Overview

AI personalization rewrites your copy for each recipient using a snapshot of the recipient's public website. When it cannot run, Tantra does not fail the send. It quietly falls back to your plain template so the message still goes out.

That is why the usual symptom is not a missing email. It is recipients receiving generic, template copy instead of tailored copy. This article explains why the fallback happens and how to get personalization running.

How personalization decides to run

For each recipient, Tantra checks a short list before calling the AI. If any check fails, it uses your template instead:

The step or event must have AI personalization turned on. It is off by default.
The recipient must have a business domain. Personal webmail addresses such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, outlook.com, icloud.com, and protonmail.com are skipped.
A website must be resolvable, either from the contact's website field or from the email domain.
The website must return usable content when Tantra fetches it.
An AI provider must be available to generate the copy.

Only the recipient's public website content feeds the AI, and only the first portion of that page is used in the prompt.

Likely causes

The step is set to template mode, not AI mode, so no personalization is attempted.
The recipient uses a personal webmail address, which is always skipped.
The contact has no website and no business email domain to derive one from.
The website could not be fetched, timed out, or returned nothing usable.
No AI provider is available, so generation cannot complete.

Step-by-step checks

Open the sequence step or the calendar campaign settings. Confirm the step's mode is set to AI-personalized, not Predefined template. This is the single most common cause.
Review the recipients. Contacts on personal webmail always receive the template. Add a business website to those contacts if you want them personalized.
For contacts with a business domain, confirm the website loads in a browser. If the site is down, blocks automated fetching, or is very slow, the fetch fails and the template is used.
Confirm a website value is set on the contact, or that the email uses a business domain that maps to a real website.
Confirm an AI provider is available. If you connected your own provider under Connectors, make sure it is active and its key is valid. See Connect your own LLM provider.
Send yourself a test to one business-domain contact and compare the result against the plain template to confirm personalization ran.

What happens next

Personalized copy is prepared shortly before each contact's step is due, not the moment you launch. If the website fetch and AI both succeed, the recipient gets tailored copy. If either step fails, the recipient gets your template and the send still happens on schedule. A website fetched for one contact can be reused for others on the same domain within its cache window, so later sends can turn out faster.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Everyone received the plain template	The step is in template mode	Switch the step to AI-personalized and relaunch.
Only some recipients got tailored copy	Personal webmail and websiteless contacts are skipped	Add business websites to those contacts, or accept the template for them.
A specific domain always falls back	The website could not be fetched or returned nothing usable	Confirm the site loads and does not block automated requests.
Copy looks generic even in AI mode	The website content was thin, or the AI could not generate	Confirm the page has real content and that an AI provider is active.
Nothing personalizes at all in AI mode	No AI provider is available to generate copy	Connect and activate an LLM provider, or confirm the shared default is in place.

FAQ

Does personalization failing stop my emails? No. When personalization cannot run, Tantra uses your template and still sends. The symptom is generic copy, not a missing send.

Why are my gmail.com recipients never personalized? Personal webmail addresses are skipped on purpose because there is no company website to analyze. They always get the template.

Do I have to connect my own AI provider? Not necessarily. A missing personal provider is not a hard blocker on its own, because a shared default can generate copy. If neither is available, the recipient gets the template.

What content does the AI see? Only the recipient's public website, converted to text, and only the first portion of that page. Tantra does not read private data.

A contact has a website but still gets the template. Why? The most likely reasons are that the step is not in AI mode, or the site could not be fetched. Check both.

How do I confirm personalization actually ran? Send a test to one business-domain contact and compare it to your plain template. Different, recipient-specific copy confirms it ran.

AI personalization is not working