Editor’s note: I’m very pleased to welcome guest poster Renata Dalmaso of emailManager! The eMail Guide community continues to grow globally and we gain a great deal every time we expand that global perspective.

Last week I experienced a Taxi Driver De Niro moment. While reading an article about email marketing I was suddenly thrown aback by the writer unexpectedly addressing the reader—i.e. me—as male. Just to clarify: I’m not, male that is. I am however a journalist that works with email marketing for some time and was really interested in the take of the article—up until the time I felt completely left out of the analogy.

My reaction was somewhat along the lines of “You takin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who else are you talkin’ to? Well, I’m the one reading this article. You must be talking to me.”

A few moments later I suppressed the need to express my disconfort by shaving my head and doing justice with my own hands. I felt it would be much better to reflect on why we sometimes make the mistake of gendering the reader in situations where we should be addressing a general audience.

So, like now, I’m referring to “you”, as my reader in this text, but I can’t know who you are. What I do know is that you are my reader, the person interested in what I have to say (hopefully), and that is all I can safely presume about you. I can’t just make the assumption that you are a woman, a man, a transgender person, or anything else about you, besides the fact that you are interested in reading about marketing.

We see marketers everywhere falling into this gender pitfall. And what happens when you gender your audience when you shouldn’t? You alienate HALF of your readers, something that every marketer out there should be afraid to terrified of. Of course that when you are sure you are addressing an already segmented audience you should personalize the dialogue as much as you can. This is in fact one of the secrets to success in email marketing: to deliver a message in a way that every person that receives it feels like it was sent directly and specifically to them.

However, when you do not have that information it is crucial that you do not make hasty assumptions. If you address your readers as male, how should the female readers receive the message? Should they feel left out? Should they get past this issue and just relate to it in the same way?

We could debate the reason behind these types of assumptions for hours (believe me, I’ve actually have spent hours discussing it), but the main thing to remember is that when writing anything (and I do mean anything: an email , a greeting card, a billboard sign, a magazine ad, an academic paper, etc) you should always consider the targeted audience for that text while writing it. In other words, unless you want your female readers to experience De Niro moments like mine, you should consider beforehand who will be the readers to your text and do your best to include them all in whatever message you are trying to convey.

Takeaway: Consider the audience you are writing for and be as inclusive as possible.

About the Author
Renata Dalmaso is currently in charge of the Social Media and Communication department at emailManager, an email marketing company based in Florianópolis, Brazil, which provides services for clients in South America and Europe. Besides her work as a journalist, Renata also holds a Masters degree in English Literature and is a PhD candidate within the Gender Studies field.

Twitter: @renatalie
Website: http://www.emailmanager.com