Email personalisation for inbox algorithms

Ever wonder why your outreach feels like shouting into a void? Generic emails move, but they rarely arrive anywhere. Personalization, on the other hand, is the express route that lands straight on your buyer’s desk. As a founder at Almoh Media, I see this daily. First, inbox rules are stricter than ever. Google and Yahoo’s policies mean bulk, impersonal blasts are flagged quickly, while messages with human context reach further. Next, think about your audience. Decision-makers receive dozens of pitches every single day. What makes them pause is not a clever subject line alone, but a message that speaks directly to their role, current challenges, or even something they recently shared online. When outreach feels like a mirror of their world, it gets read. So, start with the basics. Use the correct name and company details to show attention to detail. Then go deeper. Reference their recent initiatives, align your solution to what matters in their market, and even match their tone. Small touches like these turn outreach into connection. Finally, timing is critical. More than half of the responses come within six hours, and nearly ninety percent within two days. So give your message breathing room before following up. For agencies and aggregators, personalization is not just a trick. It is the handshake that moves your email from clutter to conversation. Let’s stop sending noise and start creating dialogues that open doors. How do you personalize your outreach today?  Share your approach, I’d love to exchange ideas. #PersonalizedOutreach #FounderPlaybook #DigitalPR #InboxThatWins #Tausiftalks

Using "Hey {first name}" in your marketing emails and calling it personalization is like picking up a rock and calling it a hammer. Technically, it works. But we have better tools now, and failing to take advantage of them is going to leave you choking on the dust of your competitors. Here's how to catch up with the times and use TRUE personalization to boost engagement, loyalty, and conversions: 1. Use dynamic content fields to customize emails based on customer attributes, behaviors, and preferences. Go beyond just {first name} – incorporate product views, past purchases, and customer lifecycle stage. Don't be creepy! Be conversational. You want the reader to feel like you understand their needs, not like you've been peeking through their blinds. 2. Set up behavior-triggered automations like browse abandonment and cart recovery flows. Make these highly relevant by including viewed products, social proof, and timely offers. Marketing is all about getting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time, and behavior-based emails are one of the best ways to do that on a consistent basis. 3. Implement Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value (RFM) segmentation to deliver personalized messaging to different customer groups. Target VIPs, at-risk customers, and prospectives customers with specific messages to convert or retain them. 4. Create personalized journeys that adjust the user's experience based on customer data or actions. For example, if you're sending the exact same post purchase sequence to a repeat purchaser as you are for a first-time buyer, you're missing a huge opportunity. 5. Use replenishment flows for consumable products, reminding customers when it's time to reorder. Or, capture email addresses on PDPs for sold out products and notify them when the item in back in stock. Easy sales. Be careful to avoid these common personalization mistakes: 🙅🏼 Over-personalizing in a way that feels intrusive or creepy 🙅🏼 Sending irrelevant recommendations due to inaccurate or outdated data 🙅🏼 Over-segmenting to the point where segments are too small to be effective 🙅🏼 Using templated, robotic language that sounds unnatural The key is finding the right balance ––  personalized enough to be relevant and engaging, but not so specific that it becomes cringey or off-putting. When done well, personalization makes customers feel heard, understood and valued. This builds loyalty, increases engagement, and ultimately drives more conversions and revenue. Level up your personalization with one (or more!) of these strategies, and your KPIs are going to shoot up and to the right.

We ran an AB test on a lead re-engagement campaign last week and it drove 2.3X higher click rates over the regular email. Steal these personalization and segmentation tactics that work: Version A: The Regular Email - Basic personalization - first name token only. Version B: The Singulated Email - Instead of the headline kicker saying just "NEW BLOG POST" it said NEW BLOG POST FOR [TRANSFORMED COMPANY NAME] so that it was visible in the inbox preview, but here's the real sauce: We used a Wow tag (Singulate feature) to transform the Company Name with a prompt: condensing and reformatting it into it's most conversational and natural form. For this list, the company names were in healthcare and often longer, containing non-core words like "Services" "Company" or "Group". For example, if the company name was 3 words or more, we transformed it into an acronym and we removed words like "The" from the beginning and Inc. and LTD and LLC from the end. We made it all caps to fit the brand format. 💡 Instead of 4-5 hours of spreadsheet clean up work and writing email script code in Liquid Syntax, this took 4 minutes in Singulate. Then we segmented the bullet point summary of the blog post by Persona. For example, Finance/Billing vs. HR and Admin vs. C-level and Owners all received targeted versions of the messaging that spoke to their Jobs To Be Done. 💡 Instead of 3-5 hours in HubSpot or 4-6 hours in Marketo setting up dynamic content and smart modules, this took 6 minutes in Singulate. (Btw, Singulate sends through HubSpot and Marketo via integration). The AB test was executed through a HubSpot workflow with a 50% random audience split - so the data was all in HubSpot and the results were clear. The singulated version did 2.3X higher results over the regular version. Takeaway: AI is making Marketing Ops 90% faster. Why is this exciting? It means we can do more of what was previously too time-consuming to do before: 1️⃣ More testing and experimenting 2️⃣ More data about what works and doesn't work 3️⃣ Better targeted messaging at scale It means you can do more with the data you have, to drive 2X results in the same amount of time. If anyone wants to see the Company Name Transformation prompt, drop a comment below with "PROMPT" and I'll DM it to you. If anyone wants to AB test any campaign vs. a singulated version, drop me a DM.

