For two decades, personalisation has been something brands did to consumers. AI just flipped that.

In this opening episode, Rasmus Houlind (Agillic, Hello $Firstname) and Frans Riemersma (MartechTribe, MartechMap.com) introduce Hello Me — an open, exploratory podcast about what happens to marketing once consumers start using AI to figure out who they want to be, instead of waiting for brands to tell them.

We get into: why humans may have already solved for safety and survival without quite noticing; the three types of AI agents reshaping martech; whether wearables are making us healthier or just better monitored; and who should really own the data behind your own AI agent.

This is the first episode of an open-ended series — we honestly don't know when the next one drops, or who's in it. That's the format. If you've got a sharp, unusual take on personalisation, AI, or the new rules of marketing — especially if you're not already in our usual orbit — we want to hear from you.

Chapters

0:00 – Cold open: why "Hello Me"

Links & resources

Watch the full video playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJGgw-cJasRw

In Chapter 17 of Hello $Firstname, Steen Rasmussen reads ‘Conversion Rate Optimisation and Personalisation’.

Steen Rasmussen is co-founder of Brand Leadership Community and IIH Nordic, as well as an international keynote speaker and consultant specialising in the commercial use of web data, optimisation, and personalisation. In this chapter, he reads the final chapter of Part Three, where the book explores the relationship between CRO and personalisation.

The chapter begins with a fundamental question: before you personalise every touchpoint, is the general customer experience already working well enough for most of your customers?

Conversion rate optimisation helps answer that question. It focuses on improving the baseline experience by removing friction, clarifying communication, and making websites, apps, and campaign pages convert more efficiently. Personalisation, by contrast, focuses on adapting the experience to known customers, specific customer segments, or particular moments of truth.

The chapter explains when to prioritise CRO and when to shift towards personalisation. For anonymous website visitors, optimising the general experience often matters most. For owned media campaigns, personalisation can start earlier because even simple self-segmentation, subject-line variants, highlighted offers, or product-feed selection can make a difference. For marketing automation, the boundary between CRO and personalisation becomes especially interesting because a triggered message that removes friction can be both.

The chapter also concludes Part Three by returning to the broader question of who personalisation is not for. If your value proposition is weak, your brand is unknown, your first-party data scale is too limited, your content layer is underdeveloped, or your general customer experience is not yet sound, then personalisation may not be the right tactic to double down on yet.

In his reflection at the end, Steen adds a timely perspective on agentic commerce, agentic personalisation, and agentic workflows. His point is not that personalisation has suddenly become hyper-individual overnight. Rather, the cost and effort of executing personalisation have dropped quickly. And when execution becomes cheaper for everyone, the competitive bar moves. That is the Red Queen effect: you may need to run simply to stay where you are.

The chapter is a useful reminder that personalisation runs deeper than chasing conversions, but that optimisation and personalisation are still closely connected disciplines.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalisation, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalisation Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalisation into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 16 of Hello $Firstname, Keanu Taylor reads ‘The CX Layers: How Data and Content Fuel Personalisation’.

Keanu Taylor is Global Head of Research at The MarTech Weekly, a global analyst firm helping enterprise brands turn the complexity of marketing technology into clarity. In this chapter, he reads about the CX Layers framework and how data and content work in parallel to fuel personalisation.

The chapter explains why many personalisation projects have historically been too data-centric. Data is essential, but data alone does not create a personalised customer experience. It needs to be matched with content that is structured, governed, scalable, and ready to be activated.

The CX Layers framework separates the work into three layers: the data layer, the content layer, and the personalisation layer. The data layer collects, cleans, models, and activates customer insight. The content layer collects, creates, models, and activates the content required for personalised experiences. The personalisation layer is where these two sides come together through experience optimisation, experience decisioning, and experience delivery.

The chapter also explores how generative AI changes both sides of the equation. AI can help scale qualitative insight from conversations, reviews, support dialogues, and other unstructured sources. It can also help marketers create, model, repurpose, translate, tag, and activate content in ways that make personalisation more operationally realistic.

In his reflection at the end, Keanu connects the CX Layers model to the emerging discipline of context engineering. His point is that enterprises do not only need content. They also need to manage the context around that content: when it is relevant, which use cases it belongs to, when it should no longer be used, and how it should be made available to AI and personalisation systems.

The chapter gives marketers and martech teams a clearer way to think about the prerequisites for personalisation: not as a single data project, not as a content production problem, but as a layered system where data, content, and decisioning have to work together.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalisation, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalisation Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalisation into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 15 of Hello $Firstname, Ida Söderbäck reads ‘The Basic Foundations for Personalisation’.

