Personal vs. Personalization: Has Marketing Lost Its Human Touch?

Personal is a handwritten note. Personalization is your name at the top of an email that’s been sent to a thousand people. Personal is a conversation that makes you feel seen. Personalization is an algorithm predicting what you might like. One builds trust. The other does, too, but only when it’s used in the right way.

In the rush to scale personalization, have we overlooked its humanity?

The Illusion of Personalization

AI is an expert at tracking clicks. But it still doesn’t understand why people buy, trust, or stay loyal. 

A Harvard Business School study found that when it comes to opening up about their emotions, people would rather speak to a human than engage with AI – even if AI had the right answers. This is because accuracy isn’t the same as empathy. Sometimes, people want to feel heard more than they want a quick answer. That’s the gap personalization was meant to bridge in marketing – but when personalization relies purely on data and automation, it loses the very thing that makes it valuable.

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Has Email Lost Its Authenticity?

Once upon a time, receiving an email using our first name felt magical. Now, we know it’s a fairytale. A fairytale dropdown menu of inserted tokens: Hi {Name}, I see you’re in {industry} and struggling with {pain point}. This is personalization, but without personality. And herein lies the problem.

Most inboxes are full of emails designed to mass-manufacture individuality. The more we automate personalization, the less personal it feels. We see emails like this every day – they’re easy for us to spot and even easier for us to ignore. 

Inauthentic personalization is everywhere. But there’s still hope for authenticity to shine through.

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Why Personal Can Still Scale

You’re trying to address a huge audience. That audience has a million problems. You only have a finite amount of resources to capture and hold their attention. 

Comedians don’t know the names of everyone in the audience. They tap into the shared experiences that make an entire crowd feel understood. Great brands do exactly this – they go beyond the surface level and find common ground among their target audience.

Effective B2B marketing isn’t about knowing a thousand names – it’s about making a thousand people feel deeply understood. That’s why the smartest brands build trust and genuine connections first before asking clients to buy anything.

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Going Back to Brilliance: The Right Kind of Personalization

The problem isn’t automation. It’s how we use it. 

Here’s how your team can go back to brilliance:

• Familiarity before outreach: You trust people you’ve previously seen, heard, and engaged with. Use your content channels to ensure your future clients know who you are before you interact with them.
• Personality over scripts: People buy from people. The fastest way to build trust is to show your face, share your voice, and let your brand have an opinion.
• Real interactions over forced engagement: Trust is built through conversations that matter. So have these conversations where your audience is already listening – on social media, in communities, and in spaces they trust.

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The Science of Human Connection

Trust isn’t built through perfectly timed follow-ups. It’s built through real interactions. When people connect face-to-face, their brains release oxytocin – the neurochemical responsible for trust, connection, and emotional bonding.

This is why in-person meetings create 34 times more trust than digital communication. And why leading organizations invest in event marketing to build relationships. But physical presence alone isn’t enough. Trust isn’t about showing up – it’s about intent. It’s the difference between eye contact and genuine engagement. Between a handshake and a transaction. Between recognition and real connection. Events create the space, but how you show up in them builds trust.

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Why Events Work

78% of organizations say in-person events are their most effective marketing channel – possibly because it’s exceptionally difficult for automated content to replace human presence. Event marketing thrives here because it reminds us what great marketing has always been about – presence, attention, and human interaction. And when that’s done right, personalization can finally feel personal again.

But trust isn’t built just by showing up – it’s built by showing you care. Whether online or in person, real connection happens when brands engage, listen, and respond like people, not programs. Successful B2B marketers don’t just optimize email sequences. They create memorable moments.

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Beyond the Inbox: How to Build Real Connection

If we know automation is making marketing feel less human, what can we do?

• Stop relying on email alone. Email is powerful when it’s part of the relationship, not the introduction. Introductions thrive on LinkedIn, in communities, at events, and wherever your audience is more open to discovering you.
• Make your outreach meaningful. Outbound doesn’t have to feel intrusive. When prospects have encountered your brand through content or events, your outreach feels less like a pitch and more like a continuation of the trust you’ve started to build. 
• Use AI to free up time, not replace connection. While AI handles the easy stuff, you and your team can focus on building relationships and genuinely caring about your customers.

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What’s Next?

If you want to bring the human touch back to your marketing, let’s talk. Not in an automated sequence. In a real conversation.