Advanced Personalization Techniques

True personalization isn't about first names or company names. It's about market awareness. Let me break this down... Most people's "personalization" looks like this: "Hey [First Name], noticed you're the [Title] at [Company]..." That's not personalization. That's mail merge. Real personalization is understanding where your prospect is in their journey. Example: We helped a client pitch web design services. Instead of: "Hey John, noticed you're the CEO at TechCorp..." We wrote: "Hey John, saw you just raised your Series A. Most founders at this stage struggle with converting their increased traffic into demos..." See the difference? We're not just showing we found them on LinkedIn. We're demonstrating that we understand exactly where they are in their journey, what challenges they're facing right now, and what actually matters to their business at this moment. This approach took their response rate from 2% to 15%. But here's the key: Your messaging needs to match their stage.  A seed-stage startup needs help with foundations.  Series A companies need scaling strategies.  Series B? They're all about optimization and efficiency. The beauty is, your core offer doesn't change. Just your positioning. This subtle shift in approach is what separates 6-figure agencies from 7-figure agencies.

Here’s a common myth about personalization: All you need is a customer’s name to make it effective. True personalization goes much deeper, it’s about understanding behaviors, preferences, and needs to create meaningful experiences. Collecting the right data isn’t just about volume, it’s about relevance. You can’t offer genuine personalization without truly knowing your audience. Here’s how I’ve approached it: ➜ Identify key data points. Don’t collect data just for the sake of it. Focus on what will actually help you understand your customers better, things like purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement patterns. ➜ Leverage tools wisely. Using the right tools is crucial. We’ve integrated platforms (like HubSpot) to ensure we’re gathering and utilizing data that matters, not just creating noise. ➜ Respect privacy. Personalization should never come at the cost of privacy. Being transparent with your audience about what data you collect and how you use it builds trust. ➜ Test and refine. Data isn’t static, and neither should your approach to personalization be. Continuously test what works and refine your strategy to meet your customers' evolving needs. ↳ By focusing on relevant data, not just more data, we’ve been able to create personalized experiences that resonate, leading to stronger customer relationships and better results. What’s been your biggest challenge in collecting data for personalization? How are you overcoming it? #data #personalization #hubspot

We booked 80+ meetings per month in a niche you’d think was "too small to scale." Here's the exact 6-step outbound system we used: Our client manufactures and distributes vinyl wraps and PPF products to small local businesses like wrap shops. Not exactly a massive TAM, but we made it work. Step 1: Hone the Niche This wasn't spray and pray. We narrowed in on local wrap/tint shops because they're visual-first businesses that often showcase a portfolio of work. Most are also underserved by tech-forward vendors, so there was real opportunity. We went deep instead of wide. Step 2: Use AI Strategically Most people use AI to replace copywriting. We used it to power personalization at scale. We scraped websites to pull wrap styles, certifications, and recent projects. Then captured quotes, before/afters, and brand mentions to create AI summaries for each business. The results felt handwritten because we had “taken the time” to understand their business. AI just helped us do the research at scale. Step 3: Build Landing Pages Per City Every email linked to a localized landing page with custom domains per city (like /partners/Houston). We positioned it as "We're expanding in your area" with a clear CTA to join the partner network, where we'd send leads their way. It felt like a real opportunity, not a cold pitch. Step 4: Lean Into Compliments That Actually Land Personalization isn't "Saw you posted on LinkedIn." It's "Saw your matte black Camaro wrap, flawless work especially around the wheel wells" or "Congrats on your {certification}, {expected outcomes from having said certification}" Make it feel like you took the time. Step 5: Start Conversations, Don't Sell We never asked for a meeting in the first email. Instead, we used soft CTAs and offered local leads & partnership opportunities instead of a sales call. We framed it as collaboration, not a pitch. Response rate? 4x industry average. Booked 1 meeting for every 17 leads touched in our best campaigns. Step 6: Scale the System Without Killing Deliverability We ran everything off alternate domains, A/B rotated to preserve inbox health, and used Clay to enrich and orchestrate the entire workflow. That's how we kept the quality high even as volume scaled up. The system worked because we treated it like partnership outreach, not cold sales. When you're genuinely trying to help businesses grow, people can tell.

