Personalization? Not Like This, Please!

This is a funny story. Hold on to your hat and prepare to chortle, giggle-snort, and perhaps even guffaw along with me as I share it with you.

It all started a month ago today, and it lasted for 6 days. The four emails I’m going to share with you arrived, in order, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and the following Monday.

Now, please understand that I get solicitation emails, sorta like this, all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. But these… these were on a whole ‘nother level.

In email #1, Dave is offering to generate TONS of new leads for Genoo using a “highly personalized cold email campaign.”

Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that Dave is using his own model – the model he is trying to convince me to hire him to use – for the emails he is sending me? Since I have zero idea who he is, have never subscribed to his list, and he clearly has no idea what Genoo even does? You’d think so, right?

Here’s his first email to me.

That subject line, ugh. What’s so “dead serious” about this? We’ll see.

60 leads in 60 days is a pretty good offer (and one that, in my experience, will NEVER come true as yes, we’ve hired people like this before – no judging please).

If this email is an example of “highly personalized,” let’s look at how it’s been done.

1. My name is in the subject line. Check.
2. My name is in the first line of the email. Check.
3. Company name is in the offer. Check.

That’s it? That’s “highly personalized”? Or is he referring to his “urgent family matters”? (Why would a cold email prospect care about that?)

Let’s look at email #2. It contains the entire text of email #1, but I’ll not put that into the image.

It’s got the same personalization (almost) that the first one did – name in subject, name in first line. Got it. And this email reinforces what was crystal clear in email #1 – this “highly personalized” cold email strategy is just a pitch with my name thrown in. Oh, and I almost forgot – the “urgent family matters,” whatever they might have been.

But… he “recorded a 2 minute for [me]” – a 2 minute what? LOL Careless is also a hallmark of “highly personalized,” I guess. OMG.

But now things get interesting. Or do they?

Again, this email included the entire text from both email #1 and email #2. Nice, right? Same subject line, my name in the email body first line, and yep, our company name makes it in once again. Check it out. (Of course the comments in the grey boxes are mine, not his.)

It feels like the man has expectations, doesn’t it? And please do note his aversion to appropriately using capital letters and punctuation (did you catch the lower case I in his closing line in email #2, too?). Okay. Again, a pitch-slap, but we know it’s coming by now, right?

Then the fourth and apparently final email arrives. Read it and let it sink in for a moment. I’m still a little flabbergasted.

Well, it seems that my lack of response to date has greatly inconvenienced Dave. He seems testy now, doesn’t he? Apparently, I should feel an obligation to respond to his emails because I’m causing him to spend extra time following up with me.

First off, I call BS. He’s using an automated system into which someone (probably not even him) plugged my name and company name – and likely the info for thousands of others.

Secondly, this feels like bullying to me. But maybe that’s what they call “personalizing”? Whatever they call it, it raised my hackles, and no, I did nothing with this one either – except for dropping it into my “Hall of Shame” folder in my email system so I could find them all again (snort/snarf).

Now that I’ve entertained you (I hope) with my take on ol’ Dave’s “highly personalized cold emails,” here’s the real point: personalizing email is WAY more than adding in a lead’s name and company name.

Read that again.

A “highly personalized” email strategy, whether cold or warm, is WAY more than adding in a lead’s name and company name. This personalization case study shows how even a company with great automation fell flat by forgetting that real personalization means caring enough to actually listen.

Read that again.

A “highly personalized” email strategy, whether cold or warm, is WAY more than adding in a lead’s name and company name.

It’s creating content that is relevant to the audience – which you can only get to if you KNOW your audience. It’s giving before asking. Building trust before executing a sales maneuver. This authentic personalization approach focuses on understanding your audience deeply enough to speak to them as individuals. It’s creating VALUE in the mind of the reader before EVER hitting anyone upside the head with a pitch-slap.

Dave clearly doesn’t get that.

He could have created value by sending me information about studies done about personalization best practices (which he also doesn’t seem to get). He could have quoted outside experts on email best practices. He could have done SO MUCH – and he did NOTHING beyond try to sell me on his services.

Ironically, and sadly, the same services he spent four emails proving to me a) aren’t very good and b) don’t really work.

Personalized emails get into the mind of the audience. They address a pain point, or an aspiration, or perhaps paint a vision of what success could look like.

I guess you could argue that 60 leads in 60 days is a vision of what success could look like. But you and I both know that’s not realistic. (If you didn’t already know that, you do now. Don’t fall for a pitch that tells you they can do that; I have never seen it happen with any service nor for any client who has also tried it – at least not without incurring massive costs and even then it’s unlikely.)

If you don’t understand your ideal customer profile at a level BEYOND their name and company name – what drives them, what (not to be trite) keeps them up at night, what motivates them, what challenges they experience – you can’t deliver a “highly personalized” email at all.

You’ll just be another carnival barker, hollering out your offer with the addition of calling the people in your audience by name, standing in a crowd of carnival barkers all hollering at the same people.

That’s the “dead serious” piece that Dave missed. The fact that, with his method of personalization, you’re just another shout in the crowd of people shouting.

Nothing stand-out about that, is there?