According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. So at least I’m not alone.

I don’t eat fast food often, but if I’m in a situation where that is the best option, I usually look for a Chick-fil-A.

I’m a member of their loyalty program and I usually order through the Chick-fil-A app, to save time. I know that they track everything I order, that’s the cost of being in the loyalty program.

And I’m okay with that.

As a marketer I understand the value of having relevant data on members of my target audience. When I consulted for Hasbro, we asked registrants to tell us whether they were gift-givers, game lovers, collectors, or something else, so that we could send them more relevant content. This is just one example of how I’ve used data to create more relevant experiences for email subscribers over the course of my career.

When I saw an email from Chick-fil-A in my box, it made me smile. The date was December 29, 2021; the subject line was ‘2021: Starring Jeanne (and chicken)’ and the preheader text said, ‘A look back at our most delicious moments together.’ A bit hooky, but hey.

So, I opened it. The full email appears below.

It’s cute, right?

You can’t see it, but there was some interesting animation around the ‘2021’ at the top.

Got to love the cow with the balloons, and it was useful to see how many points I had earned to date.

The rest was fine, I was skimming it; I didn’t click on any of the links.

But then something stopped me cold.

Do you see where it says, “You loved spice and everything nice’ in 2021?’

And underneath it says, ‘Looks like your go-to was our Spicy Chicken Sandwich.’

My ‘go-to’ is not their Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

It’s the Nuggets Kid’s Meal.

So, I closed the email and went on with my day.

But my mind kept coming back to that.

Finally, I opened the app to see what it said I had ordered. Yep. There were only a half dozen orders over the past 2 years, but most of them were for the Nuggets Kid’s Meal. The one that wasn’t? It was for an 8-count Nuggets Meal (I must have been hungry that day).

My first class of the semester at Georgetown University (I teach Digital Marketing in the Graduate Program) was last week. During introductions I ask people to mention one brand whose digital marketing is top of mind for them right now, and to tell us why. I go first.

Yep. It had been two weeks since I got that email – but that was the brand and experience which was at the forefront of my mind and that’s what I talked about when I introduced myself. And apparently, it’s still with me, almost a week later, as I’m writing about it today.

So why is this such a problem?

Because there’s an unspoken social contract here that’s been broken. They are gathering data on me, but they aren’t using it to make my experience more relevant.

According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. So at least I’m not alone.

Does this make me want to never visit Chick-fil-A again? No. But it’s eroded some of the equity the brand had built with me.

I keep wondering – did they not take the time to pull in personalized data for this section of the email? They did customize by region – the Northeast. Or they tried. I consider DC more mid-Atlantic than Northeast. But I don’t know what their district boundaries are. I digress.

Bottom line: incorrect personalization is worse than no personalization at all. If they wanted to promote their Spicy Chicken Sandwich, there are so many ways they could have done that. But suggesting that it’s my ‘go-to’ when they have the data to know that it isn’t – that’s not one of them.

So, take heed. If you can personalization an email at an individual level, do it. But if you can’t – don’t fake it. Faking it makes you look like you didn’t care enough to get information about your customer or prospect right.

We all know brands don’t actually ‘care’ about us as individuals, but not getting it right it makes us second-guess giving you our data in the future. Because if you aren’t going to use it to improve our experience, what are you using it for? Where’s the quid pro quo?