• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 8, 2009

PARK CITY, Utah -- ESPN data shows that marketing emails with a higher level of personalization may produce stronger engagement metrics -- in at least one area.

Carolyn Ude, associate director of CRM and fan marketing at ESPN, said emails sent with a person's first name in the subject line produced open rates 20% higher than the norm.

The results came from a test related to a "Tournament Challenge" fantasy competition on ESPN.com last spring. Email was used to try and build interest -- and maintain it over a several-week period.

Presenting at MediaPost's Email Insider Summit on Tuesday, Ude offered up another insight: less may be more in terms of email load. ESPN sent two promotional emails to one group of people, and three to a smaller segment. And it found those receiving two had "higher engagement."

"We may have actually seen a negative impact by sending too many emails, so that's something we will be careful of in the future," Ude said.

At ESPN, Ude said the email program is a promotional vehicle that looks to plug specific initiatives and attempts to keep people clicking around the endless ESPN.com for increasing amounts of time. "Our challenge with email is really not to drive revenue or contribution margin ... it's about driving engagement," she said. The "Tournament Challenge" game had people signing up to offer their picks for the March Madness tournament.

And every time they visited the microsite they had to log-in (with user name and password), giving ESPN.com an opportunity to capture email addresses and other information.

Ude said that putting a person's first name in a subject line proved effective in promoting the March Madness event and "can be used pretty effectively" when people have to opt-in to something, but may not be "appropriate (as) a random blast" trying to drive tune-in to an on-air broadcast.

Ude said registered ESPN.com users are seven to eight times more valuable than "anonymous fans" -- partly because targeted communications can be sent their way.

Separately, ESPN said Tuesday it is moving into the final round of an online fantasy game similar to "Tournament Challenge," known as "Streak For The Cash." The prize is $7 million, with seven finalists chasing it.