Personal connection is your new luxury

We all love automation from an efficiency perspective, and at the same time, we all hate being automated to. Don’t you despise and ignore those automated and AI-generated fake-personal HubSpot-optimized emails, LinkedIn requests, or comments?

Nowadays, we don’t know what’s real anymore. 

Therefore, if you want to be noticed, get a faster response, and give the other a sense of appreciation, make an effort and reach out personally.

→ Personal connection is the new luxury.

I often joke that if I let my AI handle the emails to connect with your AI, we could meet in real life and enjoy a coffee on a sunny terrace instead. But there’s a grain of truth in that.

This is the paradox between the sender's focus on efficiency and the receiver's experience of annoyance and feeling overlooked.

But what if … you do it differently, switching your focus from efficiency to improving the response rate? 

All you need to do is invest a little bit of your time in reaching out personally, being authentic, and giving the other person the attention they deserve, which makes them respond faster. Often, a personal reply doesn't take more than a few minutes. 

What to do to improve your response rate in 2025 (and it's not AI)

There are 3 things you can do.

1. Place yourself in the other's shoes

Flip the perspective. How would you like to be addressed, and if someone reaches out? Automated or personally?

Threat the others like you want to be threatened.

• Tip: Read ‘How to make friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie. It originates from 1938, the best-kept secret in people and expectations management.  And is still very relevant.

2. Realize that reaching out personally has a higher response rate

People want to do business with people. When are you more eager to reply, an email flow or a real person?

Again, threaten the others like you want to be threatened.

3. Know that DIY is often faster than automation

Setting up a system takes time. Finding the right tool, configuring it, setting up the flow, testing it, iterating to improve and manage the tool and the output.

Is it worth automating it, or are you faster doing it yourself?

This is also where work ethos and focusing on the output instead of the process come in. 

I don’t shy away from doing the grinding work if it gets me business. 

• I don’t mind sending out 100 personal handwritten emails if I know the response rate is higher than when I automate it.
   
• Tip: If you’re too busy to give some personal tender love and care during the workday,  plan 30 minutes daily for this and do it all in one go.

Frequently asked questions about using AI and automation for your communications

•  How can I automate my LinkedIn invites, DMs, or email communications? 
  
  You can with several tools. But I advise you not to. Based on experience, this doesn't work very well. You can grow your network in an absolute number of contacts. But is that what you're after? 
  
  If you're looking for connections with the end objective of driving sales and doing business, you must make an effort. Personally. Nobody likes to be marketed to, let alone be caught in an automated AI-generated email flow. 

• Can I personalize automated messages or emails?
  
  Yes, you can. But bear in mind your objective. If it's to widely spray and pray a few superficial leads will stick, go ahead. If you're looking for meaningful connections to, in the end, drive sales, you better make a bit more effort.  
  
  Be aware of the time it takes to find and set up the tool, configure it, create the flow, test it, and iterate to improve the output to optimize the response rate. In that same time that takes, I manually find the relevant peers and hot leads via LinkedIn search and send them a personal invite. 

• Can I use AI to write emails or LinkedIn invites?
  
  Sure you can. The only thing you need to do is configure AI to respond in your tone of voice. 
  
  I recommend using ChatGPT, Claude, or CoPilot. Using the AI from the tool or platform itself usually results in something generic and clearly AI-generated copy. 

Wrapping it up

Personal attention is the new luxury in times of automation and AI. We’re so focused on becoming more efficient that we forget that the best connections and deals are made in person, especially if we like the other and we feel seen and heard.

If you want to stand out, get noticed, and just for the love connections, make an effort and write the email, the invite, or the comment yourself instead of relying on automation and AI. It just takes you a minute or 2. 

Please notice, this goes for where personal connection matters. Not for systematic emails, process emails, workflow updates, boring newsletters, and other corporate stuff.

Now, it's up to you. 

About me and ‘Confessions of a content strategist’

A little bit more about me and my rant as I have a feeling of sharing some background information with you – why what I see and think matters and why I humbly think that I have a point. 

I'm a content strategist with a university background in marketing, media, sociology, and psychology who fell in love with technology, creativity, and data. I have been around in the industry for 25+ years and have worked for over 50+ top-notch brands and agencies. 

I've seen quite a lot. Made many mistakes. Learned even more. 

Now, I share all this with you to nudge and inspire everyone working in marketing, communication, and corporate to do an even better job. Let's be honest; there's already too much crappy content out there; no need to contribute to that, right?

Subscribe for more AI and marketing insights

If you like to stay up to date on AI, content, and marketing based on insight and how it matters to you, subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. 

Two-click subscribe, and one-click unsubscribe if it's not for you.

Easy does it.

→ Subscribe

Please share your feedback in a comment or via email to help me create better content for you.