| While I also recognize the valid argument that this is deceptive, I have to agree with you: 1. In no world would I ever believe that a cold email was significantly personalized/targeted, except if the overall content were highly specific to me. This might be wrong a good portion of the time, but it is what it is. 2. Even if I were 100% unaware of the existence of AI/ML, a video wouldn't change my mind about #1. I would be more inclined to think that they'd recorded themselves rattling off a list of customer names and then stitched that into the main video, or just rerecorded the same video hundreds or thousands of times. The latter would take some dedication, and be a pretty big waste of time, but it wouldn't convince me that the sender knows or cares more about me personally. 3. Including a video message in an email in itself is uncommon in and of itself, personalized or not. If the technique increases conversions, this alone could be a sufficient explanation. To the extent that the personalization does further increase conversions, it's equally valid to hypothesize that a novel tech demo catches their attention as it is to hypothesize that people are being deceived. Personally, I would lean toward the former. As an aside, even in the promotional video on Windsor's home page, the videos are kind of uncanny valley. May not be a big deal if the recipient doesn't think too much of one word being slightly garbled because the remaining speech sounds natural, but I'd be concerned about it completely butchering some names (particularly longer ones). |