Tweaking your Email Personalization © 2003 by Michelle Lee, http://www.UltimateResourceBarn.com You'd know by now how important email personalization is. With just a little tweak here, and little change there, you can increase the chance of your email being read. The benefits from email personalization are countless. Here are a few good reasons why it is worth your time to do it. 1. Organization "Wow, tons of emails in the mailbox! Ok, let's see if I can just find that email from Michelle promoting that latest and hottest affiliate program in town. Hmm, nope! Can't find it! Oh, forget it!" One more opportunity to close a sale lost. How many time do you think you can afford to let the above scenario happens? My answer is nope if I can help the situation. Very often, readers search by keyword such as your name or your domain name. By simply making your domain name as part of the FROM field, the reader can easily sort by name in the email client and locate your email easily. 2. Identification If you can help your readers organize their emails better, you can introduce your identification and ensure that you are a known entity. People likes to deal with other people whom they know; it is a trust thing. By just putting your identification on the email account, you are fishing out your email for them. Imagine if your email is stucking out like a sore thumb ... no way can your readers miss your email. Remember, how many webmaster do you know? Probably many! So don't just put "Webmaster" as the FROM field of your email. Say "@URB Webmaster", for example. 3. Branding One indirect results of you personalization your email accounts is branding. If you have done your personalization correctly, your domain name, product or service name would have form part of the FROM field of your email accounts. Every time someone see your email, even if they do no open it, your brand name is already being flash across their eyes. Remember the rule where a person needs to see the same advertisement seven times before he or she will register an impression? Each time your brand name appears, your prospects and even existing customers or readers are more aware of your existence. ---=====--- Any one of the above three reasons is good enough reason for you to take the personalization of your email accounts seriously. To add on to those tips which I have covered in articles of the Email Personalization series, let's take a look at some tips on how to tweak email personalization further. 1. Capitilize each word of your product or domain name Unless your product name is made up of just one word, it will be difficult for one to read a string of a few words concatenate together and make out the individual words. Compare 'autoadssubmitter' with 'AutoAdsSubmitter', the later is definitely much easier on the eyes. The same rule applies to your services you are selling, or your domain name or brand name if you are making it part of the email personalization. After you put much effort to change all your email accounts to says webmaster@autoadsubmitter.com for example, why not make it even better by having webmaster@AutoAdsSubmitter.com instead? Now you know the reason why I bother to hold the shift key each time I type @UltimateResourceBarn Newsletter! In fact, @UltimateResourceBarn is always capitilized, not only in all email communications and ezine issues, but also in all the web pages at our website. 2. Use subject prefix Part of email personalization is in the subject header. Of course, with a "super magnet" subject header, your email is going to attract attention - just like bees to flowers. What we will cover is the part that most people ignore, that is the prefix of the subject header. I can think of at least a couple of situations where you need to have a prefix with your email subject header. If you are an ezine owner/publisher, did you put the ezine name and issue number as prefix before the subject header when sending out ezine issues? This is back to the branding issue again - you would want to flash your brand name again and again whenever you can. With prefix that include issue number, not only do you present your ezine in a professional matter, it also help enhance the image of your ezine. A mature ezine that has been in publication for a long time, which is tellable from the issue number, gains more creditability. What about when you are sending out targeted solo ads? Are you helping your readers identify that the email is a solo ad? How about when you are submiting article to other ezine owners/publishers? Did you remember to use an appropriate prefix such as [New Article]? The ezine owners/publishers who are very busy folks will definitely appreciate such prefix so that they can identify what your email is about immediately. It is very important for you to include the topic of your article as part of the subject header. Compare 'New article for your consideration' and '[New Article] Tweaking your Email Personalization'. It is obvious which type of subject heading ezine owners and publishers will prefer. With the proper subject heading, your chance of ezine owners/publishers opening your email and reading your article is definitely higher. Needless to say, the chance of your article being chosen and published is higher too! ---=====--- What if you are not an ezine owner/publisher? Does all this talk about email personalization applies to you too? Of course it does! In all product or service selling type of environment, you will probably send out information to update your prospects or existing customers on the latest news. Using prefix such as [Update], coupled with a personalized FROM field such as '@URB Newsletter', your "viewership" of that email can only go up. When sending out follow-up emails to prospects, did you make sure you have the correct FROM field to identify yourself and enforce branding? Did you use the appropriate prefix in the subject header so that prospects can easily find your email again in his or her mailbox? Did you subtly remind your prospects what you are selling by having your product or service name "built into" the subject line? You can achieve wonders with simple email personalization. It doesn't take much of your time to do it and the rewards can be tremendously. And best of all, personalize your email accounts does not cost you a single cent! ----------------------------------------------------------- Michelle Lee is the owner of website http://www.UltimateResourceBarn.com and publisher of the @UltimateResourceBarn Newsletter, a FREE weekly publication. 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