AI Email Personalization at Scale: How NOT to Sound like Chat GPT
- Co-founder at LavaReach AI
- Published on August 15, 2024
- Updated on September 3, 2024
Table of Contents
You know those sales reps using ChatGPT to write “personalized” emails? Yeah, they’re about as personal as a form letter from the IRS. At least the IRS gets a response.
Jokes aside, this question comes up a lot. And with so much AI personalized emails and content these days, it raises the question, why do they all still sound very generic? It’s a real head-scratcher, right?
Here’s the deal: personalized outreach is crucial for sales teams looking to boost their response rates and book more meetings. But when your entire email is written by AI, it’s going to come off as very generic still and very impersonal.
That’s where most AI email personalization tools fall short. And don’t get started on Chat GPT. Most people are probably a little tired of seeing ‘Hi XYZ, I hope this email finds you well’!
So, how do you use AI to hyper-personalize emails, but still come across very personal? The answer is pretty simple, actually. At LavaReach, we’ve cracked the code on personalization at scale without sounding like a robot. More on that later.
In this guide I’m going to show you how to leverage AI for your email marketing efforts or cold outreach without losing that crucial human touch. Trust me, your prospects won’t even know what hit them – in a good way, of course!
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The Problem with AI Email Personalization Tools
You know what’s worse than a salesperson who won’t shut up? An AI that won’t shut up.
Starting with fully AI-generated emails. And that means FULLY AI-generated emails. You know the ones? Those emails sound like they were written by a robot trying really hard to pass as a human. Not exactly the personal touch?
Here’s the thing: a lot of AI tools out there, like Apollo, take some context about your prospect and your offering and then generate an entire email. Sounds great in theory, but in practice? It’s a recipe for generic and AI-sounding cold emails.
Why do these cold emails fall flat? Well, when AI tries to write a whole email from scratch, it often misses the nuances of human communication. It might nail the facts, but it loses that personal flair. That human touch that makes your prospect feel like you’re talking directly to them.
So you often end up with your AI email sounding like they could’ve been sent to anyone. They lack that specific, tailored feel that makes a prospect think, “Wow, this person really gets me and my business.”
And let’s be honest with ourselves, in the world of sales outreach, if you’re not standing out, you’re just adding to the noise in someone’s inbox. Nobody wants that!
Plus, these AI tools don’t give you much control over the output. Most sales reps are basically crossing their fingers and hoping the AI spits out something decent.
Take a look at this output which is personalized based on the prospect company’s information. “I was intrigued by Versapay’s mission to simplify the invoice-to-cash process for growing businesses, which aligns with my values.” Very funny that the invoice-to-cash process is now a value that humans can align with – this is what we want to avoid at all costs.
Is it a good strategy to keep throwing spaghetti at the wall until something sticks? Well, that’s basically what those sales reps are doing with cold email outreach, isn’t it? Except instead of spaghetti, they’re spamming Chat GPT-generated emails until their emails get flagged by Google.
The only thing sticking here is their company reputation – to the bottom of the barrel. But hey, keep it up! Maybe by email number 10,000, they’ll finally convince someone they’re not bots… or complete fools. Whichever comes first.
Any experienced sales rep knows that you need to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to your outreach efforts.
So while these fully AI-generated emails might save you some time upfront, they’re likely costing you big time in terms of response rates and ultimately, your sales productivity and commissions. And that’s exactly the problem we’re solving at LavaReach.
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How Basic AI Email Personalization Tools Work
Alright, let’s break down how these basic AI email personalization tools work in detail. And trust me, it’s not as fancy as they make it sound.
Most of these AI writing tools, they take some context about your prospect and your offering, right? Maybe it’s the prospect’s name, their company name, and a one-liner about what you’re selling. Then they just throw all that into their AI tool and hit ‘generate’.
What comes out? Well, it’s a personalized email alright – at least that’s what they call it. But let’s be real, it’s about as personal as those “You’ve won!” spam emails in your Gmail inbox.
These AI email personalization tools are basically playing email roulette. They’re taking a bunch of pre-written phrases, mixing them up, and hoping something sticks.
And you’ve got zero control over your email marketing efforts. You’re basically crossing your fingers and hoping the AI doesn’t tank your entire outreach process and your email health to the ground.
So in the end you get personalized messages that sound like they were written by Chat GPT. They’re generic emails masquerading as personalized content, and they’re about as likely to boost your response rates as shouting into the void.
