Article

I had a meeting last week with a business professional. During our discussion of different DM options, I gave my usual pitch for insightful personalization. He sat up quickly and related to me how his wife had received a piece from a financial institution with her name done up like a movie marquis and used continuously throughout the piece, along with other tidbits of personal information. He said that they actually found it offensive and it angered them.

I had to agree that this was one of those “over the top pieces” that actually did more harm than good. I also assured our friend that we were not talking about drippy, gushy personalization and that we strongly discouraged it.

People that you do not know often feel as though you have invaded their space when you get too familiar in a direct marketing piece. And in reality, you probably wouldn’t send an overly personalized letter to someone that you knew anyway, unless it was to your spouse or fiance. Might want to be careful there too, or you might raise suspicion.

If you use someone’s name in the greeting, they recognize that you know it. If you use it once again, maybe twice, in the same letter, you reinforce it. Beyond that you’re getting gooey and intruding and you are wasting your money if you go there.

It wasn’t nice that our friend and his wife found the letter offensive, but it was gratifying in the sense that their feelings reinforced what we have been saying about getting too overtly personal in marketing letters. Now, there are are tools that you can use that allow you to connect insightfully without even using a person’s name and that is entirely different, because, done properly, it is not even noticeable. But, that is another topic altogether

We are all familiar with the famous KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. How about for personalized communication we adopted the KYPSS principle (Keep Your Personalization Simple Stupid).

There is a big difference between trying to be clever and actually being effective with personalization. I think that KYPSS can help you find that balance.