I'd like to start this on a slightly personal note. People frequently mis-spell my last name. It's an easy mistake to make admittedly, but one that still never fails to annoy me. For example, I won a trophy from my local football team when I was 8. I was very proud, until I realised that they had spelt my last name wrong on it. It was now forever etched into that piece of metal-effect plastic. It was supposed to signify my hard work and effort over the course of a whole football season. Except that it didn't, because in my eyes it was addressed to someone totally different. If I'm going to be rewarded for all that work, at least get my name right. 8 year old me left that awards ceremony feeling deflated and upset.

Now that I'm older (and totally over it), I know that it's a common thing to become annoyed when incorrectly addressed. But there might be something worse than being called Jon' when you're actually called Jan' — Hi %FIRSTNAME%. The email equivalent of having your name forgotten entirely. The same as being introduced as erm&' at a party.

That feeling when someone get's your name wrong.

Personalisation errors can distance customers' loyalty from your brand

But why do we find this so impersonal and offensive? It's only personalisation! An organisation's attempt to use data you have provided to address you personally, making you feel as though they are talking directly to you — and therefore that you matter to them. You know the company doesn't actually know you personally, it's simply code reading some data and pulling through given information. It's hardly a shady practice for a company to want to connect with you, by personalising communications with products and offers that are relevant to you.

But for whatever reason, when the robot is revealed we take up the torches and pitchforks. We feel as though the company sending the email has forgotten about our needs and entitlements altogether, and we're back to being just a number on a spreadsheet to them. This decreases our loyalty and trust in them.

Getting personalisation right every time is hard.

There are lots of moving parts to monitor, code and tags to get 100% right and testing to be done. Not to mention that data might be being pulled from multiple ESP's. But not doing so can cause embarrassment for marketing teams, and risks your brand's reputation with your audience.

Getting a mess of cables plugged in, and in the right order, is reminiscent of a manual personalisation process

Whilst no one wants to make an error, personalisation is an area where it's easier than most for one to occur, and also one of the most noticeable and damaging to customers. Let's talk about how we can avoid them.

Whilst no one wants to make an error, personalisation is an area where it's easier than most for one to occur, and also one of the most noticeable and damaging to customers. Let's talk about how we can avoid them.

Taxi for Email prevents personalisation mistakes

Personalisation in Taxi helps you systematically avoid making mistakes, making it easier to add personalised content in your emails by freeing the reliance on team members with code expertise. Email Service Provider's (ESP) tags are added (as many as you need) and each given a label of your choice, all you need to do is use that label and Taxi knows what tag to pull through. The labels prevent any mistakes arising from repetitively editing tags, as they are all pre-saved in Taxi. Personalisation goes from a time-consuming and technical operation to an easy, quick and mistake-free addition that strengthens your emails.

This is just one of the ways that Taxi works harder to make your life easier. We work closely with marketers to help eliminate the anxiety of making mistakes, and personalisation with Taxi helps marketing teams achieve stress-free and accurate personalisation every time.

Personalisation might not be your biggest challenge, but we have lots of ways how we can help improve your email process. Get in touch with us for a demo!