Top U.S. sports retailer levels up with GenAI.  How they improved email personalization: Angela Jing & May Khine's infographic breaks down the opportunity, methodology, and results. Opportunity: Dick’s Sporting Goods (DSG) sends one to two daily emails to its subscribers. Previously, these emails were created manually with limited personalization. To enhance efficiency and personalization, DSG sought to combine Generative AI with its demographic, loyalty data, email templates, interactions, and transaction history. Here’s how they did it: 1\ Identify customer segments ↳ Cluster customers by purchase history to identify their content preferences. 2\ Generat email templates ↳ Create personalized email templates for customer segments using an LLM (DBRX) with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). 3\ Recommend templates for customers ↳ Rank LLM-generated templates and recommend the best for each customer. Results: Deliverables ↳ New LLM-based automated email generation pipeline. ↳ User-friendly web application. ↳ Clear prompt guidelines. Metrics ↳ 65% predicted increase in email relevance. ↳ 18% predicted increase in clicks. ↳ 29% estimated reduction in creation time. P.S. The graphic dives deeper on data scope and methodology. --- ♻️ Repost to help your network! 📌 Want to level up with Generative AI? 1. Just follow me Lewis Walker ➲ 2. Subscribe to my free newsletter. #generativeai #ai

The iOS 18.2 update has officially launched, and it’s a big deal for email marketers. Apple Mail just received its biggest redesign. As it owns 45% of the US email market, you can’t ignore it. Here’s what’s changed and what you need to know: 1. Apple Mail Got a Visual Makeover Apple Mail now looks a lot like the Messages app — bold, image-driven, and cleaner. The kicker? You can now upload your logo through Apple Business Connect, and it’ll show up across emails, Apple Pay, and even Maps. What to do: Add your logo. It’s a quick win for brand visibility and trust. 2. Inbox Categories Are Here Apple Mail is splitting inboxes into four categories: Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. Sound familiar? Gmail did this back in 2013, and it was a game-changer then. The reality? If your content isn’t relevant, you’ll end up buried in Promotions. What to do: Focus on delivering personalized, high-value content that earns you a spot in Primary or Transactions. 3. Digested View—Fewer Impressions, More Competition Here’s where it gets tricky. Apple is grouping related emails into “Digested Views”. That means your newsletters or promos might get lumped together into a summary. Translation: fewer eyeballs on individual emails. What to do: Make your subject lines and preheaders sharper than ever. If you can’t stand out in a group, you won’t get the click. Test different formats to see what breaks through. 4. Open Rates Are Becoming Irrelevant (Again) With emails grouped or deprioritized, open rates are going to drop. The real metric? Click-through rates (CTR). If people aren’t clicking, your email isn’t working. What to do: Double down on clear, compelling CTAs. Give readers a reason to take action—and track CTR like it’s your north star. 5. Personalization is Now Non-Negotiable Apple’s new sorting algorithms love relevance. Static, generic emails? They’re headed straight to Updates or Promotions. What to do: Use segmentation and dynamic content to make your emails feel timely, useful, and personal. Talk to your audience, not at them. Early feedback on the update isn’t great — users are frustrated, inboxes feel overwhelming, and Digested Views are causing more confusion than clarity. But it’s still early days, and things could shift. For now, the brands that focus on relevance, personalization, and adaptability will come out ahead. Let’s see where this takes us.

Solid email infrastructure has always been key for deliverability but your copy is now a huge determining factor in your inbox placement rate. Even with a rock-solid email setup, your messaging can get flagged faster than ever. Why? AI algorithms are running the show behind email servers now. They’re trained to spot templated, cookie-cutter outreach in seconds. If your messaging feels like it’s been copied and pasted, it’s game over. So, how do you stay out of the spam folder? Here are 3 ways to beat the filters: 1️⃣ Break the template mold: Regularly test fresh, unconventional variations. Keep it natural and don’t rely on robotic phrasing. 2️⃣ Use spintax: Add randomness and variability to your messages to keep them unique and unpredictable. 3️⃣ Beat the system: Experiment with new formats, phrases or creative angles that stand out while staying authentic. Your tools and infrastructure are important, but creativity in the copy is what will keep your emails landing in the right inboxes. Keep testing. Keep innovating. And most importantly, keep it human.