Faculty · Personalization Playbook
Rasmus Houlind
Author · originator of the Bowtie of Personalization
Personalization that pays, without breaking trust.
The thesis
Most personalization programs confuse data with understanding
They get the syntax right and the human wrong. Rasmus teaches the discipline that separates the two: a framework for deciding which customer signals matter, which moments deserve investment, and where generative AI is genuinely better than a thoughtful human.
It is the difference between a customer who feels seen and a customer who feels surveilled.
His work
He wrote the book. Then he wrote the AI edition.
Rasmus is the author of Hello, $FirstName: Profiting from Personalization, written with Frans Riemersma, Karsten Horsberg and Hugo Andersson and now in its Generative AI edition. His earlier book, Make It All About Me (2019), laid the omnichannel marketing foundation his personalization work builds on.
He has spent more than two decades in marketing and personalization practice and works at Agillic, a Nordic marketing automation platform. He is the originator of the Bowtie of Personalization, the framework he uses to plan segments, messages, moments of truth and content.
His workshops took the Bowtie from a book diagram to a working method, used by commerce, banking, charity and subscription teams across the Nordics, the UK and beyond.
How he teaches
Simple on purpose
Rasmus keeps the model simple on purpose, so the disagreements that ambush most personalization programs ("we both said personalization but meant different things") can be resolved at a table, with cards, before any technology gets bought.
- Working fluency: the Bowtie applied to your own program: segments, messages, moments of truth, marketing automation, inbound and AI.
- A personalization plan: what to keep, what to retire, and where AI changes the economics.
- Sharper judgment: over-personalization, under-personalization, false-positive AI and the trust cliff.
Personalization for your team
A classroom for your team only, on your dates. We work on your own cases, so the team practices on its own customers.
Own The Personalization Playbook? Your access does not expire: sign in at learn.cxm.academy.
In his words
Personalization in 2026 is not the same conversation it was three years ago. Generative AI rewrote the cost curve, and a lot of programs that looked sophisticated last year now look brittle. The teams winning are not the ones with the most tools. They are the ones with the clearest framework for which customer signals matter, which moments deserve investment, and where AI is genuinely better than a thoughtful human.
Rasmus Houlind, author of Hello, $FirstName
The Personalization Playbook
I joined the masterclass wanting to sharpen my skills. I left with a framework, a new way of thinking about the customer journey, and a stronger professionalism in personalization.
Elsa Fanney Jónsdóttir
Content Manager
Duos
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