Personalizing Emails with Your Auto-responder

More than likely at some point in time you have walked into a store or a restaurant and had someone there call you by your name, and it felt great. No doubt you remembered that person and the store or restaurant you were at, and you probably wanted to give that place your service again. When someone you deal with remembers your name it makes you feel like your business is important to them and that they really care about giving you quality service. It is important to remember that this simple lesson in customer service also has great value in the online world as well.

While it is very hard to provide the same customer service online that can be provided offline there are ways that you can make customers and prospective customers feel like they are important to you. One way that you can accomplish this online is to personalize all messages that you send out with your auto-responder. You can actually set up your auto-responder to address the individual by their first name, last name, or both. Depending on what kind of auto-responder software you have, you may be able to add even more personalized information than just their name.

Using an auto-responder makes it very easy to do this type of personalization with only a little bit of your time. The software actually allows you to do this by using various codes in place of names. Although various auto-responder programs are a bit different, they all use codes to help you accomplish this personalization. When you are typing up your emails that you want to send you can simple write, “Hi there” and then put in the code for their first and last name. If you put in the code for both their first and last names, the recipient will get an email that addresses them individually.

If you start to personalize your emails, you will probably see quite an increase in the response rate. There is a variety of research that shows that people are far more likely to open an email that uses their name, whether first or last, and this also makes them more likely to read and be receptive to the rest of the content that is provided in this email as well. Believe it or not, personalizing emails is very easy if you have an auto-responder. All you have to do is insert the proper codes when you are writing the email, and every person will get an email that is personalized with their name. No, not quite as good as being greeted by name at your favorite restaurant, but it’s getting close.

Before you can start personalizing your emails you of course are going to have to have this kind of information. It is usually quite easy to get this kind of information by using your auto-responder as well. You can use forms on your website that offer free reports or e-books that require an email address to download the file, and their contact information then will be added into your database. If you decide to do this, make sure that your forms collect more than their email address, since you will need their first name and last name if you want to personalize their emails. After you have this type of information collected, then you will be able to personalize the emails that you send out.

With the great amount of spam email that many people receive, it is important that you make your emails look personal so you can actually get them to open it. Adding their name can make the feel like a valued customer and will prompt them to go ahead and open the email. If you do not have an auto-responder program you will no doubt have to spend hours of your time typing in names to get this affect, but an auto-responder can allow you to personalize emails in just minutes.

If you want to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are successful you need to start taking advantage of the personalization options available in your auto-responder software. Remember that feeling that you get when the customer service is great and people call you by name and try to carry this over to your customers and prospective customers that you contact by email. No doubt you will see your sales increase and you will have customers returning over and over again to experience that feeling of being a valued customer.