But hey, at least it automates repetitive tasks, right? You can churn out a metric ton of these cold email templates in no time. Too bad quantity doesn’t equal quality when it comes to personalized outreach.
But don’t worry, we’ve got a better way with LavaReach.
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LavaReach's Approach to AI Personalization
Alright, let’s get into the good stuff – that’s how LavaReach is changing the game when it comes to AI personalization. At LavaReach, we’re not just throwing AI at the problem and hoping for the best. Nah, we’re much smarter than that.
Our AI email personalization approach is all about giving you the power to create hyper-personalized emails that actually sound like a human wrote them. So how is that possible? By combining user-generated text, variables, and Artificial Intelligence in a way that makes sense.
Let’s break down our email builder for you. It’s got some advanced features and three key elements that work together to create killer personalized emails:
- Static text: This is your bread and butter. It’s the text you write yourself, giving your email that authentic, human touch. You know your product and your style better than any AI.
- Variables: These are the green bits in our builder. They’re dynamically filled with data about your prospect or their company. Could be their name, their company name, or any custom data you’ve got. When the preview is generated, these variables spit out the actual values one-to-one. It’s a super easy way to make your email feel tailored to each recipient.
- AI-generated prompts: This is where the magic happens! These are the purple bits in our builder. You can mix and match different text or variables within the prompt, giving you tons of flexibility to craft your perfect output. This is where AI comes in to add that extra layer of personalization, but only where it makes sense.
The beauty of this system is that you’re in control. You decide where to use AI, where to use variables, and where to keep your own voice. It’s not about letting AI take over your entire outreach process. It’s about using AI as a tool to enhance your email personalization efforts.
For example, you might use static text for your intro and closing, variables for the recipient’s name and company, and an AI-generated prompt to create a personalized opening line based on the company’s recent achievements.
In LavaReach, you can pair text with {{variables}} in green and [[prompts]] in purple. You can even wrap [[ {{variables}} within prompts ]] to use relevant data to personalize even further.
The barrier to entry is slightly higher, because you have to prompt yourself and make sure that the entire email is cohesive with the portions AI outputs, but it’s worth it in the end, especially you need to do it once.
As a result, you get an email that’s personalized, engaging, and most importantly, doesn’t sound like it was written by Chat GPT.
This approach gives you the best of both worlds – the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence and the authenticity of human-written content. It’s personalization at scale, without sacrificing that all-important human touch. And trust me, your prospects will notice the difference.
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Data: The Foundation of Effective AI Email Personalization
A client said the other day, “I’ve got so much data on my prospects. I know their dog’s favorite treat and their aunt’s middle name. Still can’t get them to reply to my emails though. Maybe everyone should start addressing them to the dog instead.” One thing is having access to data, the other is having the right tools and strategy to apply it in the right way. More importantly, do you have the right data to drive relevancy for your prospects?
To do great email personalization, you need data on your prospects. And that’s not just about their name and email address. It’s about the good stuff that really lets you tailor your cold emails.
At LavaReach, it’s all about giving you the data you need to take your email personalization to the next level and customize messages based on various sales triggers.
I can’t promise data on your prospect’s dog’s favorite treats but there’s got a whole suite of data enrichment capabilities that’ll make your sales and marketing team salivate.
First off, there’s your basic data. That’s about company summaries, that kind of thing. You can pull that into a prompt, have AI summarize it into one sentence, and boom – you’ve got a personalized opener that shows you’ve done your homework.
But it doesn’t stop there. Oh no, that’s just the start. There’s also advanced enrichments that’ll take your email personalization to the Moon – website traffic statistics, revenue range, funding history, recent job postings, company revenue growth rate, etc. The use cases are up to you.
And here’s where it gets really cool. There’s got this thing called Orgchart enrichment. It lets you find out if company X has a sales team, or a finance team, or who is on their finance team. This is gold for recruiters or consultancies doing function-specific activities.
But wait, there’s more! There’s also got AI enrichment. This gives you maximum flexibility to ask AI any question about a company. For example, you could ask, “Does this company need a humanoid robot?”
You can craft a custom prompt, and our AI will create a custom column with the answer. And guess what? That becomes a variable you can use in your cold email personalization!
And you know the best part? All of this data becomes variables you can use in your email builder. So you’re not just personalizing with names and company names – you’re personalizing with deep, relevant insights that show you really understand your prospect’s business. How cool is that?
Crafting Personalized Emails with LavaReach AI
Sales reps that use Chat GPT to “personalize” emails are like that friend who always uses pickup lines from TikTok. Lots of words, zero comprehension, and absolutely no chance of closing the deal.
Let’s show you how you can craft killer personalized emails with LavaReach.
First things first, It’s not just about slapping AI on everything and calling it a day. Nah, it’s about being strategic. Remember, if your entire email is written by AI, it’s gonna come off as generic and impersonal. So it’s only about using AI where it makes sense to personalize.
Here’s how it works: You’ve got your static text, which is just you writing your email like a normal human being. Then you’ve got your variables – those green bits that pull in specific data about your prospect. And finally, you’ve got your AI-generated prompts in purple.
Let’s say you want to do a simple personalization with the company summary. You can wrap that company summary in a prompt, something like “Hey {first_name}, I read recently that {company_name}…” and then tell the AI to complete the sentence based on the company summary.
But here’s the cool part, you tell it to keep it under 10 words. So you get this short, punchy, personalized opener that flows right into your main message.
Flow is key though. You want your email to read like a human wrote it, not like it’s a bunch of AI-generated paragraphs stitched together. So you’re mixing your own writing style with these personalized elements.
Here’s an example: You might start with your AI-generated opener based on the company summary. Then you transition into your main pitch, which you’ve written yourself.
You sprinkle in some variables like the prospect’s name or company name to keep it personal. And maybe you end with another AI-generated bit, like a personalized PS line based on some other data point.
So what you get is a personalized email but it still sounds like it came from a real person. It’s got that natural flow. That human touch, but it’s also leveraging AI and data to make it super relevant to each prospect.
And here’s the best part – once you’ve got your email template up and running, you can apply it to your entire lead list. So you’re doing personalization at scale, but each cold email still feels like it was crafted just for that prospect.
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Advanced Email Personalization Using AI Enrichment
You know how researching prospects can be a real time-suck for sales teams? Like, you’re spending two to five minutes per website, and suddenly your whole day’s gone just trying to get intel on 100 companies.
Well, Lavareach have basically taken that time consuming eight-hour slog and shrunk it down to 30 seconds. Yep, you heard that right – 30 seconds for 100 websites.
So how does this magic work? Let’s say you’re after some specific details about a company – maybe their HQ location, or how many manufacturing sites they’ve got, or where all their factories are.
Normally, you’d be clicking around their website like a madman, trying to piece it all together. But with LavaReach Advanced AI Enrichment, you just tell it what you’re looking for, and it does all the heavy lifting for you.
Here’s a quick rundown of how it works in practice. First, you’ve got your basic info already populated – things like the company website, location, industry, employee size, what they do. That’s your standard enrichment. But now, here’s where you can take it a few steps further.
You apply the AI enrichment and give it a prompt. Something like, “Tell me the HQ location and list out all the manufacturing sites, factories, and facilities with their locations.” Hit that ‘enrich’ button, and watch the magic unfold.
In seconds, it’s pulling all that info for you. It’ll tell you they’re headquartered in Michigan, that they’ve got a factory in China, another in Indiana, and so on. And it’s doing this for every single company on your list, all at once.
Now, imagine dropping that kind of specific, relevant info into your outreach emails. That’s the kind of advanced personalization that gets responses. You’re not just saying, “Hey, I see you’re in manufacturing.” You’re saying, “I noticed you’ve got a new facility in Shenzhen – how’s that affecting your supply chain?” That’s next-level stuff.
And the best part? You’re not spending hours digging for this info. You’re getting deep, relevant insights in less time than it takes to grab a coffee. This helps you automate repetitive tasks and frees you up to focus on what really matters.
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AI Email Personalization Tips
You know what’s great about AI email personalization? It gives sales reps a whole new way to screw up.
Jokes aside, here are some of the best practices for AI-assisted personalization. This is where you can really dial in your personalized outreach.
1. Level up your email personalization game.
First off, forget about using AI to just fill in {first_name} and {company_name}. That’s an amateur move. It’s next-level stuff here. Use AI to analyze your prospect’s recent tweets, LinkedIn posts, or even their company’s quarterly reports (if it’s a public company).
Then, have it craft a hook that ties their latest business challenge to your solution. It’s not just personalizing, it’s about contextualizing.
2. Leverage your CRM data.
You know all that data sitting in your CRM? You gotta put it to work. Use your AI tools to cross-reference that data with public info. Have it generate insights that’ll make your prospect think you’re a mind reader. “Hey {FirstName}, noticed your company’s been expanding into {NewMarket}. Bet that’s putting some strain on your {Department}…” Boom. Personalized content that actually means something!
3. Test, test, and test again.
Don’t just set it and forget it. You gotta test your email campaigns like your sales quota depends on it (because, let’s face it, it kinda does). A/B test everything – subject lines, opening lines, CTAs. Let your AI tool crunch the numbers and optimize your cold email outreach in real time.
4. Don't forget the human touch.
And for the love of all that is holy in sales, don’t forget the human touch. AI is great, but it’s not gonna replace your sales team’s expertise. Use AI to augment your marketing strategy and outreach efforts, not replace them.
Blend AI-generated content with your own insights. Your prospects can smell a fully AI-generated email from a mile away, and trust me, it stinks of desperation and lazy sales tactics.
5. Start small and scale up.
Start small. Personalize emails manually at first. Maybe just use AI for one part of your email at first, like the subject lines. See how response rates compare to your usual approach. If it’s working, great! Start expanding from there. If not, tweak your prompt or try a different personalization tool.
6. Master your variables.
And don’t forget about your variables. These are your secret weapon for making emails feel personal without relying too heavily on AI. Well-placed variables can do wonders for making your prospect feel like you’re talking directly to them.
7. Get psychological.
And here’s a mind-bender for you – use AI to personalize email content based on psychological profiles. Have it analyze a prospect’s online presence to determine their O.C.E.A.N. personality traits, then tailor your message accordingly.
Openness? Hit them with innovation. Conscientiousness? Stress reliability. It seems worth giving it a shot!
It’s not just about trying to sound personal here. LavaReach aim to be so relevant, so on-point, that your prospects think you’re a damn mind reader! It’s to use AI email personalization to sound more human, more relevant, more “how the hell did they know that?”
It’s about leveraging Artificial Intelligence to do what would be impossible at scale with manual personalization.
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Conclusion
I’ve seen how AI email personalization can transform sales outreach. But it’s not about letting AI take over completely. It’s about finding the right balance. AI should enhance, not replace, the human touch in your emails.
Remember, your goal is to leverage AI to create more relevant, engaging content that resonates with your prospects. Use it to save time on prospect research, craft compelling subject lines, and generate insights from your CRM data.
But always bring your own expertise to the table. Blend AI-generated content with your unique insights. Test different approaches, refine your strategy, and keep that human element front and center. Because in the end, it’s not just about personalization. It’s about making meaningful connections with your prospects.
FAQs
How does AI email personalization impact email deliverability?
AI email personalization can improve deliverability by increasing engagement rates. Personalized emails are more likely to be opened and interacted with, which signals to email providers that your messages are valuable. This can boost your sender reputation and improve overall deliverability of your email campaigns.
Can AI email personalization tools help with email list segmentation?
AI email personalization tools can enhance email list segmentation. By analyzing user behavior, preferences and engagement, AI tools can create more granular and dynamic segments. This allows for targeted emails that go beyond traditional demographic segmentation, resulting in more effective email marketing campaigns.
How can AI email personalization improve follow-ups in sales outreach?
AI email personalization can enhance follow-ups by analyzing the prospect’s engagement with previous emails. It can suggest optimal timing for follow-ups, personalize content based on the prospect’s interests, and even recommend the best channels for outreach. This can improve response rates in your sales outreach.
How does AI email personalization handle A/B testing?
AI email personalization tools can automate and enhance A/B testing. They can generate multiple variations of email content, subject lines, and send times, then analyze the results in real-time. The AI can quickly identify winning combinations and automatically adjust your email campaigns for optimal performance.
How does AI email personalization handle data privacy concerns?
AI email personalization tools adhere to data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Many use encryption and secure data handling practices to protect user information. They offer features for data anonymization and consent management, ensuring that email personalization comply with privacy laws and user preferences.
About the Author
Daniel Zhao – co-founder at LavaReach. Daniel is a multiple time founder with years of first-hand experience in B2B sales and revenue leadership. He has a consistent track record of helping companies experiment and implement outbound in SaaS and other industries. Throughout his career, Daniel has set up numerous outbound motions for the first time for companies that previously had not found success with sales led customer acquisition.
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