Breaking Through the Noise: Personalization That Actually Works

If you missed our recent webinar on personalization with the brilliant minds from Clay and The Kiln, we’ve broken down all of the useful tips Patrick and Dorothy shared below!

The Problem with "Personalization" Today

Let's be real - most "personalization" in B2B marketing is... not great. We've all gotten those "I noticed you went to [insert school]... anyway, buy my product!" messages. 

About 60% of buyers feel like sales teams aren't taking the time to understand them. This isn't surprising when so much of what passes for personalization is shallow at best and creepy at worst.

Layers of Relevancy

Good personalization is about being relevant, timely, useful, and earning the credibility to offer the people at our target accounts a solution. In today’s world of automation and access to data, we need to combine multiple layers of information to understand the full picture. Account-level signals aren’t enough on their own, and if that’s all a team is using it can be hard to make the signals actionable.

• Industry knowledge: What's happening in their sector?
• Company-level understanding: Recent news, hiring patterns, public statements
• Individual insights: What's their world like day-to-day?
• Signals: What actions are they taking that show interest?

The magic happens when we combine these layers to create a compelling hypothesis about how we can relate to and help the company, the buying group, and the person (or hopefully people) we’re connecting with.

Not All Intent Signals Are Created Equal

This is where the human side comes into play, Automations can help us gather lots of different intent signals and do better research, but nailing personalization requires differentiating between strong and weak signals before taking action:

• Strong signals: Website visits, engaging with our content, requesting information
• Moderate signals: Industry news that relates to our solutions
• Weaker signals: General funding announcements, basic firmographic data

Each type of signal should trigger a different, intentional response. Someone visiting the pricing page deserves a different outreach than someone who just raised funding and may not be ready to buy.

Dynamic Lists > Static Lists

TL;DR: We’re getting crystal clear alignment on our ICP and what a “good” account and buyer looks like, then we’re ditching those old, static target account lists!

Creating dynamic target lists based on real-time signals allows marketing and sales teams to prioritize who gets attention when. This isn't just more efficient; it's dramatically more effective. When we reach the right person at the right time with the right message, conversion rates skyrocket.

If the sales team is initially hesitant to transition to shared dynamic lists, running a time-boxed dynamic experiment together can help prove how much better the results are vs static, arbitrary target account lists.

Automation Should Enhance Humanity, Not Replace It

People buy from people. Automation should make our outreach MORE human, not less.

Our goal is always to enhance the human element with better data and insights.

Done right, automation frees up BDR and sales teams from hours of (important but painstaking) research so they can focus on creating more meaningful connections with the right people. At Sendoso, we balance automated outreach with personal touchpoints like calls and personalized gifts to ensure the human connection remains intact.

The Best Personalization Is Useful, Not Just "Personal"

Personalization isn't just knowing someone went to ASU ("Go Sun Devils!"). It's speaking their language about the problems they're trying to solve.

It’s not that these "personal" touches are completely irrelevant, it’s that they often lack any additional context and can fall flat when that’s the only part of a message that’s “personalized.”  

Small personal anecdotes should be an add on, while the meat of the outreach focuses on business value, connections with past champions of our products, and relevance to their challenges to create real connection.

What's Working Now: Keep It Brief, Human, and Valuable

Some quick hits on what's working today:

• Less is more! Short, conversational messages beat corporate-speak essays
• Align sales and marketing around shared data points and signals
• ABT: Always be testing! Test rapidly, kill what doesn't work, and optimize what does
• Show up consistently as a genuine, helpful community member and earn the right to connect or people will view you as transactional/inauthentic
• Focus on providing value before asking for anything

The Bottom Line

The tools and data we have today make meaningful personalization at scale possible, but only if we use them to be more human, not less. The goal is to create connections that resonate because we truly understand what matters to the person on the receiving end.

If you want to learn more about how we're doing this at Sendoso, feel free to reach out to me! Let's chat about how we can make marketing and sales more human together.