Badsender of the week: A recommendation email without personalization in the subject line?

published on 26/11/2013,

updated on 19/12/2022

Another Belgian thing, but that's how it is, we are used to taking examples from our direct environment. Belgian or not, the following remarks are universal 😉

A little background

Belgacom is the main telecom operator in Belgium, with fixed telephony, mobile telephony, internet and a television offer. For the latter, Belgacom has developed a technology that is supposed to make recommendations to the customer based on programs (movies, series, shows, ...) watched in the past. These recommendations are used to give a % of compatibility during zapping and to make suggestions in the video on demand interface.

Basing a strategy on recommendation... without showing it at first glance?

In addition to % compatibility during zapping and suggestions for VOD, Belgacom has been sending its recommendations by email for several weeks now. A very good initiative, especially as it is possible to program a remote recording from your email or to add a film to your personal selection. But we're not going to go any further down this road, so let's confine ourselves to the subject line of the email! In fact, we're faced with a paradox. While the email was created with personalization in mind, the subject line is always the same! So maybe this is the right choice, maybe it's more effective to reuse the same subject line to catch the eye when the email is received. But why limit yourself to the minimum? Wouldn't a subject like "Our recommendations: Toy Story 3, My worst nightmare, ..." be more effective? In any case, a little AB testing on the subject would certainly have been very interesting! Optimize = Test + Test + Test + ... belgacom-tv-email-list

Identity card

Generic email information:

Subject of the email : Recommendations for Jonathan
From : Belgacom TV
Preheader : Is this e-mail illegible? Open the online version. More info about the "Recommend me" service
Sending platform : Smartfocus (Emailvision)

Checklist :

Link to privacy : KO (there is a link, but it does not work anymore)
Link to unsubscribe : OK
DKIM : OK
Text version : Bof (links don't work)
Text to Image Ratio : Bof
List-unsubscribe : OK
Friendly reply : Bof (automatic answer sending to a form)
Mobile ready : KO

Screenshot of the email

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux

I've been involved in email marketing for over ten years, and my career path began on the technical side (email campaign integration) before moving on to sales (as an eCRM expert) and finally marketing consultancy. For the past 9 years, I've been the author of the Badsender.com blog. Emailing isn't just an expertise, it's truly become my passion, which is why Badsender is now my main activity, with the creation of an emailing consulting business linked to the site.

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One response

jose
10 years ago
Could you send me the link to the newsletter to check?