In previous posts, we discussed how to gain a prospect’s attention with organic commonalities and how to make a hyper-personalized business case via cold email.

But there’s a third component in cold emailing that accelerates meaningful engagement with a prospect: personality customization.

You may have discovered a great personal commonality or made an excellent business case, but the email can still fail if its tone or content clashes with the prospect’s personality type. There are many ways to go about personality customization, but DISC is a great shorthand for understanding major personality types and what each type is likely to want from your outreach.

You can often discern your prospect’s DISC type from their digital footprint (here is a tool for doing that), then use this information to write your email in a way that suits them. Here’s a brief overview of the four DISC types and what will likely resonate best with them:

• D / Dominance: This prospect wants you to get to the point as fast as possible. They want you to prove that you can help them win. They care about results, the bottom line, and they don’t want anything extra. You’ll also want to put them in control and defer to their authority.
• I / Influence: This prospect wants a personal connection first. You’ll want to be friendly, use humor when it makes sense, and lean heavily on shared commonalities. They tend to be swayed by stories and testimonials.
• S / Steadiness: This prospect is drawn to calmness and steadiness—show them how your solution can bring more predictability and consistency to their daily lives. Your email should be warm, reassuring, and brief.
• C / Conscientiousness: This prospect is most likely to want some concrete details. They’re going to be skeptical unless you can quickly demonstrate your own competence and expertise and give them data points they don’t see as inflated sales posturing.

Done well, your personality customization will be invisible to the prospect. You don’t want to say, “As a fellow D type, I...” Rather, your customization should be a thoughtful layer added to your hyper-personalized email.

You can even shortcut this process by going onto the prospect’s social media or watching a YouTube video or podcast interview with them and observing their communication style. Often you can intuitively tell how they might like to be approached. Are they effusive or restrained? Are they highly positive in outlook and congratulatory of others, or are they more cautious and skeptical? Do they use lots of exclamation points and emojis? There are a host of cues you can pick up that will help you mirror their style and create natural affinity.

Good luck! Let us know in the comments if you personalize your emails to the prospect’s personality and what you’ve discovered that works.