Ida Söderbäck is a customer loyalty and CRM marketing expert currently at the Swedish Red Cross. In this chapter, she reads the opening chapter of Part Three, where the book turns from what personalisation is and how it creates value to when personalisation is actually the right tactic to use.

The chapter asks three important questions: Do you have the prerequisites to do personalisation? Is it the right thing for your organisation to do? And is it the right thing to do now?

It argues that personalisation is a distinct communication tactic, not the answer to every marketing or business challenge. Before investing heavily in personalisation, organisations need a solid core offering, brand trust and demand, access to customer data and insights, and enough content to match those insights with something useful to say.

The chapter also makes a pragmatic point that is sometimes overlooked in personalisation projects: if the value proposition is weak, if the customer experience is fundamentally broken, or if no one knows or trusts your brand yet, personalisation is unlikely to fix the problem.

In her reflection at the end, Ida connects the chapter to loyalty and CRM. For her, personalisation is central to creating relevant communication, building relationships, and increasing loyalty and revenue. But she also underlines the chapter’s core message: personalisation becomes powerful only when the organisation has the right prerequisites, including individual-level data, the right competencies, and the martech systems to put it all into action.

The chapter serves as a useful reality check for any marketing leader facing pressure to personalise before the basics are in place.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalisation, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalisation Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalisation into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 14 of Hello $Firstname, Rasmus Houlind reads ‘Tying It All Up in the Bowtie of Personalization’.

Rasmus Houlind is the author of Hello $Firstname and narrates this chapter himself because it brings Part Two together. The chapter revisits all four corners of the Bowtie of Personalization and shows how they come together across campaigns, marketing automation, and inbound platforms.

The chapter explains what good looks like from the customer’s point of view. A realistic personalized customer experience is not hyper-personalized at every touchpoint. It is a mix of highly personalized communication, semi-personalized communication, and generic communication, shaped by how much data the brand has and how engaged the customer is.

The chapter also goes deep into measurement. It discusses control groups, proxy metrics, statistical significance, customer lifetime value, net promoter score, and the importance of doing the math all the way to the money. It then gathers the maturity levels for campaigns, marketing automation, and inbound platforms into the front end of the Pyramid of Personalization.

In his reflection at the end, Rasmus adds a 2026 perspective. AI has made it easier to turn structured and unstructured data into insight, create message variants, localize content, generate images, tag content, and prepare content feeds for activation. But he also warns that more AI-generated content is not automatically better content. Marketers still need judgment, taste, governance, and a clear model for what they are trying to do.

The chapter closes Part Two with a clear conclusion: AI does not make the Bowtie obsolete. It makes the Bowtie more useful. The more powerful the technology becomes, the more important it is to understand the customer, the moment, the message, the content, and the value being created.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 13 of Hello $Firstname, Mark Robertson reads ‘Personalization on Inbound Platforms’.

Mark Robertson is Partnerships Director at Mastercard Dynamic Yield and has spent around 25 years working across marketing, technology, sales, partnerships, and tools for both outbound and inbound marketing. In this chapter, he reads about personalization on websites, apps, and other inbound platforms.

The chapter explains that visitors arrive on inbound platforms with some kind of intention. If campaigns and marketing automation have done their job, the brand may even have helped spark that intention. The question then becomes how websites and apps can respond with the right content, functionality, messages, and feeds.

The chapter argues that the core customer experience must come before personalization. A website or app must first work well as a self-service experience. Only then should marketers add dynamic personalization, starting with ‘My’ pages, then content feeds, then personalized messages based on intent, and eventually the hiding of irrelevant content that creates unnecessary friction.

In his reflection at the end, Mark draws a clear distinction between testing, conversion rate optimization, and true personalization. He also points to the importance of operability across CDPs, loyalty systems, CMSs, digital asset management systems, ecommerce platforms, and analytics tools. His view is that AI will push inbound personalization beyond single-page testing towards more journey-based optimization.

The chapter reminds marketers that inbound personalization is not just about changing the homepage banner. It is about understanding customer intent in near real time and designing the whole platform experience around what the customer is trying to do.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 12 of Hello $Firstname, Maria Moreau reads ‘Content, Part 2: Content Feeds’.

Maria Moreau is CRM Director at Boozt.com, where she works with CRM for millions of users. In this chapter, she reads about the second content corner of the Bowtie of Personalization: content feeds.

