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

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 the % compatibility during zapping and the VOD suggestions, Belgacom has been sending its recommendations by email for several weeks. A very good initiative, especially since it is possible to program a remote recording from your email or to add a movie in your personal selection. Very interesting !

But we won't go any further down this road, let's limit ourselves to the subject line of the email! In fact, we are faced with a paradox. While the email was created in a spirit of personalization, the subject line is always the same!

So, maybe it's the right choice, maybe it's more efficient to reuse the same subject line to catch the eye when receiving the email. But the minimum would have been to add a date in the subject.

On the other hand, why limit yourself to the minimum? Wouldn't something like "Our recommendations: Toy Story 3, My worst nightmare, ..." be more efficient?

In any case, a small AB test on the subject would certainly be very interesting! Optimize = Test + Test + Test + ...

Identity card

Generic email information:

• Subject of the email : Recommendations for Jonathan
• From : Belgacom TV
• Preheader :
  Is this email unreadable? Open the online version.
  More info on 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