Week 4: Personalisation and Specificity#
A compliment that could go to anyone doesn’t read as attention. It reads as the opposite.
What this lecture covers#
- performed personalisation vs. real personalisation
- the second-sentence tell
- the ten-recipients test
- a composite example, worked through both ways
Performed vs. real#
Performed personalisation names something true about the reader that requires no specific knowledge to say: a job title, a company name, a recent headline anyone could find in ten seconds.
Real personalisation uses a detail that shows the writer actually looked, and connects that detail to the ask.
Flattery that could go to anyone reads as effort spent proving it went to someone.
The second-sentence tell#
The compliment sentence is decoration. The second sentence is where the email either connects that compliment to something specific, or reveals that it was never going to.
If sentence two could follow any compliment about any person in the same role, the personalisation in sentence one wasn’t real.
The ten-recipients test#
Could this exact email, with only the name swapped, go to ten different people in the same role and still make sense?
If yes, nothing about it was actually built for this reader, no matter how warm the opening line sounds.
Predict, then watch#
Read the opening line on the next slide. Predict what the second sentence will do. Then check it against what it actually does.
From: [Sender]
To: [Recipient]
Subject: Loved your talk on scaling eng teams
I really enjoyed your recent talk on scaling engineering teams. Such valuable insights! I wanted to reach out because I think our tool could really help your team.
Fails the second-sentence tell: sentence two never returns to the talk.
The rewrite#
From: [Sender]
To: [Recipient]
Subject: The on-call rotation problem from your talk
In your talk you mentioned the on-call rotation breaking down past 30 engineers. We built the tool that fixes exactly that split, and I’d like to show you how.
Passes the ten-recipients test: this version can’t go to anyone else.
Talk to your neighbour#
Find a cold email you’ve received that opens with a compliment. Does the second sentence connect to it, or move on to something generic? Compare findings.
Recap#
- performed personalisation names something true but generic about the reader
- the second-sentence tell exposes it: does the email return to the specific detail, or move past it
- the ten-recipients test is the same check from the other direction