The Email Wars

So I am a fan of personalization of emails. I love it when it is done right and makes sense in the copy, images, subject lines or other places in the email creative. What I am not a fan of is when it is just tacked on like an after thought. Really do you think that just dynamically inserting it at the top of the LARGE image you sent to your list is really going to make that much or a difference if you did not? With this creative and the offer it might as well have been left out as it is like there should be a line at the top with a FILL IN THIS BLANK field penciled out. It feels that personal to me. 

Now I am a BIG fan of Ben and Jerry’s and what they do with marketing. This looks to me as if they just outsourced the campaign to an ESP that is not in the creative business and said, “get this out stat, oh yeah and can you add their name to the offer as we read that works better”. So the rush and the implementation are some of the factors I would think would cause this to look so poor. Now I am not saying that the email did not perform. But I would wager that if you did an A/B split with personalized or non personalized that this campaign would perform the exact same. The insert first name here was not going to be a catalyst for the success. Now if they could have taken the geo targeting to know that this offer was sent to subscribers where there is a Ben and Jerry’s store (Portland has 2 that I am aware of) and inserted the location store locations into the creative it might have made an impact. 

Although this looks like a tasty treat I am not rushing out to get me one as it left an email marketing bad taste in my mouth.