Guest post by Oleg Volkov, Partner at First Impression Consulting

Let me play clairvoyant for a bit. In the past year, you’ve probably received DMs, emails and in-mails (gosh, what a monster those are) from strangers who were eerily knowledgeable about your hobbies, views and even that obscure podcast you went on 2 years ago. They might have misspelled your name, but they tried really hard to sound personal. I’m removing my clairvoyant cape in a bit but before I do, I’d just like to guess that you probably didn’t care much. Chances are you even found the approach a tad creepy or intrusive. And if you’re a journalist, you’ve already lost count of such emails you receive. 

While I don’t want to generalise too much, some people writing this way do have good intentions. They read somewhere that cold emails should be personal, tailored. That they should butter the recipient up with references to their past achievements. Knowing what they know, they’ll of course add “I loved your article on X” or praise your “great insights”. Who knows, maybe their ice breaker was even written by some AI software, still in beta. 

Now, before someone comes to rain on my parade with open rate stats, I must get off my soapbox for a bit. Yes, the “trying to be personal” approach can be better than a less personal cold opener. Provided you have a huge pool of recipients (as is the case with B2B sales), fiddling with subject lines, adding a sprinkling of flattery and A/B testing every bit of the email might give you an edge. But what if you have only shot? Spoiler alert: you usually don’t get many with the media.

Is there another way? Of course. The simplest way out is to forget about personalising cold emails and try, for once, to actually be personal. And being personal is much more about offering people on the other side what they really want (a good story, a relevant lead) than digging up personal information. People (journalists, editors, CEOs) already know everything about themselves. Give them something new.

And if you still want to personalise your email one way or another, here’s a handy check-list of questions you should ask yourself:

• Am I in the position to compliment the person? Do they need praise from a stranger? If they’re accomplished in their profession, I doubt they care about being reminded about some award (even if it’s a Pulitzer) they won 6 months ago.
  
• Is this creepy? In general, I would avoid reference to anything personal. It’s fine to mention the fact that you’ve graduated from the same university. It might be less fine mentioning their cute dog, whom you saw on their private Instagram after being accepted by accident.
  
• Am I trying too hard? If your intro becomes worthy of a separate essay, this might indicate that you simply don’t have a strong enough pitch. Spending more time polishing it will yield better results than pretending that you’re friends with the journalist.
  
• Does this sound like an ad-libbed template? Pattern recognition is a skill journalists certainly possess. And one doesn’t need to be an expert to successfully guess that they are one in a hundred who have received a “Hello, {firstName}, I’m really impressed by your work at {websiteName}”.

There’s enough spam out there as it is. Don’t be a part of the problem, {dearReader}. You’re better than this.