Let’s Get Personal
The Illusion, The Confusion, and The CRM Pollution.
What’s going on?
The power to personalise was meant to be a game-changer.
Instead, it’s turned into a theatre of nonsense.
Marketing departments, customer success teams, CRM managers - everyone is boasting about “tailored experiences”, “hyper-personalised journeys”, and “1:1 communication at scale”.
Except people’s names are incorrect.
’Personalised Recommendations just for you’ are based on an event 3 years ago.
Job alerts are based on a job title and CV uploaded 10 years ago.
That’s not personalisation. That’s performative personalisation running on outdated, incorrect data.
The Evolution
Over the last two years, we’ve seen the evolution of:
Sales cadences
Automated email sequencing
Real-time personalisation engines
And now… AI-driven engagement
But it doesn’t matter how clever your tools are, if the data feeding them is crap.
The problem isn’t the sequencing.
It’s that the data being collected, how it's being collected, and when it's being collected -
is all wrong.
And now?
We’ve got faux personalisation powered by AI.
But when your AI is pulling from broken CRM fields and outdated segments,
you’re not offering “predictive engagement”,
you’re just guessing with confidence (over-confidence)
The Sad Truth
AI/AI Prompts/AI Agents - when designed right - can actually personalise at scale.
It can streamline lead nurturing, campaign logic, and customer engagement.
But only if it’s built on clean data, clear intent, and structured context.
Instead, what we’ve got is a feedback loop of nonsense:
Lazy form fills
Dumped into CRM with no validation
Triggered into automation
Fed into “AI engines”
Spits out generic content with a First Name token and a CTA
And round we go.
People love to blame AI for the death of personalisation.
You’ll see it all over LinkedIn:
“AI has killed authentic connection.”
“Only humans can truly build relationships.”
BUT
AI didn’t kill personalisation.
Bad data did.
Bad data created by lazy humans, managed by lazier data cultures, enabled by non-existent data policies.
You can’t keep blaming tech when the foundations are rotten.
The Numbers (aka receipts)
$12.9 million/year – the cost of poor data quality for businesses, according to Gartner
76% of customers expect personalised experiences - 51% say most brands still miss the mark (Salesforce)
60% of CRM data is inaccurate, incomplete or stale (Forrester)
But sure. Keep sending birthday emails to people who unsubscribed in 2021.
🔥 BOS Challenge of the Week:
Audit 10 records in your CRM. Randomly. Right now.
Not your “hot” leads or your favourite accounts, just 10 at random.
Check:
Is the name correct?
Is the job title relevant?
Does the email bounce?
Has there been any activity in the last 12 months?
Do they know they’re in your CRM?
If more than 3 of those records are unusable - congrats, your personalisation is fake.
Now do something about it:
Archive old records
Fix ownership rules
Update consent processes
Build data hygiene into your KPIs
Because performance isn’t just about the message.
It’s about the mess behind the message.
🧠BOS Mindset
“The data you collect reflects the business you run.”
If your CRM is full of ghosts, duplicates, unqualified leads, and expired contacts, don’t be surprised when your “personalisation” efforts land flat.
You can’t fake intimacy. Not with a merge tag. Not with sequencing. Not even with AI.
Real customer connection starts with operational honesty.
Know what you’ve got. Know what it means. And if it’s crap - fix it before you automate it.
You don’t need another tool. You need a reality check.
Until next time!
Remember - Less chaos. More BOS
Khyati Pal
Voice of BOS | Business Operations Streamlined