The personalisation research workflow (60 seconds per prospect, 30 minutes per top account)

What's the workflow for personalising cold email?

Short answer: for tier 3 (broad ICP), spend 60 seconds on LinkedIn. For tier 2 (named accounts), spend 5–10 minutes including company website + recent posts. For tier 1 (strategic), spend 30+ minutes including content, podcasts, leadership history, and recent news.

TL;DR — research time by tier

The 60-second research (Tier 3)

For broad outbound to ICP prospects:

Sixty seconds; one specific personalised first line per prospect.

The 5–10 minute research (Tier 2)

For named accounts:

Output: a personalised email that references 2–3 specific points.

The 30+ minute research (Tier 1)

For strategic accounts:

Output: an outreach that demonstrates the depth a senior buyer respects.

The signal hierarchy

What to look for, in order of impact:

The 60-second research should produce at least one signal from this list. If nothing surfaces, the prospect probably is not worth a personalised touch — drop to template.

Templating without sounding templated

The trick: template the structure, personalise the data point.

{Recent specific observation about them}.

{One sentence linking that observation to relevant value/pain.}
{Soft proof: peer or outcome reference.}
Worth 15 minutes {specific day} to see if relevant?

This template works for hundreds of prospects with one personalised data point at the top. The structure is consistent; the substance is unique.

What kills personalisation quality

Mistake 1: Compliment without substance. "I love your work" / "I'm impressed by your background" — generic and obvious.

Mistake 2: Wrong signal. Referencing a 2-year-old role change.

Mistake 3: Public-knowledge-only signals. Referencing what is on their company About page reads as lazy.

Mistake 4: Overly long opening. Three sentences of "research" before the ask becomes a lecture.

Mistake 5: Misspelled name. Disqualifies all personalisation effort.

For UAE & KSA teams

• Argaam, MAGNiTT, Wamda are regional signal sources beyond LinkedIn.
• Saudi government appointments are often announced via SPA (Saudi Press Agency).
• Arabic-name spellings vary; use the LinkedIn version.
• Recent regional events attendance (LEAP, GITEX, ADIPEC) is a strong shared-context signal.

What MAVEN does about it

Research workflows are documented in every Sales Process Program and Apollo Quick-Start — including specific templates by signal.

Frequently asked

Can AI do the research?

For Tier 3, increasingly yes. For Tier 1, no substitute for human judgement.

How do I scale personalisation?

Tier the accounts. Spend research time proportionally.

What if I have no time?

Use templated outreach for Tier 3. Do not pretend to personalise.

Should every email be personalised?

First line, yes (or honestly templated). Body can be templated.

What's the ROI of deeper research?

Tier 1 personalisation can lift reply rates from 4% to 15%+. The math justifies the time.

---

Post 91 of our outbound + sales OS series.

Related reading

• How long should a cold email be in B2B?
• Cold email vs LinkedIn outreach
• Why are my cold emails going to spam?
• Best cold email subject lines
• How many follow-up emails to send
• What is sales sequencing?