Uber is a master in ad personalization at scale. The behind-the-scenes of how we pulled it off when I led growth efforts at Uber: As a global company, Uber’s complexity is no joke. We’re talking: • Global markets • Multiple products • Diverse languages Without a streamlined system, personalizing ads would be chaotic. That’s why we built a well-oiled machine for ad creative and messaging across regions. Which resulted in ads so personalized... They felt tailor-made for each region. And believe it or not, our backbone was... Google sheet. But this sheet didn’t just house creative assets and messaging. It was our command center. We hooked our sheet into what’s called an FMP (Facebook Marketing Partner.) We could update and push hundreds of campaigns across markets without opening Ads Manager. Need to tweak copy in a certain region? Adjust in the sheet, hit refresh, and it's live. That's how we personalize our ads at scale. If you don’t have the budget for an FMP, you can still achieve personalization at scale. Instead of overwhelming yourself by testing in 20 markets at once. The key is to start small: ↳ Test messaging within a single category or region ↳ Identify winning variations ↳ Scale them across other markets A concrete example: Uber’s rider campaigns weren’t just about translating content. But also about cultural relevance and buying power. An ad in Mexico City is entirely different from one in Los Angeles: • Language: English vs. Spanish • Offers: Discounts adjusted for buying power • Location: Specific callouts like "Hey Los Angeles" vs. "Hey Mexico City" We wouldn’t give a $10 discount in Mexico as $10 is worth way more there. Beyond ad creative, we ran advanced growth tests. For instance, we measured user propensity: The likelihood of someone re-engaging if they saw an ad and received an email versus just seeing an ad. We dug into timing too - Were 30-day inactive users more likely to convert than those inactive for 90 days? These granular insights fine-tuned every touchpoint of our campaigns. For less mature growth teams: The goal is to optimize the first 95% of performance with best practices. But for advanced teams like Uber’s... The challenge is squeezing out that last 5%. And that requires hyper-specific: ↳ Testing  ↳ Segmentation  ↳ Understanding how every variable affects your outcome That’s why we ran advanced growth tests – to nail the final 5%. While Uber was already a highly mature company when I joined... This level of personalization applies whether you’re an enterprise or startup. It’s a scalable approach regardless of company size. The best part? Personalized messaging yields incredible results. As competition rises, this precision is what separates you from the rest.

A couple months ago, one of our large grocery and store delivery clients had a problem: Their main creative for prospecting was showing signs of response wear-out and stagnation. We did a full audit of their creative and messaging. Their control creative used the copy: “Order from your favorite stores”. The examples of those stores printed on the piece? Big regional / national retailers. We suggested testing a simple hypothesis: Could personalizing the creative with local stores lift response rates significantly? Here’s how we worked with the client to plan and execute the test: 1/ Confirmed that the client’s CRM could output the most popular stores for an area if a location is known - it could (client already using the capability to personalize emails) 2/ Created a custom template for the client’s direct mail creative with space on the piece for store logos to be pulled in 3/ Coded the piece in HTML, so that the most popular store logos could be dynamically pulled in to each piece; logic was within 25 minute delivery radius of prospect’s location 4/ Linked it all up to the client’s CRM and QC’d to ensure no errors 5/ Loaded the creative and list into our DM platform, Poplar, so that it could be dynamically printed on a 1-to-1 basis The test was now ready to go: each prospect in the test group would be receiving a creative that said “order from the most popular stores in your area” paired with the logos for local stores personalized by location. The control would continue to be the static creative. We hit send on the campaign! The results: ~30% lift for the test group with local personalization, and a new winning creative for the client. Prospects clearly preferred and responded better to a piece that called out the most popular local stores around them. The best part: The creative is differentiated and personalized based on the client’s own, proprietary data, and it easily scales to any location :) If you’re curious how personalization at scale could work for your acquisition strategy, send me a message. Happy to chat through what you’re thinking!