Simplelists has a feature which allows you to insert members’ names into the group emails that you send. We’ll jump straight in and tell you how to do it and then discuss why it’s useful and when it is important to include a person’s name.
How To Add Names To Your Emails
1) First you need to activate this feature for your Simplelists account - just send an email to support@simplelists.com requesting to 'activate the insert names feature’ and we’ll activate the feature for your account. You can also tell us your preferred default option which is used if the member’s name is missing from their details in your address book - for example 'Member’ or 'Customer’ could be chosen as a default.2) Simply add $FIRSTNAME to your email where you want the members first name to appear and $SURNAME where you want their last name to appear.
That’s all there is to it - each member will receive a personalised version of the email that includes they’re own name.
Here’s an example:
Hi $FIRSTNAME,
As a valued customer we are giving you a 10% discount code for...
What if a member’s name is missing from their details?
Don’t worry - if a member’s name is missing from your address book and you have let us know your preference for a default it will revert to the default setting in place of their name.In the example above the email that would be received would read:
Hi Member,
As a valued customer we are giving you a 10% discount code for...
When To Use The 'Insert Name’ Feature
Personalisation of emails is becoming increasingly important for email marketing.Mail clients like Gmail are now showing the first 15-20 words of emails in the inbox before emails are opened. This means that, at a glance, people can see whether an email addresses them in person or not. If you don’t include a person’s name in your email and they don’t instantly recognise you as the sender it’s quite likely that they simply won’t open your email.
Stats from 2012 show that emails with personalised subject lines were opened 22.2% more frequently than those without (email marketing stats) - this is likely to be even higher now.
For these reasons, we’d recommend that you use the 'insert name’ feature in all email marketing emails and in any email where you think that the person receiving it might not instantly recognise the sender.