Massively Useful, Ironically Flawed

Spotify can predict your next favourite song. Netflix suggests what you’ll binge next. TikTok knows your tastes frighteningly well. But your email newsletter? It still mostly guesses.

In an age where AI often seems to know what you’re thinking, why hasn’t the hyper-personalised newsletter arrived?

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) promise a single view of every user's habits, preferences, and interactions. In theory, that should let newsletters deliver exactly the right story, at the right time. But most still rely on basic segmentation: job title, industry, maybe a few checkboxes ticked at sign-up.

Why? Because personalisation is hard to scale. To borrow an analogy: a CDP is supposed to be like a well-organised kitchen—everything prepped and easy to find. But in reality, it’s often more like a fridge full of half-labeled leftovers. Technically useful, but a nightmare to cook with.

Then there’s the operational complexity. Truly personalised emails demand custom content variations, rule-based delivery, responsive timing, and continuous feedback loops. Multiply that by thousands of subscribers and you get a recipe for burnout—or worse, generic content dressed up in the illusion of relevance.

Privacy laws add another wrinkle. Hyper-personalisation edges into the territory of profiling, which means GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations kick in. Many teams, understandably, opt to play it safe.

So what’s missing? It comes down to this: have a clear purpose, share only what's genuinely useful, and focus on the individual, not the persona.

What would a newsletter that truly understood you look like? Have you ever received one that came close?