There is no excuse for addressing me as, “Hi {$firstname}”

Hi {$firstName},

It was a pleasure connecting with you at [event] in San Francisco. We appreciated the chance to talk with you about your IT environment and our services for IT professionals.

Fortunately, this was not an e-mail service provider (ESP). That would have been really embarrassing. Pretty sure they didn’t even talk to me about my ‘IT environment’ OR their services. There is never an excuse for making this kind of mistake.

1. But, we are a huge company, so scaling is an issue.
Fine, then you have two options. If you’re that huge, you can hire a few more people to treat your people correctly. Or, stop pretending to know me by my {$firstName}. You think I can’t tell you don’t know me? Pretending to is not going to impress me.

2. But, it is the software’s fault.
I’m sorry, but who bought the software? Hopefully you did. Which means, the only correct response is, ‘I bought the software and I didn’t learn how to use it, and I made the mistake.’ Or, I’m willing to bet you didn’t even pay for it. You probably outsourced this to some agency or consultant. Again, your fault for outsourcing the most important part of your business–talking to your customers and potential customers–to someone else.

3. Opps! This was just a bad mistake.
Please see the above comment about not pretending to know my name if you don’t have it. But, mistakes happen to all of us. That’s cool. Just make sure you tell me that you made this mistake. If you’re willing to spend money to send me emails promoting your service, then you should be willing to send me emails connecting with me as a person to clarify your mistake, and let me know why you hope you won’t make that mistake again.


Posted

in

by

Comments

Leave a Reply