How to Use AI on Cold Emails + Best AI Tools
Discover the secrets behind avoiding spam folders and increasing your success rates with cold emails using the power of AI.
Cold emails are an essential part of B2B sales - no question.
Even today, when spam and Google are more stringent than ever, a good cold email will often help you get your foot in the door and get that prospect on a demo.
But how can you avoid those spam folders best?
This is where AI (Artificial Intelligence) can come into play.
Using AI tools, salespeople can improve their success rates by personalizing and optimizing their emails for each recipient.
In this article, we will discuss how you can effectively use AI on your cold emails and introduce some of the best AI tools available.
What is AI in Cold Emailing?
AI has become an integral part of many industries, and cold emailing is no exception. Using AI on cold email is one piece of a broader AI-powered outbound motion, where AI technology offers a new way to optimize and improve the effectiveness of cold emails.
But what exactly is AI in the context of cold emailing?
AI refers to computer systems or machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. It involves using algorithms and data to analyze and make decisions, without direct human involvement.
In the case of cold emailing, AI can assist in various aspects, such as personalization, timing, and content optimization - as we will see below.
What is AI Personalization?
Personalization plays a crucial role in the success of cold emails. But it can be very time consuming to do well, especially when you're trying to reach as many prospects as possible.
AI personalization takes it further by using machine learning algorithms to analyze data and personalize each email based on various factors, such as demographics, behavior, and past interactions. This level of personalization can significantly increase the chances of getting a response from your cold emails.
What are The Benefits of Using AI in Cold Outreach?
There are many benefits to using AI in cold outreach, but let's review the top ones:
Increased efficiency: With AI automation, you can send many personalized emails simultaneously, saving time and effort. This also lets you focus on other important tasks, such as lead generation and follow-ups.
Higher response rates: AI can analyze and optimize the best timing, subject lines, and body for each prospect, increasing the chances of getting a response.
Improved personalization: AI can analyze large amounts of data to personalize each email, making it more relevant and engaging for the prospect. This can lead to a higher conversion rate from cold emails.
Better segmentation: AI technology can segment your email lists based on various factors, such as demographics, behavior, and past interactions. This allows for more targeted and effective cold outreach.
Continuous learning: AI algorithms can continue to learn and improve based on the data collected from your cold email campaigns, leading to better results over time.
How to Use AI on Cold Emailing
Define your ICP with AI
The first step in using AI on cold emails is understanding your target audience. It will help you customize your email and approach accordingly.
Essentially, this is AI's ability to help you define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
AI tools can help you identify common characteristics and behaviors among your most valuable customers by analyzing data from various sources. Use AI tools like customer segmentation and data analysis to better understand your audience.
This information can then be used to refine your target audience and improve the effectiveness of your cold email campaigns.
Use an AI Email Assistant to Automate Daily Tasks
With the help of AI, you can automate follow-up emails based on recipient behavior and engagement levels.
This will save you time and effort while ensuring your leads are consistently nurtured through the sales process. And it means you won't forget to send a follow-up, which is a key component of any successful sales strategy.
In addition to automating follow-ups, AI tools can also help with other daily tasks, such as organizing leads and scheduling emails. This saves time and ensures that your outreach efforts are consistent and timely.
Create Multi-Channel Sequences With AI
AI can also assist in creating multi-channel sequences, where cold emails are integrated with other forms of communication such as social messages or cold calls. This helps create a more personalized and holistic approach to reaching out to prospects.
AI can help you predict the likelihood of a response from a prospect.
Utilize this technology to prioritize your outreach efforts and focus on high-potential leads, and on the best channel to reach them with.
Use AI to Compose Engaging Email Content
AI can help you determine which subject lines are most effective in getting recipients to open your emails. Use A/B testing to try out different subject lines and see which ones result in higher open rates.
AI-powered writing assistants can also help you compose more engaging and persuasive email content.
These tools use natural language processing algorithms to analyze the tone, structure, and grammar of your emails, making suggestions for improvement that can improve the impact of your message.
Best AI Sales Tools
Setsail.co
Setsail.co is an AI-driven platform that uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer behavior and provide personalized recommendations.
It can also help sales teams optimize email outreach by suggesting the best time, frequency, and content for cold emails. This can significantly increase response rates and, ultimately, sales.
Additionally, they offer 24/7 deal analysis via their AI Analyst for revenue teams, making it easier than ever to jump into any deal and understand what the prospect needs and what stage it is at.
Unfiltered.ai
Unfiltered.ai is a sales automation platform that uses AI to help you warm-up your emails before sending a cold email campaign.
This tool allows you to personalize the email content of the warm-up campaign using AI, so your sent from Unfiltered will have your voice, value proposition and voice.
Additionally, Unfiltered focuses on keeping your email domain and sender reputation healthy and out of the spam box—an especially important component given spam and Google regulations.
Flowrite
Flowrite offers an AI-powered writing tool that can help you craft effective cold emails.
It uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze your writing style and suggest improvements, making your emails more engaging and personalized.
Primarily though, it is designed to streamline and optimize workflows within teams.
With its powerful automation capabilities and intelligent decision-making algorithms, Flowrite AI helps businesses automate repetitive tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce operational costs.
Tavus
Tavus is a groundbreaking AI-driven video personalization platform that is transforming how businesses craft their video content. Combined with email, it takes personalization to a whole new level.
This innovative platform integrates distinctive voice variables and synthetic AI technology, creating myriad customized videos from a single recording.
With Tavus, businesses can effortlessly generate immersive experiences for individual viewers, eliminating the need to produce numerous tailor-made videos. This approach significantly improves viewer engagement and click-through rates, offering businesses a powerful tool to maximize their video impact.
