What’s in a (Customer’s) Name? A Lot!

B2C companies operate in a digital arms race.  The stakes for their bottom line are always rising, because customer expectations keep rising too—and that’s to say nothing of the constantly growing list of cool things MarTech can do. It’s rough out there, marketers! Prospects are savvy. And flooded with more options than ever before, they often choose your company over a competitor’s (or, heaven forbid, vice versa) based on the little things. The minor details that go into making a bespoke customer journey.

For a digital journey to be personalized, it must be able to do one of the following two things: (1) address users by name, and (2) make recommendations based on past behavior. We’ve addressed the importance and functionality of recommendation engines in a previous post, so here I’ll dive into name automation, which is the easiest way to make customers feel acknowledged, respected, and—well—human.

Subject Line & Salutation

Dale Carnegie, author of the famous self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People, said it best: “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” This observation is just as true today as it was in the mid-20^th century when Carnegie first made it. Examples abound, but perhaps the most famous digital manifestation of this axiom is the “Share a Coke” campaign, launched by Coca-Cola in 2013.

If you’ve been to a convenience store in the last four years, then you’ve almost surely seen the iconic red and white cans emblazoned with every name from Aaron to Zebadiah. It’s a simple concept, but it earned Coca-Cola millions in revenue, almost 1 billion Twitter impressions, and seven awards at Cannes Lions. Customers like it when brands address them by name—so much so they are willing to do the legwork of finding the can that calls them by name and still give the brand credit.

Your organization might not be able to emulate “Share a Coke” on a brick-and-mortar level, but it doesn’t have to. Tweak your automated email campaigns to mention users’ names when possible. The two best places for a name drop: the email subject line and the salutation. According to a recent Science of Email report (in which over 800 million emails were measured), clickthrough rates were higher for emails that featured the recipient’s name in the subject line. Likewise, in the body, which do you think is more likely to keep someone’s eyes from glazing over as soon as they open the email: “Dear valued customer” or “Dear Olivia”?

Default Values

But accuracy is paramount! Either personalize right, or not at all. Before launching a name-customized campaign, first do the best you can to ensure that each name on the send list is correctly recorded in your database. It’s a tedious job and requires manual examination—perhaps by different people on the team checking different sections of the send list (“You take last names Anderson to Lee; you’ve got Lewis to Zachary!”) But in the end, you’ll probably find prospects who would’ve been addressed by the wrong name—and who would’ve almost certainly not converted as a result. Addressing leads incorrectly is a fast way to look insincere at best and amateurish at worst.

Secondly, you’ll want to make sure the automated name field has a default value assigned. The default value is what the system will populate the field with, in the event the corresponding value is missing or corrupted or otherwise unusable in the database. For example, if you code your emails to greet people with “Hi [first name],” give the [first name] field a default value such as “there.” That way, if the worst happens and the system is unable to customize the email the way you’ve intended for someone, it won’t just say “Hi” (which sounds impersonal). It’ll catch itself and at least muster “Hi there”—just a one-word difference, but it does sound conversational and a little more thoughtful.

Lastly, remember that perception is reality. Marketers consistently report that one of the biggest challenges to their ability to personalize is having too little data to base content on. But prospects and customers don’t need to be privy to your growing data pains! If you only need a lead’s name to begin humanizing their customer journey, why not start there? It’s the most basic building block on the contact record in your CRM, and it can deliver the fastest, easiest uptick in conversion rates.

If you have Eloqua and you need support with email strategy or building emails, please contact us!  We love helping companies transform their marketing automation.