Let’s address the cold email elephant in the room: is deep personalization still worth it in 2025?

I used to be the guy who swore by personal compliments. In fact, if you’ve read Cold Email Manifesto, you know I helped popularize those hyper-personalized first lines—stuff like referencing a tweet, a podcast quote, or someone’s favorite band.

But today? Things have changed. A lot.

Prospects Don’t Want Perfect. They Want Clear.

Here’s the reality: the 2025 inbox is way different from what it was even two years ago. Prospects aren’t impressed by perfect emails anymore—they’re suspicious of them. A long, polished message filled with tiny, try-hard compliments doesn’t feel warm anymore… it feels robotic. Worse, those lines even trigger spam filters now.
Instead, what works now is what I call the “one-to-one, to many” approach.

Here’s how it works:

• Pick one ideal prospect (say, a Director of Marketing at a SaaS company).
• Write the email as if it’s just for them.
• Then send that email to a few thousand others in the same category.
• Boom—hyper-targeted, yet scalable.