Nobody replies to {first_name}
A short film about cold email. Three generic lines, three rooms of people who stop listening, and the one line that brings them back.
A short film with no sound; the lines are subtitles. Everyone in it is made up. Read the script
The script
A hotel bar after a conference.
A man in a grey suit straightens his tie. Where his face should be there is a name sticker: HELLO, my name is {first_name}.
Three people are talking at a cocktail table. He walks up.
{first_name}Hi {first_name}. Love what you're doing in the space.
They look at him. Then they leave, one at a time. Ice settles in a glass.
A restaurant, at night.
He kneels by a table for two, holding out a ring. He reads from his phone.
{first_name}Hi {first_name}, I came across your profile and thought we'd be a great fit.
Her chair is empty. A violin stops. The candle goes out.
A wedding. The top table.
He stands at the end of the table, glass raised.
{first_name}To {bride} and {groom}. I hope this finds you well.
One cough. The groom puts his glass back down.
The hotel bar again.
Alone at the table, he takes hold of the sticker's corner and peels it off his face. Under it is a face. He looks at the sticker, and lets it drop.
He turns to a man standing at the bar.
JoelJames. Two warehouses since the Halden deal.
James turns round, and walks back to the table.
JamesGo on.
The other two come back as well.
Nobody replies to {first_name}. Write to the person.
Made up. Every person, company and deal in the film is invented. It was shot as stop motion: miniature figures, twelve poses a second, no sound.
{first_name} in the wild
Five things people write for each other, addressed the way a mass email is. Hover over each one, or tap it, to write it to the person.
When an email says {first_name}
- Why did I get an email that says Hi {first_name}?
The sender wrote one email and sent it to a list. Their email tool puts each row's values in place of the tags, and a tag it does not recognize, because it was mistyped or written in another tool's format, goes out exactly as typed. Either way, it tells you the email was written to a list, not to you.
- What is a merge tag?
A placeholder an email tool fills in from a list before it sends: {first_name}, {{fname}}, %FIRSTNAME% and Mailchimp's *|FNAME|* are common forms. One email goes to every row of the list, with each row's values put in place of the tags.
- How do I stop {first_name} going out in my own emails?
Give each tag a fallback for rows that have no value, then read every message as it will arrive before you send. Each email tool writes a fallback differently; the mail-merge preview lists 21 of them and flags empty fields in your browser, free.
- Is a first name enough to make an email personal?
No. A first name shows you have a list. What gets a reply is a line that is only true of the reader, like the one in the film, found by reading about their company and checked before it is sent.