Yo! Welcome to the next episode of The Reeder Newsletter.
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Two types of personalization. One works. One pretends to.
I partnered with Tofu to analyze 1M+ AI-generated marketing assets.
One finding changed how I think about every campaign I touch.
Turns out there are two types of personalization — and the one most B2B teams rely on is the one that underperforms by a wide margin.
The free report breaks down:
— The two types of personalization (and why one massively outperforms the other)
— The specific data points that separate high-engagement campaigns from noise
— When each approach actually works based on where prospects sit in your funnel
Personalization without the right data is just mail merge with extra steps.
Read the full report and see which type you're running.
"Am I going in the right direction?"
That's the question on almost every marketer's mind.
The pressure to perform is higher than ever because the margin of error is small and getting smaller.
We don't have quarters to spare or millions to spend. We gotta figure out how to win now.
Add in the noise of everyone spouting advice like it's the gospel truth, with little to no context. That's a recipe for disaster.
Whether you're going from zero to one ("We're trying to get our exec active on LinkedIn, where do we even start?") or from one to two ("Our executive dinners are getting traction, how do we scale this?"), you're really asking the same thing: am I making the right call?
And when we're not sure, we do the most natural thing in the world.
We look at what everyone else is doing.
That's where it gets dangerous.
You see a brand blowing up on TikTok with a hundred million views, and think we should do that.
You see your competitor running Reddit ads and panic. We gotta do that too!
There's a name for this in behavioral psychology: availability bias.
We overvalue what's visible and assume that because we can see it, it must be working. And marketing is uniquely vulnerable because everything we do is public-facing. Our brains skip straight from "I noticed it" to "it must be effective."
But visibility is not proof.
I know firsthand.
When I was running content at a billion-dollar SaaS company, an enterprise sales rep Slacked me in a tizzy because our competitor — an ankle-biter, not a real threat — had just done a 45-minute webinar featuring one of our executive clients.
"What are we doing about this?!"
My honest answer: This isn't a big deal. Because if a 45-minute webinar is all it takes to lose a customer, that's not a marketing problem. (And copying others is a guaranteed way to stay in 2nd place!)
The worst thing I could've done was pull resources from what was already working to chase someone else's play.
That's a real decision. Made under pressure, with stakes attached. And it's the kind of decision that determines whether your content strategy works and compounds — or falls apart because you keep reacting to whatever's most visible.
But nobody shares that part of the story.
All we see is the curated outcome, not the conditions that created it. We don't see the constraints they were operating under. What they tried first that failed. Or what about their specific situation made that play land — when it would have flopped somewhere else.
Following so-called best practices that ignore your context is how you end up running someone else's playbook and getting zero results. That's how you waste budget, lose internal credibility, and risk your career.
We deserve better than that.
That's why I'm launching a new series called Playmakers.
Every episode, I break down a real play made by real marketers under real constraints.
This isn't dry analyst theory or generic commentary. It's no highlight reel either.
This is the full picture: what was at stake, what bet they made, and why it was the right call at that moment, so you can adapt the thinking to your world.
And I've set some rules:
-Every play is Certified, meaning I've seen the dashboards, the pipeline impact, and the proof.
-Every play is earned. Nobody can buy a feature.
-Every play includes the risks. What was scary, what almost didn't work, and what most people would miss.
I'm building this for people who want to win with content.
Who want to see the big creative bets that paid off, channel experiments that gave BIG results, and even the "boring" things (whitepapers, technical content) that quietly drove pipeline. If it moved the needle, it belongs here.
Every other Wednesday you'll get a bonus newsletter send plus a video breaking down the play.
Now here's where it gets really fun...
I want to build this with you from day one.
Two ways to get involved:
Got a play? A content or marketing decision that drove real, measurable results? Hit reply with what happened. If it's legit, you'll be featured.
Want a play broken down? A decision you're wrestling with or a topic nobody's giving real answers on? Tell me. I'll go find the goods.
First episode drops soon. Don't miss it.
It's game time.
— Devin
Pen by Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder
Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok | Instagram
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