Testing Email 'From' Address – Email Personalization – Does it Work?
November 6th, 2009by Tom Klingebiel
With inboxes getting more and more cluttered these days with special discounts, Facebook notifications, and news from companies you swear you’ve never given your email address to, it’s hard for any message to stand out. SiteLab recently tested email personalization with a client of ours with the goal of optimizing customer engagement.
For this micro test, half of the recipients received a message from the client using the company’s name while the other half saw an email coming from an individual within the organization. The subject line, date and time of send, and content all remained the same. The email using the individual’s name as the sender had a 2.7% higher open rate than the email coming from the organization. While the click through rate was slightly lower, the end result showed simple personalization improved net unique click through* by 15%.
Why does personalization work? Think about it. How often do you pay extra attention to emails that come from an actual person, rather than an organization? My guess is more often than not. To make it work, the message being delivered needs to have a personal feel, one that speaks to the reader in a very amiable way. Now this doesn’t mean email personalization applies in every situation, but in those cases where it makes sense it can have a positive impact on open rate, something all email marketers strive for.
*Net unique click through is calculated by dividing unique clicks by total emails delivered
