeted Promotions

The very worst thing of all is to not use the data you’re collecting. If you’re going through the trouble of collecting customer data, then by God, use it!

But guess what? A lot of companies are collecting data and not using any of it, at least not for the sake of personalized emails. Don’t be them. Use the data you’re already collecting by harnessing the power of deep personalization.

Fortunately, this one is an easy fix. Zembula gives you a turnkey solution to connect your data with your creative marketing. Zembula’s content builder lets you drag and drop your way to personalized emails. Connect any data source and easily drop your content into your email template, then control that content from the platform.

Learn more about how Zembula can help you avoid personalization pitfalls.