To have the personal emails reported, first create a “Personal email” rule. To create a rule in Mail, choose Mail > Preferences > Rules, then click on "Add rule." Name the rule “Personal email” and select the following:
- The rule should match any of the following conditions
- "Sender is in my Previous Recipients"
- "Sender is in my Address Book"
- "Perform action": flag emails with a gray flag
- E-mail should be unread ("Message is unread")
- Flagged ("Message is flagged")
- In your inbox ("Message is in Mailbox Inbox")
- Has been sent directly to you ("Any recipient contains myemail@mydomain").
The dock badge will now count unread personal e-mails from the smart mailbox you just created.
[kirkmc adds: I have actually done something similar for years. I have a "Current" smart mailbox, which contains messages that are important; everything but mailing lists, Google alerts and spam. That is the one I have selected for the Mail icon badge.
We ran a hint about this in 2009, but it simply specified how to choose a smart mailbox for the badge count. This current hint is useful as it explains how to filter specific e-mails that come from people you know.]

