Personalization is overrated.
You heard me.
I had a woman reply to one of my messages last week. She works in a similar space, and she told me my messages needed to be more personalized. I told her personalization was overrated.
She blocked me. (I posted about that last week)
But I’m serious. Personalization used to be one of those indicators that you were a real person. You read their profile, maybe some of their posts, maybe even listened to a podcast episode. It felt unique. Five years ago it was a total game changer. Taking the time to personalize a message would skyrocket the response rate.
These days? It’s almost a guarantee that your message was written by AI.
And what do people NOT want more of? More messages written by AI.
AI can do this at scale. Thousands and thousands of these messages a day.
Back when you were hiring somebody or doing it yourself, you could maybe do fifty on a good day, and that took up a lot of time. Now AI does in minutes what would take you weeks. It’s lost all its value.
Quite frankly, at this point if I use personalization at all, I use it as a joke. A way of laughing and having a little fun at the expense of the personalized message.
Here are some examples from my spam inbox. For context, the About section of my LinkedIn profile says “I’m just here guarding the mozzarella sticks.” That’s what we’re working with here.
So this cold email says: “Your mozzarella stick security detail in your headline is peak comedy. Do you take that gig as seriously as your actual work?”
Clearly written by AI.
And here’s what I got yesterday. This one went with where I attended school: “I saw on LinkedIn you attended University of Nebraska Lincoln. Ever experienced the Great Pumpkin Festival? Heard it’s a fantastic celebration with pumpkins, games and family fun.”
You’ve got to be careful with that type of stuff, because nobody calls it “University of Nebraska Lincoln.” If you live in the state, you call it UNL. If you live outside the state, you tell people you went to Nebraska. Like saying you went to Michigan, or Colorado. Just the state. That’s how the big names work. In no way did they communicate that correctly.
And the Great Pumpkin Festival? Never heard of it. Maybe it’s a newer thing. I mean, I’m old. But they took the time to personalize with AI, got it all wrong, and picked something completely irrelevant to me anyway.
So what should you focus on? The thing that still matters: the relevant offer.
Put your effort and focus into that. It’s going to be harder to craft. AI can’t do it, it’s not good at that. But that’s where I’d focus my efforts.
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