Fix Your Firstnames

Ok I have a really short but great tip you can use immediately after reading this.

If you use an autoresponder to collect opt-in leads, you’d normally have a webform like this to capture the person’s information:

So you capture the guy’s info, he’s on your list, and now you start to followup with the fella using email. And this is what you normally do when you create an email (let’s use aweber as an example):

Hi {!firstname},

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

If you’re familiar with autoresponders, the {!firstname} will be filled with whatever the person entered when he first opted-in. The trouble is a lot of people are lazy and they enter their names in lowercase. Which means the person types in ‘robert’ instead of ‘Robert’. And then when you craft your emails, it looks really unprofessional. Like this:

Hi robert,

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

Doesn’t look or feel nice eh? It’s like you don’t respect the person’s name enough to ’spell’ it right, only that it wasn’t really your fault in the first place. So what do you do?

Simple.

Just use {!firstname_fix} instead of the normal {!firstname}. And now the autoresponder will automatically “fix” any lowercase names and spell the name out the right way when you craft your emails. Something like this:

Hi {!firstname_fix},

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

will become
.
.
.
.
.

Hi Robert,

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

So now all your emails will have your subscribers name spelt right even if all your opt-in leads are lazy bastards who can’t bother to type their name in right. I didn’t know this when I crafted all my emails and when I did, I went back to my autoresponder and changed all my (!firstname} fields into {!firstname_fix}. Took me some time but worth it.

Anyway something you can use if you haven’t done so.

Cheers…