Personalised link using checksum tokens leads to empty page
It seems only the link was incorrect and lead to the explained behaviour. The wiki entry over at civicrm.org is inaccurate (for Wordpress installations at least). The suggested link is

.../?page=CiviCRM&amp;q=civicrm/profile/edit&amp;reset=1&amp;gid=N&amp;{con‌​tact.checksum}&amp;id={c‌​ontact.contact_id}

while in my case the correct link is

.../civicrm/?page=CiviCRM&amp;q=civicrm/profile/edit&amp;gid=N&amp;rese‌​t=1&amp;gid=16&amp;{contact.‌​checksum}&amp;id={contac‌​t.contact_id}

I realised the link was missing the "civicrm" part, when I tested the profile in "create mode", which gave me the correct (second) link. Hopefully, someone else may find this useful.