There are few online marketers who would recommend desystemising your email sending and making it personal - except the one marketer who actually matters.

I want you to add friction back in. If you want to be seen as being personal, the best strategy is to be personal, which is slow and expensive.

  1. Don't send the same email to large numbers of people.
  2. If you have more than a few people to contact, you'll be tempted to copy and paste or mail merge. Don't. You'll get caught. It shows. If it's important enough for someone to read, it's important enough for you to rewrite.
  3. Careful with the salutation. Don't write, "Dear Claudia," if you don't usually write "Dear" at the beginning of all your emails.
  4. Don't mush the salutation together with the rest of the note. If I had a dollar for every email that started, "Joe, When experts come together..." That's not personal. That's lazy merging. See rule 1.
Read the rest of these email sending tips on Seth Godin's blog.

What do you think? Will personal emails result in more business for you? Are you willing to add that friction?