A new study from the University of Illinois confirms what many of us may have suspected privately: "personalized" marketing communication online can often make us actively dislike the message's sender.
"People bristle at personalization just for the sake of personalization," said Tiffany Barnett White, the professor who headed the research. Barnett White found that relevance was one important factor in increasing recipient interest, but ultimately it was the actual value being offered that made the lion's share of the difference in peoples' reaction. At a time when information overload is often being responded to by varying degrees of personalization, we believe this study is worthy of consideration.
The University of Illinois study focused on emails sent to college students that were personalized based on information that the students voluntarily submitted. "Even when someone has volunteered their personal information, they still have preferences about how firms use it. They don't want to be bombarded with a mountain of facts about themselves unless they perceive a very good benefit," White said.
We would argue that this behavior is probably common in online communication in general. If your service is personalizing its messages to users for anything but a very good reason, it's probably a bad idea. Flickr's "welcome [username]" in various languages around the world is cool - but other forms of fake personalization are not. Now we've got the numbers to prove it.
We've written here about how we want to get RSS feeds from PR agencies, not just emails - but the pseudo personalized emails are pretty obnoxious. The most obnoxious are emails personalized with our competitors' names! (This happens at least once a week.) We also receive any number of other emails from online training services, conferences and others that include some personal information. Especially when this personalization tricks us into opening the email, then we really get angry at whoever sent us that email.
We are interested to know whether you, [Reader'sName], feel the same way - or if you are someone who uses this kind of personalization in your online communication and have seen different results.
Image from Beth Kanter
Comments
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I couldn't agree more about the fakeness, and glad someone published a study about it... maybe PR and marketing companies will read it and stop straddling the fence. If you don't know me, then just be generic... I will delete you either way :) (but if you trick me I will be mad!)
Posted by: John
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July 1, 2008 1:39 PM
I hate fake personalization .. where they just add your name or "Hi Beth" and then the cut and pasted press release.
I know that it is more efficient that way, but when I want to personalize a message and I create a personalized message to that person. That seems to work well in terms of building a community or network or improving relationships.
BTW, those faces come from a drink tray I have from the 1950s - there's twelve faces and it shows what your face looks like after consuming x number of drinks.
Posted by: Beth Kanter | July 1, 2008 1:42 PM
I know that failed personalisation sucks, but it's probably better than not trying at all.
I would suggest that it's the point where personalisation becomes targeting that's interesting, and when the benefits to both sender and receiver of the message start to stack up.
Posted by: Jack | July 1, 2008 1:55 PM
We've studied the issue of personalization and have concluded that the best route is to provide users with the ability to determine their own preferences in terms of how they use a service or are communicated with. Most of all, users want control over their experiences. It could behooves businesses to provide users with tools that enable their control.
Posted by: Don Jones - VentureDeal | July 1, 2008 1:59 PM
My most hated example: those Facebook ads for match services that read:
"[Your age] and still single??"
Reminding me of that sad fact is not the way to get me to click.
Jerks.
Posted by: barbara | July 1, 2008 2:49 PM
Okay, clearly I'm not built to scale, because I've never sent a blast email in my life. No matter how commoditized the information, if you're genuinely interested in making a connection, building a relationship or getting something out of that communication -- then you can take a few minutes to *actually* personalize your note.
True, generic personalization like, "Hello Merredith (not Merredith? Click here)", offends no one. But when someone pretends to be your best friend in real life, it's off-putting; and online is probably no different, except that online, friends are a commodity in some communities. Maybe it's the degree of friendliness that turns us off? Or how often they err? Thanks for the numbers and the study, but do you think the spammers will pay any attention?
Posted by: Merredith | July 1, 2008 2:54 PM
And here was someone on Twitter complaining of same: http://twitter.com/alanbuxton/statuses/844077883
Posted by: Paula Thornton | July 1, 2008 3:05 PM
Marshall, can you provide a link to the study? You mention 'we now have the numbers' and I'm wondering if the original data was made available.
Posted by: J. Campbell | July 2, 2008 2:44 AM
Of course it fails some of the time, but "how often" is not the question that marketers are asking.
Marketers are asking the question:
WHICH WORKS BETTER?
- Real personalisation (ie, actually reading my blog, sending me a genuine personal email that plays to my prejudices and offers something that I might really be interested in.) --- This works very well, but is much more time-intensive.
- Psuedo-personalisation (ie, "Dear Mark" rather than "Dear Customer".) --- This annoys some customers, but charms others.
- No personalisation (ie, "Dear Customer".) --- While "Dear Mark" slightly rankles, "Dear Customer" sends a message that you're not even trying :-)
As ever, it's a mix BETWEEN the three types of communication...
Posted by: Mark Harrison | July 3, 2008 2:06 AM
I just read a letter that had been left out on the side, it had a fake post it note, with fake handwriting, saying the food magazine had sent me a recipe because they know I like recipes.
To matt, I sent you this...blah blah....gillian.
Fake everything, and they used my first name - which made it even worse somehow. Then, the obligatory phone number (not free), for me to renew my subscription....
Posted by: Matt Lambert | July 7, 2008 10:32 AM