In the early days of personal computers, word processing software such as WordStar and WordPerfect offered a feature called Mail Merge that enabled users to personalize mass mailings. Each email would contain the same body text, but the salutation would be customized with the recipient’s name. Due to the limitations of that early technology, the salutation had to accommodate the longest name. So a recipient with a short name such as “Joe Doe,” would see his name and then a very, long empty space before the requisite comma. The intention to customize was honorable but the execution backfired. Mail Merge is still widely used today, but the long empty space factor has been eliminated.
Flash forward to today when call centers, in their effort to satisfy their customers, have their representatives say the name of the customer—repeatedly. “Thank you for being a loyal customer, Jane,” “Let me pull up your account, Jane,” “I see that you have been with us since (fill in year), Jane.”
There lies the problem: the intention to customize is honorable, but the execution—excessive repetition—like the extra spaces in Mail Merge, backfires.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Alyssa Lukpat described excessive name repetition in other verticals—sales, college recruitment, politics, and service industries such as restaurants and grocery stores—and then she went on to say that it produces “resistance from those who find it more creepy than charming.”
In this day and age the intention to customize is even more important because businesses are challenged to deliver their message to multiple audiences via multiple avenues, and their presenters are challenged to deliver the “corporate deck” and not sound like a robocall. So, saying or writing the listener or the recipient’s name is a good start. Lukpat quotes Dale Carnegie, the godfather of presentation coaching, who “famously said in 1936, ‘Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.’”
I would also quote Theognis, the sixth century Greek philosopher who said, “Be not too zealous; moderation is best in all things.” Or put even more simply, too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
Or William Shakespeare, who had Hamlet say, “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”
So go ahead and write or say the names of the recipients of your message, but do so in moderation and then offer these other forms of customization:
- Company name. Write or say the name of the company for whom the recipient works. “I’m confident that your colleagues here at (company) will find our solution…”
- Contemporize. Look online or in the newspaper to find a relevant event that is happening on the same day as your presentation. “Today, the stock market reacted to…”
- Localize. Reference the venue of your presentation. “Your neighbor in (venue) found that…”
- LinkedIn. Research your audience members’ professional career paths. “I’m sure that when you worked at (company) you found that…”
Mix and match these four valuable techniques with your audience or recipient’s name to make your message as customized as a bespoke garment.