Many B2B emails I receive begin with "Dear Loren." This beginning promises that the rest of the email will have content highly personalized to my company demographics (firmagraphics) and business needs, based on my behavior and engagement with marketing content. Not.

Brands today are looking to create a more relevant experience for their customers. Doing so means relying heavily on accurate data. But not all data is created equal. Over the years, I have experienced my fair share of email content with misinformation: incorrect birthdays, incorrect first name and even wildly wrong product purchases when a brand is following up with cross-sell/up-sell messages. I'm sure we have all seen this problem. But sometimes it's just so wrong that one's loyalty is called into question.

This week I received an email from a company whose content I really enjoy. More than that - since I am in contact with many brands who would benefit from using this company's service, I have referred clients to them over the past year. But to my dismay (as a subscriber), I received the following email from them this week:

Recently my Yahoo account turned 15. It doesn't get much use these days - aside from the occasional seed list for a client project - but it is an epic archive of my life, my career, and to an extent, the evolution of email marketing. While I'm not going to share the dishy details of my personal correspondence through the years, I can relay a few email marketing insights that became evident while I perused my old account.

When you understand how your customers move from research to purchase to loyalty stages of the customer journey, you can explore new messaging or overhaul your current programs to make your emails more helpful and relevant. Even as you move away from overt promotion in all messages, you're never going to stop using email to sell. However, to break through inbox clutter successfully, you need to provide content that adds value at each stage of the journey.