It was my birthday the other day (thank you, but the TIME accolade was enough, thank you), and I was interested to note that for all the years of talk of personalization in the email marketing world, only two companies acknowledged my special day.

Now it’s not like I don’t get email from companies. On the contrary. My AOL account, which is where most of this stuff goes, currently boasts in excess of 500 messages, probably 50 percent of which are commercials. (The rest? Newsletters and discussion lists, plus the odd family correspondence.)

Given all the junk mail I see over the course of the year, and given how many speeches Peppers and Rogers have given over the years, I would have expected to see dozens of birthday emails when I logged on.

But alas, only two. So who got it right?

Cigar.com (which offered me a $10 discount on any order) and Borders (which honored me with 15% off any one item, plus a free dessert).

A good stogie, a good book and a bite of pastry. Hmmm, doesn’t sound too bad, come to think of it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.