Personalization Is the Problem. Because It Is So Transparently Fake.
Every marketer swears by personalization. Meanwhile, most executives receive 30 to 50 “personalized” emails, texts, voice mails, and LinkedIn messages every single day. I am one of them. And I can say with confidence: this kind of personalization is not just ineffective — it is blatantly transparent as fake and hence immediately ignored and deleted. It is worthless!
During a recent conversation with a marketing agency, the topic of personalization and authenticity in outreach came up repeatedly. When asked how many personalized messages I receive daily, my answer was simple: “a lot — and none of them get my attention”
Why? Because what passes for personalization is usually just automation wearing a very thin disguise.
If you run a business or hold any kind of visible leadership role, you’ve seen these:
“Loved your recent LinkedIn post about leadership…”
(No reference to which post, what insight, or why it matters — just a token phrase pulled from scraping software.)“Congrats on growing Vendux!”
(No evidence they know what we actually do, who we serve, or what challenges that growth creates.)“I see you help SMBs scale revenue — we help companies like yours…”
(Which companies? How? In what way that connects to my reality?)“I admire what you are doing…”
(Really? I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and we have never met.)
These messages are not personalized. They are templated campaigns with variable fields. And because everyone uses the same tools and follows the same advice on personalization, they all sound eerily similar.
Worse, they pretend to be one-to-one messages while clearly being mass-produced. That mismatch is what triggers immediate deletion — often with a small, cynical smirk. Sometimes with deep annoyance and wishing I could just tell them how worthless their efforts are.
True personalization would require actual context, timing, and relevance. And that is far harder to automate.
Relevance and Timing Beat Personalization Every Time
What actually gets my attention is not flattery or profile-scraping — it is relevance at the right moment to a problem I am experiencing right now.
In that same conversation with the marketing agency, I shared a simple example: my current LinkedIn tool had just changed its interface in a way I strongly disliked. When another provider contacted me offering an alternative at that exact moment, I immediately asked for a demo. Not because the outreach was clever, but because the timing aligned perfectly with a real frustration.
That is not personalization. That is situational relevance plus timing.
The Three Conditions That Actually Matter
From years of working with business owners, I see the same pattern repeat. Three things must be true before meaningful engagement happens:
They have a problem
They recognize it as a problem
They are ready to do something about it
Most sales and marketing outreach assumes step three. Most buyers are still stuck at step one or two.
No amount of personalization tokens will move someone who is not yet motivated to change.
So, What Actually Works?
Not hyper-personalized cold pitches. And not fake familiarity.
What still works — slowly, imperfectly, but measurably — is a consistent, visible, non-threatening presence:
Sharing useful content without an immediate pitch
Publishing case studies that reflect solutions to real problem scenarios
Being clear about what you solve, for whom, and in what situations
Letting prospects self-identify when the timing is right
Yes, they know you sell something. That is not the issue. The issue is whether your message connects to a felt problem — not whether you referenced their job title correctly.
Ironically, blunt transparency sometimes performs, and certainly better than fake personalization:
“This is a cold note. Here’s what we do. If this is relevant, happy to talk.”
At least that approach is honest. And when it lands at the right moment, it can work.