Copy.ai
Copy.ai is an AI-powered writing tool that uses machine learning to produce diverse content types, such as blog headlines, emails, social media posts, web copy, and more.
Using OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM), Copy AI streamlines the copywriting process for users. It furnishes various tools and writing frameworks to kickstart your content creation journey, catering to over 25 languages.
Ideal for beginners, Copy AI offers an accessible entry point to understand and utilize generative AI technology. It can help you grab the attention of your prospects and increase open rates.
Clay
Clay is an AI-powered platform that helps you personalize cold emails by analyzing recipient data and creating custom messages for each prospect.
You can use your research per lead and personalize your first line with a single click.
It can also help you track and measure the success of your email campaigns, and it is integrated with various other sales tools, such as Salesloft, Outreach, and more.
Compose.ai
Compose.ai is a free Chrome plugin that helps you write faster and improve your writing by using auto-complete anywhere. It allows you to write emails, documents, and chats faster than ever.
Although it is completely free to use forever, there is a premium version with some advanced features, including personalization and other data.
Where AI Helps, and Where You Still Need a Human
I use AI on every cold email campaign I run. But I don't let it run the campaign. Here's how I split the work across a typical outbound workflow.
| Step | What AI does | What the human does |
|---|---|---|
| ICP definition | Spots patterns in your best customers | Makes the final call on who to target |
| Lead enrichment | Pulls firmographic, hiring and intent data | Checks that the data is relevant and current |
| Trigger detection | Monitors funding, leadership changes, launches, job posts | Decides which accounts are worth contacting now |
| Drafting | Writes first drafts and variants | Edits for tone, accuracy and context |
| Sending | Handles timing and follow-up logic | Watches deliverability and performance |
| Replies | Sorts replies by intent | Answers every real conversation personally |
| Optimization | Runs A/B tests and surfaces patterns | Adjusts positioning and targeting |
The biggest time savings come from research, not writing. AI can build context on a prospect in seconds that would take a person 10 to 15 minutes. Let it find the signals. Then make sure a person turns those signals into the message. If you want the bigger picture on tools for each step, I compared them in the best AI tools for outbound prospecting.
Why AI-Written Cold Emails Get Ignored
AI made cold email faster. It also created a new kind of bad cold email that buyers have learned to skip. Three problems show up again and again.
AI slop
Most AI tools personalize from a database: name, title, company, industry. The result feels custom and says nothing. It congratulates you on a funding round from eight months ago, or opens with "I noticed you're in the SaaS space." If the line could apply to any company in the same industry, it isn't personalization.
The tells
Recipients spot AI writing fast. Rui Nunes has documented specific word choices that flag an email as AI-written, like "impressed," "fascinated," "intrigued" and "innovative." Write "I was impressed by your innovative approach" and you've told the reader exactly how the email was made.
The issue isn't AI itself. Buyers don't punish the tool. They punish lazy output.
Everyone has the same stack
When everyone uses the same enrichment tool, the same LLM and the same sender, the emails converge. Your "personalized" email reads like the five others your prospect got that morning. The edge from AI personalization shrinks as more people use it the same way. The only durable edge is better targeting and real human judgment on top.
An Editing and Sending Checklist
This is what I check before AI-drafted cold email goes out.
Edit the draft
- Cut the tells. Delete "impressed," "fascinated," "innovative" and anything that sounds like a press release.
- Make it specific. Reference something from the prospect's last 30 days, or tie it to a clear segment pain. If it could go to anyone, rewrite it.
- Keep it short. Aim for under 80 words and one clear call to action. AI tends to overwrite, so fight that.
- Verify every fact. AI misreads websites and invents details. If you can't confirm a claim quickly, remove it.
Protect the sending side
- Space follow-ups. According to Instantly, top performers space follow-ups 3 to 4 days apart and keep sequences tight instead of running eight touches.
- Clean your lists often. At least 28% of email lists go bad each year, and bounces drag down sender reputation. Verify before every campaign.
- Authenticate and warm up. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on dedicated sending domains, warm new inboxes, and keep spam complaints well under Google's 0.3% limit. Under 0.1% is the real target.
- Measure replies, not opens. Privacy features make open rates unreliable. Track positive replies and meetings booked.
For the full system behind this, including tiering accounts by how much personalization they deserve, see my guide to outbound automation and personalization.
FAQ
Is AI cold emailing legal?
In most places, yes, as long as the email itself complies with the rules that apply to any commercial email, like CAN-SPAM in the US and GDPR in Europe. That generally means accurate sender information, a working opt-out, and legitimate business targeting. Using AI to write it doesn't change those requirements.
Can ChatGPT write cold emails?
Yes. It can draft subject lines, openers, follow-ups and whole sequences. I'd treat its output as a first draft. Edit out the generic phrasing, check every fact, and make sure the email says something specific to the prospect before it goes out.
How many personalization points should a cold email include?
Fewer than you think. A strong cold email usually has one trigger event or company-specific insight, one role-specific pain point and one simple call to action. Stacking more details tends to make the email longer, not better.
Should AI handle replies to my cold emails?
Let it sort them by intent so nothing slips. Answer the real conversations yourself. Someone who took the time to reply deserves a response from a person who actually read it.
Conclusion
AI has undoubtedly transformed the sales process, and cold email outreach is no exception.
Making smart use of AI is the name of the game now, and you need to get on board before it's too late.
After all, as we saw, you can significantly increase your chances of success in reaching and engaging with potential customers through cold emails. You must keep experimenting and integrating AI into your sales strategy to stay ahead of the competition.
With the right approach, SDRs can revolutionize your sales process and achieve greater success in reaching and engaging with potential customers through cold emails.
Post by Flor Fustinoni.
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