If in doubt, don't get personal

Naturally we all like to make our customers or potential customers feel as though we care about them. Nowadays there are some great tools to help us do this, even when we are communicating with complete strangers.

One of the simplest ways is to create an e-mailing list which includes people's names as well as their email addresses. It's supposed to make people feel warm and fuzzy: 'Hey this company knows my name.' Maybe so, but get it wrong and you could end up having the opposite effect.

Reecently I received an email that opened with 'Dear Steph'. OK, we all make mistakes. But this was from a company who claim they can help me take control of my data to increase e-marketing response rates. Er, no thanks.

Then another company sent me an email, this time opening with 'Dear Peter'. I'm beginning to develop a complex by now.

Frankly I've moved beyond caring whether an organisation opens its emails to me with my name. Using my name won't make any difference if the email isn't of relevance. But calling me Steph, or Peter, or whatever? Well I think you can guess what response that will generate.