Personalizing Your Marketing Messages

Personalizing Your Communications

In the world of marketing it's been tested and proven again and again - you can increase your response rate and results dramatically, if you personalize your communications with prospects, i.e., use their names.

What will you be personalizing?

Well, you can't personalize your real estate investor web pages with customer names - they haven't yet figured out how to do this.

Whenever you come to any of my web pages that sell a product you see a salutation like:

"Hello Fellow Investor", or

"Dear Friend", or

"To All Real Estate Entrepreneurs Who...."

That's the best you can do on a web page, as of right now. (I have no doubt they will eventually figure out how to personalize the web pages with customers names too, but as of today, it's still "Dear Friend...".)

So the only other thing left for personalization is your follow up message series.

Psychologically, if you read a salutation like one of the above, you instantly know - it's a generic one. This letter was written for everyone who comes to the website, right?

You also know, it's a marketing ploy to get the reader feel like he and the writer of the letter have something in common.

As such, generic salutations aren't all that effective, though they're better than no salutation at all.

Compare all those salutations above with a simple:

"Hi Bill"   or    “Hi Janice”

If your name is Bill – it makes you perk up. When you get an e-mail from me, and it starts with your name up at the top - it feels like it's a personal letter coming from someone you know, perhaps a friend.

Even though deep down inside you probably know, it's all done by the software - you still feel that personal touch.

The same thing happens when your automated follow up system sends personalized e-mail messages to your prospects - Buyers and Sellers.

"Hi Bill” carries all kinds of subtle messages in itself.

First, we're not total strangers. Somehow you know me by my first name. 

Second, it allows me to assume more personal writing style, as compared to the letter that starts with "Dear Friend...".

It’s peculiar, but with a "dear friend" I can't be as personal as with "Bill", even though I don't call “Bill”  “my friend".

Third, if I use it in the “subject” line of the e-mail message, it’s highly unlikely you’ll assume it’s a junk mail and hit a delete button without scanning it first.

Fourth, if I know your name, I could use it (with discretion!) in any part of the sentences - in the beginning, in the middle or in the end, depending on the kind of effect I'm trying to achieve.

For instance, "you know, Bill, I was thinking about something last morning..." has some elements of intimacy in it, even though consciously Bill may not register anything special about it in his mind.

Or I could drop the name at the END of the sentence, to draw customer’s attention to a specific argument point, like in the following sentence:

"I understand how it may seem like you have a nice 20% chunk of equity in your home. But consider 6% real estate commission, 3-4% in closing costs, 2-3% buyer incentives or negotiations range, and the expense of making loan payments for 4-6 months... you can see how quickly your first 12%-15% of equity will be paying those expenses of sale.

Can you see this, Bill?"

To put it in a different way, when you use the follow up series of messages with the personalization like this - all of a sudden, you are engaged in a dialogue, as opposed to a monologue.

To sum it up - capturing prospective customers' e-mails is important, capturing their names is important... USING their names is even more Important!

Your customers would like to hear/read their names in your communications --- so don't disappoint them.

CAUTION: Don't Overdo It!

You know, we all love our names, but when someone overuses it - we feel uneasy. So use good discretion in putting your clients' names in your e-mails.

If it's a short message, just use their name in the initial salutation.

If it's a long message, you can still have a favorable effect with the use of customer names in a couple of other places. I'd use one in the middle and one at the end, in closing remarks.