First name in subject? Delete!

There is statistical evidence that I saw once that backed up the opinion that if you put the recipient's name in the subject of your email when marketing, then open rates are higher.

I have one question: why oh why would people respond to this? It's unfathomable to me.

I think my initial hatred stems from the fact that it's an old spammer tactic (which even they don't seem to do that often now). They'd just take the part of your email address before the @ symbol, hope it's your name and whack it into the subject. So a legitimate company doing it doesn't come across as suddenly more legitimate by just having my name in the subject.

I particularly don't like the jaunty familiarity of it all. Compare The Market is a good offender. I get frequent emails for myself and my father from them, and they're always of a similar ilk with every email using our first names in the subject. "Gilbert, compare insurance today and you could save hundreds" and "Insurance renewal reminder for Gilbert" are just two of their subjects. But thanks, I know who the email is for – it's my email address.

And if they are going to resort to this name-in-subject style, what happened to good old Mr Smith? I wasn't even aware we were on a first name basis. It's just too pally for my liking.

It seems Compare the Market's friends are very much in agreement with this marketing principle though. I set up my email address for my father and used Compare the Market to get an insurance quote. Since that day, the address has been infested with emails about insurance, loans and other financial products -- all addressed, you guessed it, with his first name in the subject.

Perhaps Compare the Market helps prove that it really is just a tactic used by spammers after all. But at least it gives me a pattern to delete the emails more easily.

First name in subject? Delete!