"The sweetest and most important sound in any language."
American author Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
We loooove when people use our name. The smartest companies know it. Now you do too.
Actually, when you see or hear your name, your brain actually bounces awake. Yep, it’s a thing. The medial surface of the superior frontal gyrus is activated when calling a subject’s own name. The superior frontal gyrus reads more like Greek fast food to me, but it’s actually the front, top part of your brain.
Yum. I loved a great gyro 🥙 after the bar when I was in university.
Say your name out loud, can you feel your brain bounce awake?
This is exciting because if you use someone’s name in your communication, you can boost revenue by up to 40%. It’s simple, but it’s HUGE. And, it’s time you started.
It seems harder than just sending a basic email, but the rewards are too good to not do this. I've built a career on working with email and it's not hard at all.
Here are 3 steps to start personalizing your next email:
Build your customer list
Scrub that list
Send your first email
Here we go.
Build your customer list
First, to use someone’s name, you’ve gotta know someone. Yes, yes, yes, you’re popular and know many, but are they in a list somewhere?
At a minimum you need to have a name and an email. Without this, you have no hope.
Your customer list can be a in spreadsheet, a CRM (a database to track customers), or a simple notes file.
To find more people, look for contacts at the next event you’re at. Build a website lead magnet (eg., a download, demo, or checklist in exchange for a person's name and email). Or, find people that have previously bought from you.
Perfect, now you have a list to pull names and emails from for your first campaign.
Scrub that list
Like spring cleaning, it’s important to have a clean list. Be picky and sweep those corners.
Cleaning your list is making your data usable for the future. Start with:
Removing old emails. People move to new companies. Delete them. People retire and lose their email. Delete. Some pass the pearly gates 😥. Delete.
Formatting names as Title Case. Capitalize the first letter of the first name and first letter of their last name. There'll be are some ethnic exceptions, but for most part this is solid (sorry to the vons and vans out there). There’s nothing worse than working hard on a beautiful email and the name that’s brought in is “TOM WARWICK” in all caps. Terrible.
Removing bad characters or weird spacing like tabs. The internet doesn’t reward these. Squish them.
Fixing any bad emails. Be careful here because you don’t know all email addresses, but you can guess that @mgail.com, should be @gmail.com
Removing duplicates. They’re getting it once, remove the second.
Removing anyone that has asked to unsubscribe. Most reputable email services will automatically do this for anyone that unsubscribes.
Making sure that you have permission to email your recipient. Never copy and paste emails from the web to build your pile of recipients.
Now that your list is clean, you’re ready to build that first email.
Consumers expect brands to demonstrate they know them on a personal level. 54% of buyers expect you to personally address communications to them.
~ McKinsey
Build your first personalized email
We’re drawn to things that are personal to us, and our own name is the most personal thing there is.
There’s a reason Starbuck’s asks for your name when you order. It’s then printed on your cup and called out from the bar. It starts to make you feel good about spending $6 on a coffee. Okay, it makes you feel a little better about spending $6 on a coffee. Ugh.
You’ve worked hard to build a clean list, let’s put it to work.
Write your first email and find smart points in the content where you might naturally include someone’s name. If you’re warming up to this, just start with the name at the top. Nothing wrong with “Good morning Hugh”, “Hello Jenny”, or a simple “Hey Audrey”.
As you become more comfortable in finding places to add your reader’s name, look for more places in the body of the email or when signing off.
Let’s assume you’re using an email marketing service like Mailchimp to send your emails. Here's what you'd do.
Import your list.
Build your outgoing email.
Deliberately include the placeholder tag used to bring in the first name of your subscriber (this’ll be in the toolbar of your email builder).
Done. You’ve dipped your toe into the basics of personalization. 🥳
To make your email extra special, here are a few other guidelines to help your emails convert.
Don’t include the reader’s name too many times.
Watch how many times you include other details on your reader. Your reader might begin to feel like they’re being manipulated or you’ll come off as creepy. Both bad. Plus, people worry about privacy. So be gentle.
Don’t get the placeholder tag wrong. Bringing in the last name, instead of first name is a big oops.
Make sure you get the email service’s placeholder tag correct for first name. FIRST_NAME and F_NAME are very different to a system. Don’t guess. Know what it is for your service. Again, check the toolbar.
Make sure your content is relevant to the reader. There’s nothing worse than getting an email that doesn’t help make the future you better.
Test, test, test. Many services allow you to send yourself a copy of the email using a subscriber’s name to confirm it’s set correctly. Do this. Because once your actual email leaves the gate, it’s gone. You want to look your best.
Yay. The simple touch of including your reader's first name starts adding a personal connection. You did it.
Readers expect personalization and it can add 40% more revenue if you do it correctly. Think about that. Imagine you make $100,000 a year. Simply using someone’s name in your work, could add another $40,000. Now you’re making $140,000 without changing much.
That’s all for this week.
🔗 Take a deeper dive. 4 helpful references related to this post.
↪ Dennis P Carmody, Michael Lewis, “Brain Activation When Hearing One’s Own and Others’ Names”, National Library of Medicine, October 20, 2007, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647299/
↪ Jodi Schulz, “Using a person’s name in conversation”, Michigan State University Extension, January 12, 2017, https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_a_persons_name_in_conversation
↪ McKinsey Insights, “What is personalization?”, McKinsey & Company, May 30, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-personalization
↪ Wikipedia, “Dale Carnegie”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie