One of the first rules of communication or establishing communications with your constituents is to recognize them when they come to your Web site, or are entered into your email stream. It’s just a good practice, and you can say you are doing great customer relationship management.

Or ARE you?

Simon, our Director of Search, or Search Guru pointed out an email he received from IFAW today on behalf of Jessica Alba. The email greeting read:

“Dear HESELTINE”

I cringed. If it were me, I would immediately unsubscribe from the list because is shows me that the organization isn’t careful about it’s data and is making a lame attempt at getting ‘personal’ with me. Nobody, seriously, nobody, calls me HERRITY.

It’s a good practice to regularly cleanse your constituent data to avoid these embarrassing mistakes. Most users/constituents would be happy to periodically update their personal information on a supported organization’s site. Why not send an email to your list that asks them to update their information so they can be better served? (But leave the salutation field blank – or have it read “Dear Loyal Supporter” or something less servant like but will at the same time let the recipient know that they are important and loyal supporters.)

This is also a great opportunity to start segmenting your file so that you can customize communications down the road and increase your overall response rates because you are asking for support on an area that ‘I’ have told you I am interested in.

that’s my rant for the day.

Filed under: Agency, Education and Training, Email Marketing, Non-Profits on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 by Serengeti Communications | 1 Comment
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