This week I’m preparing some of the most common email “faux pas” for the next installment of our Free on Friday webcast series.

But since I’ll only have a half-hour to highlight the biggest offenders, today I thought I’d share an email tip I probably won’t get to on Friday.

You’d probably be amazed by it — but I’m still seeing emails with the recipient’s first name merged into the subject line.

It’s a practice that was pretty neat back in the day because it had that “Hey, look what I can do with this nifty new email broadcast tool thingy” quality about it.

But these days it’s considered a pretty ineffective marketing practice that’s very likely to get you filtered as SPAM or sent straight to the trash (if you’re lucky enough to make it to the inbox in the first place).

Make no mistake — personalization should be a guiding principle of all your campaigns.  But sticking someone’s name in the subject line and feigning friendship isn’t the way to do it.

If you really want to pursue personalization in email marketing, stick to segmenting audiences and providing something of value that’s both timely and relevant to that specific group.

After all, what’s in a name?  That which we call an email (without any other subject line customization) would smell as sweet…;)

Adrienne
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Our next Free on Friday webcast will take place on February 18th.

I’ll be reviewing how to avoid some of today’s biggest email faux pas in this half-hour dedicated to our most widely-used marketing medium.

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