Week 4: Personalisation and Specificity
Performed personalisation vs. real specificity.
1 March 2027
Last week’s fix was pricing the ask. This week’s failure sits earlier in the email, in the line that’s supposed to prove the writer did their homework, and usually proves the opposite.
Before the lecture
This is just to get a quick understanding before the lecture. The examples and the rest are in the lecture, so it’s advisable you attend.
In brief#
This week names performed personalisation: a line that mentions the reader without committing to anything that would be false for a different reader. “I loved your recent post on X” could go to anyone who posted recently, so it isn’t specificity, whatever name it drops. The tell is almost always the second sentence, where a template has nothing left to say and either goes vague or pivots straight to the pitch. It matters because a reader who spots the pattern reads the rest of the email as mass-produced, even if the pitch underneath it is genuine.
Outline#
- personalisation that survives being sent to anyone
- the second-sentence tell
- a test for telling performed personalisation from real specificity
- rewriting a generic personalisation line into a specific one