Why Your "Personalization" Isn't Actually Personal (And What To Do Instead)

Everyone talks about personalizing cold emails.

"Use their first name!" "Mention their company!" "Reference their LinkedIn!"

So you do that. You write:

"Hey [First Name], I saw you're the VP of Sales at [Company Name]. Congrats on the recent funding round! I'd love to chat about how we can help [Company Name] grow."

And you get... nothing.

Because that's not personalization. That's mail merge with extra steps.

Real personalization isn't about inserting someone's name or company into a template. It's about showing you actually understand their world.

Here's how to do it right.

Stop Confusing Personalization With Customization

Customization = inserting someone's name/company into a template

Personalization = writing something that could only be written to that specific person

Most people do customization and call it personalization.

They think using "Hey Sarah" instead of "Hey there" is enough.

It's not.

Sarah knows you sent this exact email to 500 other Sarahs. She can smell the template from a mile away.

What Real Personalization Looks Like

Real personalization requires you to know something about them that you can't just pull from their LinkedIn.

Here are examples:

Bad (customization): "Hey Sarah, saw you're the VP of Sales at Acme Corp. I'd love to chat about how we help companies like yours."

Good (personalization): "Hey Sarah, noticed you guys just promoted three AEs to senior roles. Guessing you're scaling fast and probably looking at ways to fill the pipeline without hiring more SDRs."

The second one shows you actually looked at what they're doing. You made an inference. You connected a dot.

That gets a response.

Personalization At Scale Is Possible (But Not The Way You Think)

"But I can't write custom emails to 500 people!"

You're right. You can't.

But you don't need to.

Here's the secret: segment your list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, then write personalized emails to the segment.

For example:

Segment 1: Companies that just raised funding Angle: "Congrats on the Series A. Guessing you're hiring fast and need pipeline yesterday. We help companies in your exact position book 10-15 qualified calls per month without building an SDR team."

Segment 2: Companies hiring for sales roles Angle: "Saw you're hiring an SDR. If you want pipeline flowing while you're still recruiting, we can get you live in 2 weeks. No hiring, no training, just meetings."

Segment 3: Companies with stagnant outbound Angle: "Noticed your SDR job posting has been up for 6+ months. If you're tired of the hiring game, we can build your outbound system and start booking calls in 14 days."

Each segment gets an email that feels personal to them, even though you sent it to 100 people in that segment.

The Research Doesn't Have To Take Forever

You don't need to spend 30 minutes researching every prospect.

Here's what good research looks like:

30 seconds per prospect:

• Check their company website for recent news

• Look at their LinkedIn for job postings or recent activity

• See if they're mentioned in any recent articles

That's it.

You're not writing a dissertation. You're just finding one specific thing you can reference to show you're not a bot.

The Bottom Line

Stop using someone's first name and calling it personalization.

Real personalization shows you understand their specific situation. It references something they're actually dealing with. It makes them think "wait, how did they know that?"

That's what gets responses.

Generic templates with merge tags? That's what gets ignored. give up after one email.

That's a mistake.

The first email is often ignored. Not because they're not interested, but because they're busy.

You need 3-5 follow-ups spaced out over 2-3 weeks.

Each follow-up should add value or give a different reason to respond. Don't just say "bumping this up in your inbox."

Talk soon,

Lourenço