gavin681 — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 16:57:07 +0000

>>It depends what kind of tone you want to use. If you want to be businesslike and formal, use both first and last. If you want to be more informal and friendly, just ask for first name.<<

Magan you hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Great thanks everyone for all your comments.

Peace, I’m out
Gavin

Megan — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 14:19:02 +0000

It depends what kind of tone you want to use. If you want to be businesslike and formal, use both first and last. If you want to be more informal and friendly, just ask for first name. If you want to cater to their needs ask for just "name" so, as The Webmistress said, they can put in whatever they're most comfortable with.

m1l — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 11:50:58 +0000

Putting my programmer head on, I would say just get the name, it shouldn't be too difficult to grab the first name out of the name entered, just programatically cut the string from the first character to the first occurence of a space. As an example, in an Access query, it would be

SELECT left(fullname, instr(fullname, ' ') - 1) as firstname
FROM registration

The Webmistress — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 08:52:55 +0000

I would go with just name & email, if it was me filling it in I would just put Julia anyway.

gavin681 — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 18:06:14 +0000

Interesting feedback.

>>How about just change that from "First Name" to "Name".<<

But when I bulk email all these people I wanted to personalise the email. You see it maybe a month or so before the ebook is in print. Most people will have forgotten about Grannyjo.com

If I insert their first name they may be more likely to read it and not discard it thinking it was just junk email.

Should I include just:

(A)email field
(B)First Name and email field
(C)First Name, Last Name and email field
or
(D)Just Name and email field

I've seen several big time marketers use (C)

Maybe this would be the best one to use?

Gavin

ZoomPosters.com — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 14:15:30 +0000

I think it's good with "First name". Your users will know that you use the name for informal contact.

The Webmistress — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 08:31:18 +0000

Yeah I agree as well, that way people will put whatever they are comfortable with.

disaster-master — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 03:26:29 +0000

I agree with Megan on that.

Megan — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 03:05:42 +0000

How about just change that from "First Name" to "Name".