Are you publishing an ezine or offering an email course? Are you talking with your subscriber through your ezine or email course? If so what are you calling them?

"Hello John"? or

"Hello friend"? or

"Hello"?

If you want to feel the difference between the above three, stand infront of a mirror and call yourself with above three ways. Which one is more pleasing for you? The same with your subscriber too!

What is personalizing of emails means?

At the beginning of the emails instead of starting the message directly we will call the person by name like 'Dear John'.

This is possible if you are sending email to one person or few people.

But here you are dealing with a large subscriber base...Some thousand emails...

So what to do?

You need a Mailing list Manager that works with this feature. While you keeping subscription forms, you need to keep two fields. One for the First name and second for the email address. So your cgi script stores your subscribers name in the database.

If you sending emails to your subscribers, you have to put some code like [FIRSTNAME] or {fname} etc depending on software instructions. Then the script replaces this code with actual first name while sending the message. Pretty cool. Huh?

Some cgi scripts that have these personalization features:

Mailing list Managers:

http://willmaster.com/master/subscriberpro/index.shtml

http://www.cgisupply.net/mailsupply.html

http://www.worldwidecreations.com/listmanager.htm

http://www.sylconia.com/scripts/newsletter.shtml

http://www.citro.net/scripts/more.shtml

http://www.ubidog.com/scripts/announcer/index.htm

http://www.cosmicperl.com/cosmicmailing.shtml

Follow Up Autoresponders:

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/follow-up-autoresponder-pro/index.shtml

http://www.autoresponseplus.com/

Where can you keep this personalization feature?

In subject lines of your emails

At the beginning of emails, ezines or email courses

Before 'Unsubscribe' link. Ask them they really want to unsubscribe.

If you are offering something exciting

Rule of Thumb: Don't Overdo it. It looks odd. If your subscriber sees some 10 times in your email, next thing he will do is looking for unsubscribe link.

OK...Very convincing till now. Why should You personalize your emails?

1. Calling your subscriber in the subject line of email increases the chances of opening your email. Their name in the email subjects attracts the eyes. So more chances of opening it.

I myself scan thru the all subject lines of emails. Certainly I feel like opening the emails with my name. But you should be careful with emails that carry virus to your computer. Some people send you emails with your name and attachments. This is especially common with free accounts like Yahoo, Hotmail etc,.

2. Once your subscriber opens the email there will be more chances of clicking other links in your ezine.

3. If you use your subscribers name before any special offer or exciting bonus, it catches his eyes. Leave an extra line above and below the name. So the name stands a little prominent.

4. When you contact other webmasters for link exchanges, joint ventures make a habit of personalizing the emails. It makes lot of difference.

5. You can use this personalization feature on your websites, membership sites, discussion boards etc. When the member logs on to your membership site, the script (usually the script uses cookies to display your members name) automatically displaces their names welcoming them.

TWO LAST 'NEVER DO IT' tips: Some people write the message templates and copy and paste them in their email programms and send them to different people. These templates if has a name on it and you are sending it to a person with different name, it looks very very embarassing. So check the names before sending email messages.

Another is DON'T misspell the names. Especially the person is from different country, you may not be familiar with those names. So check twice before clicking send button.

One last note...

Try experimenting by implementing different features in your ezines and see how the subscribers response and your expected results.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata - Subscribe to 'EbookBiz Magazine' which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

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