You will be able to personalise content, timing and offers rather than just inserting a first name.
You have probably received an email that began "Hi JASON" in capitals, or "Hi ," with a lonely comma, or worse, "Hi [FIRST NAME]". Each one was an attempt at personalisation, and each one told you instantly that a machine had sent it to thousands of people, which is the opposite of what the sender intended.
Personalisation is worth doing, but a first name in the greeting is the smallest and riskiest part of it. This lesson covers the kinds that readers actually notice: different content for different people, and timing that follows what a person did.
Adding a first name is easy. Every email tool has a merge field, a placeholder that is replaced with each subscriber's data when the email is sent. Type the placeholder after "Hi" and every email greets the reader by name.
It is also easy to get wrong. The field is empty for anyone who signed up without giving a name, or who was imported from a list that did not have one. Some people type their name in capitals, all lowercase, or include their surname. Some type a nickname, a business name, or something rude. Every one of those comes back to you in your own greeting.
There are two habits that fix most of this. First, always set fallback text: the word the tool uses when the field is empty. "Hi there" or simply "Hi" reads naturally. Without a fallback, the reader gets "Hi ," or worse. Every email tool lets you set one, though where it lives varies. Second, glance at your name field before a big send. Sort the field and look for blanks, odd capitals and obvious junk, and tidy the worst of it.
Even done well, a first name is a small touch. People know it is automated. It helps the email feel like a message, but it does not make the content any more relevant.
A more useful kind of personalisation changes what people read. Most email tools let you show or hide a block of content depending on a tag or field, often called conditional or dynamic content. One email goes out, but different readers see different paragraphs.
This is often better than writing two separate emails. Most of the email stays the same, so you write it once, and only the part that should differ is different.
Priya's end-of-term email is a good example. The main section, a tip for revising over the holidays, goes to everyone. Below it, enrolled families see a paragraph about next term's timetable and a link to confirm their child's slot. Parents who have not enrolled see a paragraph inviting them to a trial class in the first week of term. Same email, same send, two different next steps, each fitting the reader. She sets this up with the customer tag from lesson 6.2: show block A if the contact has the tag, block B if not.
Before sending a personalised email, preview it as a contact from each segment. Most tools have a preview-as option. Make sure every reader gets a block, and nobody gets both or neither.
The kind of personalisation people feel most often uses no name at all. It is an email that arrives at the right moment because of something the person did.
A booking reminder the day before a trial class. A care note two days after a cake is collected, with how to store leftovers. A reminder a few weeks before a child's birthday comes round again, if the parent shared the date. None of these says "Hi Jason". All of them feel personal, because they are about the reader's own situation and arrive when that situation is current.
These emails are triggered by events, not sent on your newsletter schedule, which makes them automations. Module 7 covers how to build them. For now, notice that timing is personalisation, and often the strongest kind.
Mei Ling's example monthly email shows all three working together. The greeting says "Hi" followed by the first name, with "Hi there" as the fallback. The opening section about December dates goes to everyone. A middle block differs: customers who have ordered before see "Order again with your saved details" and a link to their account, while non-customers see three photos of recent cakes and a line on how ordering works. Everyone sees the same sign-off and the same footer.
Before sending, she previewed the email as a customer, as a non-customer and as a contact with no first name, and read each version through to the footer.
In the activity below you will write one email of your own that shows a different paragraph to customers and non-customers, with fallback text set for every merge field you use.
Write one email that shows a different paragraph to customers and non-customers, with fallback text for every merge field.
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