The perils of (passive) personalization.Conventional wisdom and most test results hold that personalization (what Barb Kaplowitz calls "passive personalization in the above article) of marketing materials almost always pays off. It will add 15-20 percent to cost but still more in response. But I can't help but wondering if the novelty is off this rose. My first experiences with "personalization" came 30+ years ago when hotel marketers learned about it. By the sixth or seventh letter I received I was less impressed with their ability to insert "Yes, Fred, when you see our 500 completely renovated rooms ..." three or four times throughout a two-page letter. But I also wonder how much the results of personalization could be improved with more quality control. I'll not forget the mailing I received when I was executive director at the newsletter association: Dear New Ass Soc Many years ago, struggling with an order card in my execrable handwriting, The New Yorker came to know me as "Fngo Guss." I've kept that tag all through the years and renewals. It's fun to trace The New Yorker's list rentals by seeing all the mail Fngo Guss gets. But now we have a new winner. Driven by the current political scene, I joined the ACLU ACLU: see American Civil Liberties Union. and am now a proud, card-carrying member card-carrying member n → miembro con carnet card-carrying member n → membre actif card-carrying member n → known to the organization's mailers as: Mr. Friederiac D. Goss n. 1. Gorse. Honestly, do these people outsource data entry to Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (burkē`nə fä`sō), republic (2005 est. pop. 13,925,000), 105,869 sq mi (274,200 sq km), W Africa. It borders on Mali in the west and north, on Niger in the northeast, on Benin in the southeast, and on Togo, Ghana, and ? Where do you find key punchers who think that Fngo and Friederiac are men's names in North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. ? But I suppose the all-time winner for flummoxing personalization programs was my old colleague, publisher of Association Trends newsletter, who always styled himself as: Col. Frank L. Martineau, Jr., CAE (1) (Computer-Aided Engineering) Software that analyzes designs which have been created in the computer or that have been created elsewhere and entered into the computer. , USAF, (Ret.) |
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