MCP

Relevance vs personalization

TL;DR

  • No. Relevance is the message fitting the prospect's situation; personalization is evidence you looked. Relevance does the persuading.
  • A personal detail that never connects to your value proposition is flattery, and readers can tell.
  • Default: build relevance first, then use personalization to prove it.

The two words get used interchangeably, and the confusion produces emails that open with the prospect's marathon time and pivot to a demo request. The leading practitioners largely agree on the hierarchy — relevance outranks personalization — and fork on where the hours go.

The schools

Hook personalization to relevance (Becc Holland, Flip the Script; webinar [1] + 2020 interview [2]) — A personalized observation is worthless until it is hooked to a value proposition: noticing something is not the same as it mattering. Holland's method maps each persona's likely pains to the language that persona actually uses, then ties the researched detail to that pain — the detail earns attention, the hook does the work. Personalization without relevance, in her telling, is flattery.

Fits when: prospects are researched 1:1 anyway and personas are well understood. · Avoid when: you cannot articulate the value link — a hookless compliment is worse than none.

Recognizable by: openers that cite a prospect-specific fact and connect it to a pain in the same breath ("saw you're hiring SDRs — that's usually when pipeline math breaks").

Relevance first, segment-level (Jason Bay; Outbound Squad live training, ~2023 [3]) — On most lists, tight targeting plus a message that fits the segment's situation beats per-prospect research. Bay's argument is arithmetic: 1:1 minutes rarely repay themselves on mid-value prospects, while a well-built segment makes every email feel relevant at zero marginal research cost. Deep personalization is reserved for the accounts that justify it.

Fits when: lists are large, deal sizes mid-market, segmentation can be sharp. · Avoid when: a handful of named accounts carry the quarter — there, 1:1 is mandatory.

Recognizable by: no prospect-specific facts, but an opener anyone in the segment would nod at; the same email across a segment, tailored only to the shared situation.

These schools agree more than they fight: both subordinate personalization to relevance. The genuine fork is where the effort goes — Holland spends it per prospect on the hook; Bay spends it upstream on segment design.

Default if the user has no preference: Relevance first, segment-level — relevance is the part that persuades and segment work scales; add per-prospect hooks where account value warrants it (priced in Economics of personalization).

References

  1. Becc Holland — Personalization to relevance (webinar page, n.d.)
  2. Becc Holland — On personalization at scale (podcast writeup, JB Sales, 2020)
  3. Jason Bay — relevance-over-personalization live training (podcast, Outbound Squad ep. 332, ~2023)