I received two pitches via email today, one from AMEX OPEN Forum and one from Kodak.
AMEX Open Forum
If you click the image you'll be able to read the text that says, "Every day, more and more business owners are sharing their insights on Twitter. To help them find each other—and potential customers—we're introducing OPEN Forum PulseSM, a unique online experience that brings together the Twitter feeds of some of the most-followed business owners and industry leaders...You are specially invited to be among the first to participate in Pulse."
This appealed to my ego..."most-followed"..."specially invited"..."be among the first"... Oh, and the email referenced my name in the greeting, "Dear Paul Chaney." Now, it would have been better and more personable had it said simply, "Dear Paul," but at least there was the name reference.
Contrast that with...
Kodak
No personalization...just one of a one million...generic message... I'm no one special. Plus, it assumed I would even want to attend the Ellen DeGeneres show. (I don't) The OPEN Forum message knew exactly what excited me, tweeting about business and using social media as a tool to make connections.
I know both were email broadcasts sent via one or another email sending platform. OPEN pulled my info from a database just like Kodak did. But, that's where the similarity ends.
OPEN did a much better job of making it more personal. There was a sense of exclusivity. It wasn't as good as if some PR person sent me a one-off email (I'm not that special!), but it got the job done.
Guess which one I clicked on. Yep, you guessed right.
Want to get people's attention and respond to your overtures? Appeal to their innate needs for attention, love. a sense of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. All those things Maslow talked about in his hierarchy. (And use their name for Pete's sake!) That's what the OPEN Forum email attempted to do and it worked.
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