Via Merredith, the straight talking Mass Media Director of The Hoffman Agency who has just started blogging with a little clarity from Colorado, I was pointed to ReadWriteWeb highlighting research that shows that email personalization can backfire. A University of Illinois study confirms the common sense feeling that "personalized" marketing communication online can often make us actively dislike the message's sender.

Tiffany Barnett White, the marketing professor who headed the research said:

"When messages are highly personalized, but lack value and justification, they have unintended effects. They can actually have a boomerang effect and cast the firm in a negative light, sending customers running to the competition."

She went on to say:

"Nowadays, consumers are so much more savvy. They're so bombarded with tricks of this nature that they start to seem like tricks. So the onus in on marketers to convince consumers that this isn't a trick, that it has some value."

So Flickr saying hola Mandy (or whoever you are) is cool, but there is a line that a marketer can cross that makes us uncomfortable with false familiarity. As with all technology, just because you've got the ability to tailor email messages with lots of detail you've collected about the sender doesn't mean you should use it. Pulling in the extra detail will work if it's directly relevant, but could backfire unless the person you are mailing sees the value. This suggests that the simple approach is probably better, and that will help small businesses who tend to have less sophisticated email marketing tools.