The chapter opens with HBO Max and the challenge of personalizing which movies, series, and episodes are shown to each user. It explains how content feeds differ from messages: they are often fed from existing sources such as product information systems, article databases, application databases, or ecommerce platforms rather than being written from scratch by marketers.

The chapter covers how content feeds can be grouped, sorted, ranked, filtered, and marked. It explains why the right feed can matter more than the ranking within it, how feeds can support both relevance and inspiration, and why marketers must be careful not to create narrow echo chambers when recommendation logic becomes too rigid.

Maria’s framing at the beginning makes the practical stakes clear: for teams managing CRM at scale, content feeds are vital to making personalization operational. They are what allow brands to activate large bodies of products, articles, offers, shows, events, or recommendations in ways that feel useful to each customer.

The chapter shows why personalization on inbound platforms is often less about writing a perfect message and more about choosing the right shelf, the right feed, and the right context.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 11 of Hello $Firstname, Jordie van Rijn reads ‘Personalization in Marketing Automation’.

Jordie van Rijn is an email marketing and martech specialist who guides businesses in selecting marketing software through emailvendorselection.com. In this chapter, he reads about personalization in marketing automation and customer lifecycle communication.

The chapter explains why marketing automation is different from campaigns. Instead of deciding that it is Thursday and sending a newsletter, automation waits for customers to reach specific moments of truth and then responds with a relevant message. This makes timing one of the strongest drivers of perceived relevance.

The chapter explores value creation in marketing automation across increased top-line sales, churn reduction, and cost savings. It discusses abandoned baskets, onboarding flows, welcome programs, subscription upgrades, win-back tactics, next best action, next best experience, and the importance of measuring automation over a longer time horizon than campaigns.

In his reflection at the end, Jordi brings the chapter back to practical marketing work. He describes marketing automation as data set in motion and encourages listeners to find one additional valuable data point or trigger that could make an automation more relevant. His point is that creativity and data belong together.

The chapter reminds marketers not to let perfect become the enemy of good. A triggered message that exists and reaches the customer in the right moment will often create more value than a beautifully segmented message that never gets built.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 10 of Hello $Firstname, Morten Suhr Hansen reads ‘Insights, Part 2: Moments of Truth’.

Morten Suhr Hansen is founder and senior partner at Subscrybe, where he works extensively with subscription businesses. In this chapter, he reads about the second insight corner of the Bowtie of Personalization: moments of truth.

The chapter opens with FT.com and a usage digest designed to reduce churn before subscription renewal. It explains how the timing of a message can make the difference between relevance and irrelevance, especially when customers are close to making a decision that affects their relationship with a brand.

The chapter defines a moment of truth as a moment in time where a customer or potential customer is, or should be, making up their mind about a decision that involves your company. It covers the difference between discovering intent and creating intent, how dynamic data can indicate a moment of truth, how absence of data can also be meaningful, and why marketers must be careful not to assume too much.

In his reflection at the end, Morten explains why this chapter is particularly important for subscription businesses. Moments of truth are central to retention, renewal, churn reduction, and long-term customer value, which is why they are also essential when working with the Personalization Cards in consulting and strategy work.

The chapter sets up the next discussion on marketing automation by showing why timing is often the most powerful personalization lever of all.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:

In Chapter 9 of Hello $Firstname, Peter Anders Franch reads ‘Personalization in Campaigns’.

Peter Anders Franch is Head of CRM, CLV, and Customer Insight at Matas in Denmark, where he works with Club Matas, one of Scandinavia’s largest loyalty programs. In this chapter, he reads about how personalization creates value in campaigns.

The chapter defines what a campaign is and distinguishes campaign communication from customer lifecycle communication. It explains how personalization in campaigns can increase sales, improve efficiency, reduce unnecessary media spend, avoid customer dissatisfaction, and even create new revenue streams through retail media.

The chapter ties together the upper part of the Bowtie of Personalization: segments and messages. It shows why customer segments matter so much when marketers decide which message variants to create, which audiences to target, which customers to exclude, and where paid media budget should be spent.

In his reflection at the end, Peter brings the chapter into the current AI moment. He argues that ecommerce, CRM, and personalization are changing fast, but that technology is only as good as the thinking behind it. AI can help brands reach relevance at greater scale, but judgment, empathy, and an understanding of what the customer actually needs still have to come from marketers.

The chapter is a practical reminder that personalized campaigns are not about doing more for the sake of doing more. They are about improving relevance, efficiency, and business value without becoming creepy, lazy, or wasteful.

More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe

You can buy the physical book here:

If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.

You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:

You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here: