--- title: "A first name in the subject line lifted sales leads 31% in a randomised test" summary: "What a 2018 field experiment found when email subject lines carried the reader's name, what to automate next, and the India consent and invoice view, as of September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/boost-email-marketing-efforts-automation format: Note desk: "AI in the enterprise" published: 2025-09-30 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["email marketing","marketing automation","personalisation","subject lines","field experiment","Zoho Campaigns","Pipedrive Campaigns","DPDP","GST"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/boost-email-marketing-efforts-automation.png --- # A first name in the subject line lifted sales leads 31% in a randomised test *What a 2018 field experiment found when email subject lines carried the reader's name, what to automate next, and the India consent and invoice view, as of September 2026.* Note · AI in the enterprise · By TechBag · Published 2025-09-30 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/boost-email-marketing-efforts-automation The cheapest thing an email tool automates has the best evidence behind it: in a randomised field experiment, putting the recipient’s name in the subject line raised sales leads by 31% and cut unsubscribes by 17%.[1] A merge field costs nothing on any plan. What it shows is the real case for automation: not sending more, but making each message read as if it were written for one person, at a scale nobody could manage by hand. The 2023 version of this piece promised better open rates from segmentation, triggers and drip campaigns. The buyer’s question is the same three years on: which automation is worth switching on, and how would you know it worked? TechBag countWhy the 2023 case studies are gone The original quoted three results: HubSpot +10% opens, Mailchimp +30% conversion, Constant Contact +50% retention. None of the three named a report, a customer or a date, so we dropped them rather than repeat them. ## What a randomised test measured Navdeep Sahni, Christian Wheeler and Pradeep Chintagunta ran randomised experiments on the email programmes of three companies and published them in Marketing Science in February 2018. In the main one, half the list got the subject line with their name and half without. Opens rose from 9.05% to 10.80%, sales leads from 0.39% to 0.51% of recipients, and unsubscribes fell from 1.2% to 1.0%.[1] The authors’ reading is that the name made people pay attention to the rest of the email, not that the email became more relevant; Chicago Booth’s write-up of the work makes the same point.[2] **Figure: A first name in the subject line lifted leads 31% and cut unsubscribes 17%** *Relative change against the same email without the name, main randomised experiment, Marketing Science, February 2018, %* Sales leads, more 0.39% to 0.51% 31% Opens, more 9.05% to 10.80% 20% Unsubscribes, fewer 1.2% to 1.0% 17% | | Value (%) | | --- | --- | | Sales leads, more | 31 | | Opens, more | 20 | | Unsubscribes, fewer | 17 | Source: Sahni, Wheeler and Chintagunta, Marketing Science 37(2), via Stanford Graduate School of Business · as of 27 February 2018 · Leads 0.39% to 0.51%; opens 9.05% to 10.80%; unsubscribes 1.2% to 1.0%. Measured before Apple changed open tracking in 2021 Our view Our view: the leads and unsubscribe numbers matter more than the opens, because they are the ones that survive Apple’s 2021 change to open tracking. Treat 31% as one company’s result, not a promise, and test it on your own list: split the next campaign, keep everything else equal, and count replies, form fills or orders. ## What to automate after the name The same logic, a message that matches what this one person just did, is why triggered sequences outperform scheduled campaigns. Which sequences to build first, and what they earned across 150,000 brands in 2025, is in our [drip campaign analysis](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/drip-email-campaigns). The limit on how much automation can send before the mailbox providers push back is the subject of our [note on email cadence](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/importance-email-cadence); read it before the first workflow goes live. Our view The cheapest mistake to avoid is the launch blast. Once Google classes a domain as a bulk sender the status does not expire, so one send of an old imported list sets the rules for that domain for good.[3] Send marketing from a subdomain, and warm it with the people who asked to hear from you. ## Buying and sending in India Personalisation fields and simple triggers come with the entry plans; the plan that unlocks segmentation costs US$4.50 to US$20 a month at the entry contact tier on five tools.[4] The invoice is the India question. Pipedrive Campaigns bills in US dollars without a GST invoice, so the buyer self-accounts 18% IGST under reverse charge; Zoho Campaigns bills in rupees with GST.[5] TechBag resells Zoho and HubSpot. A name in a subject line is personal data, and a marketing email to an individual in India rests on consent under the DPDP Act, 2023; its Rules were notified on 13 November 2025 and the substantive duties, including the right to withdraw consent as easily as it was given, apply from 13 May 2027.[6][7] Check that the name field came with the consent, not from a scraped list. How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 The experiment’s figures are from the published Marketing Science paper’s summary on Stanford Graduate School of Business’s page; the percentage changes are relative, so the absolute differences are small (0.12 percentage points of leads). The paper also ran similar tests with other companies; only the main experiment is charted. Bulk-sender permanence is from Google’s sender-guidelines FAQ. No open-rate or deliverability benchmark is quoted, because none we found states a method we could check. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Sahni, Wheeler and Chintagunta, Personalization in Email Marketing: The Role of Noninformative Advertising Content, Marketing Science 37(2) (opens 9.05% to 10.80%, leads 0.39% to 0.51%, unsubscribes 1.2% to 1.0%)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/personalization-email-marketing-role-non-informative-advertising) — 27 February 2018 2. [Chicago Booth Review, Open this, [NAME]! Why personalized email subject lines work](https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/open-name-why-personalized-email-subject-lines-work) — undated page 3. [Google, Email sender guidelines FAQ (bulk-sender status does not expire)](https://support.google.com/a/answer/14229414) — vendor FAQ, undated 4. [TechBag blog, Segmented emails got 2× the clicks; the builder costs US$4.50 to US$20 a month](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/segmenting-mailing-list-effective-email-marketing) — 3 June 2025 Prices as stated in that post. 5. [TechBag, Pipedrive Campaigns intel page (billing and GST)](https://www.thetechbag.com/pipedrive/pipedrive-campaigns) — version of 30 September 2026 6. [DPDP Rules 2025, commencement timeline](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — notified 13 November 2025 7. [Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, section 6 (consent and its withdrawal)](https://www.meity.gov.in/data-protection-framework) — 11 August 2023 Related on TechBag: the [HubSpot Marketing Hub page](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-marketing-hub) sets out the contacts-tier arithmetic; the [email security guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/email-security) covers the DMARC tools that protect the domain your campaigns send from. **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [Email & collaboration security guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/email-security) — the DMARC tools that protect the domain your campaigns send from - [HubSpot Marketing Hub intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-marketing-hub) — the marketing-contacts tier arithmetic and GST via reseller - [Pipedrive Campaigns intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/pipedrive/pipedrive-campaigns) — USD billing against Zoho Campaigns' INR invoice