Use the personal details clients have told you, and let them see where each one came from
A 2015 study in the Journal of Retailing found that people responded better to more personalized ads when the firm had collected their information openly than when it had collected it covertly. My reading for agents is that a personal note lands best when the client can tell exactly how you came to know the detail in it.
Key points
- In a 2015 Journal of Retailing study, Aguirre and colleagues found that participants showed greater click-through intentions for more personalized ads when the firm collected information overtly, in contrast with covert collection.
- The authors trace the negative reaction to the feelings of vulnerability people experience when a firm collects their information covertly, and found trust-building strategies can offset it.
- Liv's reading for agents: build personal notes from details clients have told you, make the source of each detail easy to recognize, and keep the most personal ones for notes that clearly help the client.
People welcomed personalization when the information was collected in the open
Elizabeth Aguirre, Dominik Mahr, Dhruv Grewal, Ko de Ruyter and Martin Wetzels set out to explain what they call the personalization paradox. In Unraveling the Personalization Paradox, they describe how greater personalization typically increases a service's relevance and the number of customers who adopt it, and how it may also increase customers' sense of vulnerability and lower adoption rates.
They started with an exploratory field study on Facebook and secondary data about a personalized advertising campaign. Both pointed to sharp drops in click-through rates when customers realized their personal information had been collected without their consent.
The authors then ran three experiments on how firms collect information from social media websites. When a firm collected information overtly, participants showed greater click-through intentions in response to more personalized ads, in contrast with how they reacted when the firm collected information covertly. The authors conclude that a firm's strategy for collecting information is a crucial determinant of how customers react to personalized advertising.
The studies also found that trust-building strategies, either transferring trust from another website or signalling trust with informational cues, could offset the negative effect of covert collection.
Vulnerability explains why the same detail can help or hurt
The authors trace the negative reaction to the feelings of vulnerability people experience when a firm collects their information covertly. My reading is that when someone senses a firm gathered information about them without asking, a personalized message reminds them of what they never agreed to share.
A second study points the same way. In a 2008 Marketing Letters paper, Tiffany Barnett White, Debra Zahay, Helge Thorbjørnsen and Sharon Shavitt found that people experienced what they call personalization reactance to highly personalized emails when the firm didn't explicitly justify the fit between the offer and the person's characteristics. Those people were less willing to respond favourably. The results of their two studies suggest the effect emerges mainly among people who saw relatively little value in the service. For people who valued it more, justifying the personalization mattered less.
There are limits to how far this goes. Both studies looked at marketing messages from firms, and the experiments measured click-through intentions, not what people did over months or years. Neither was about real estate. Applying them to an agent writing to a past client is my own reading. I think the logic carries over because the agent's note works the same way: the client reads the personal detail and, almost without thinking, asks how you know it.
Make the source of every personal detail easy to recognize
These are practices I'd suggest. Neither study tested them.
Build notes from what clients told you. The details that feel warm in a note to a past client are usually ones they shared with you directly, like the school they were worried about for the kids or the job that brought them to town. Mention one of those and the client can place the conversation it came from. That's the closest thing I can find in an agent's work to overt collection.
Say where you heard it. A short phrase does the work. "You mentioned at closing that you wanted to redo the kitchen" lands differently from "How's the kitchen?", because the first one tells the client how you know. I read this as the agent's version of the informational cues Aguirre and colleagues found could signal trust.
Be careful with details you found on your own. A promotion you spotted on LinkedIn or a holiday you saw on social media may be public, and it can still read as something the client never chose to share with you. If you do use it, say how you saw it, or keep it out of the note and let the client bring it up.
Match how personal you get to how much the note helps. White and colleagues found the need to justify personalization mattered most when people saw little value in what was on offer. My reading is that a note offering something useful, like a neighbourhood update relevant to a renovation they mentioned, can carry a personal detail more comfortably than a generic check-in can. If the note doesn't do much for the client, keep the personal touch light and obvious.
Keep sensitive details out unless the client raised them. Health, money worries and family changes are the details most likely to make someone feel exposed. I'd only refer to them when the client has brought them up with you, and even then gently.
If you're thinking about personalization in subject lines, I've written about what a client's name in the subject line does and why the body has to deserve it. And if you're unsure whether a note needs a reason at all, there's a case for a check-in without a special occasion.
Knowing where each detail came from takes a good record
Agents I've spoken to have said remembering the personal details is the hard part once a database runs into the hundreds. Knowing where each detail came from is harder still. Worthington keeps a link from every fact he learns to where it came from, whether that's an email, the calendar, the CRM or something you told him, so you can check it before it goes into a note. Each draft shows what it was built from. Sensitive details never appear in a message unless the contact raised them, and some details are used only to time a message and are never mentioned in it. He drafts in your voice, and nothing goes out until you press Send.
A personal detail is a small thing in a note, and in these studies people's response to personalization depended on how the information reached the sender. If a client can trace the detail back to a conversation with you, it reminds them that you listened.
FAQ
Does this research say personalized emails work better?
Aguirre and colleagues describe greater personalization as typically increasing relevance and adoption, and they found more personalized ads drew greater click-through intentions when information was collected overtly, in contrast with reactions when it was collected covertly. In their experiments, the way the information was gathered shaped how people responded to the personal message.
Is it okay to mention something I saw on a client's social media?
The study found people reacted badly when they realized their information had been collected without their consent, and social media was the setting of its experiments. My suggestion is to say how you saw it, or leave it out and let the client mention it, since a detail can be public and still feel like something they never told you.
Was this study done in real estate?
No. Aguirre and colleagues studied online personalized advertising, and White and colleagues studied personalized email solicitations. Applying their findings to an agent's notes to past clients and leads is my own interpretation, based on the fact that in both cases a person reads a message that shows what the sender knows about them.
How do I explain where I learned a detail without sounding awkward?
Tie it to the moment the client told you, in a few words: "you mentioned at closing" or "when we spoke in the spring." It reads as remembering, and it shows the client how you know. White and colleagues found that explicitly justifying personalization mattered most when people saw relatively little value in the service, so I'd take the most care with notes that don't offer the client much.
Worthington draws on research like this to shape a nurturing strategy for each of your clients. Start a free trial