I recently recieved the following email from Intel's marketing people, see if you can spot the fatal error:

No need to read more - the error is on the first line - "Dear NULL".  I'm a NULL?  Is that a comment on my importance?  My value as a customer?  If I could walk into an Intel shop would I be greeted with a cheerful "Howdy, Mr Insignificant Nobody"?

Ok - I'm being a little a little over the top, but it's such a glaring fault I had to discuss it.

Let's go through the series of errors and omissions required to achieve this (un)remarkable degree of (mis)targetting:

1) The person who wrote the email software had to consciously insert a command to say "insert First Name here."  Neither they, their supervisor, or any of the testers thought about "what if we don't have a first name."  Gee, why would you?  Every marketing database is absolutely perfect, right?  There's never any need to check for errors, is there?  You never encounter a single item of data missing, do you?  In addition, NULL is a logical data response, not actual data.  You have to write code in a certain way to get NULL treated as data and inserted into output, and that way involves cutting corners (technically this is called "loose data typing".  A good programmer would simply never have got into the mess.  I can guarrantee there was no one on the coding team with more than 3 years experience, including the supervisor.  More experienced programmers wouldn't have made this error.

2)  No one sending out these emails ran a test first.  "Let's just trust the system, and if it costs us sales to be so lazy about it, who cares!"

3)  The email system isn't pulling data from the database properly.  This email was about a subscription service, where they actually DO have my name, so NULL should never have appeared.

I am sure no one reading this would be so unprofessional with their email marketing, but let's review the lessons anyway:

1) Don't use email marketing software you haven't testing first.  Ensure your tests cover every possible form of missing data.  I keep a special database with really terrible records mixed in amongst good ones.  The bad records cover every possible form of mistake - missing data, mismatched data, duplicates, etc.   This is such a common need, you can buy such "testing" databases.

2) Don't assume your marketing database is still working properly, just because it worked last time.  Data always gets corrupted.  Hard disks are metallic moving parts - they wear out.  As they degrade, data gets trashed.  That's why we all spend so much on backups.  Run a test on all email campaigns before sending.

The salutation is the most important line in any email.  It instantly tells someone whether you're sending junk to them or not.  "Dear Sales" or "Dear Info" (or "Dear NULL") instantly say - "mass shotgun email - junk me quick!"  Just a simple "Hi!" if you don't have a name is preferable.

We need to remember that email marketing is a two-step process.  Before we can convince people with our great emails, catchy subject lines, etc, we must first convince them to read the email.  That process begins with the salutation - it's the first impression and sets the tone for the whole encounter.

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