Over 144 billion emails are sent on a daily basis. It is not a secret that email marketing is today, one of the most effective ways to communicate. However, we have to be vigilant and smart about the entire process.

In the end, no matter what our goal is with our email campaign, we want to stand out. Not only do we want our email to be opened, but we want the person at the other end to hit that " call to action" button, don't we?

We have a tendency to think that seeing our name at the beginning of an email such as:

Dear " first name, last name", could help the receiver think that the email was really sent to him and help increase the value of the email received but nope, that is no longer true.

It used to be true, but no anymore. Too many email scams have occurred and now, people are very reluctant when they see an email come in from someone or a company that they don't know of. Even if consumers have heard of the person or the company that the email is coming from, they are still wary.

The first secret to "standing out" is NO MORE "DEAR".

Becoming too familiar too fast could come out as being " weird" and alerts may go off.

Relationships and trust take time in real life and it is exactly the same in email marketing.

Take a look at this example and tell me how it makes you feel...

Have you ever written an email to someone that you know and written the name in lower case letters? To me, this doesn't seem personal at all. It doesn't look like this email was sent to me with care. For my part, I would just disregard it. How about you? What do you think?

I am not saying that personalization is not good any more, all that I am saying is that we use it in a more effective way.