Machine learning is the dominant AI paradigm — at least for now. A few years after ChatGPT popularized AI chat platforms based on natural language processing, we’ve experienced a tremendous surge of machine learning tools. You can find an AI tool based on machine learning for pretty much anything. And that’s true for your customer outreach program as well, which can be massively improved with even the most basic machine learning tool. Read on to learn how to transform your outreach with AI.
What Outreach Problem Does Machine Learning Solve?
As you’ll see from our use cases below, machine learning tools can handle various aspects of your outreach process, including audience targeting. As you fine-tune your audience understanding, these tools also open opportunities to explore innovative link building strategies that align with your audience’s interests.
However, you’ll feel their biggest impact regarding the main outreach problem — personalization.
People don’t respond to generic messages — it’s that simple. We receive hundreds of random emails daily, most of which contain random promotional material. And we don’t have the time or the inclination to open most of them.
This leads outreach experts to two conclusions:
- You need to send messages en masse. Due to low open rates, you need to send as many emails and other messages as possible to reach even the smallest fraction of your target audience.
- You need to send personalized messages. Emails and InMail messages on LinkedIn don’t matter which format you use — people only respond to messages that address them specifically.
How Does AI Solve Scaling?
The main issue is that sending personalized messages is difficult at scale. You need a lot of time and workforce to generate leads, research every potential customer individually, and craft a message that responds to their specific pain points.
AI is the ultimate solution to this problem. With machine learning, you can automate every aspect of the process, including:
- Lead generation
- Customer research
- Writing personalized messages
- Answering potential questions
Even with a small business, you can cut back on hours of manual outreach work using AI. It can do all the work for you based on information about your leads, your company’s value proposition, and a few additional instructions.
AI-based personalization can help you create hyper-targeted messages that guarantee higher open and response rates. Each customer can receive a message with an ultra-specific icebreaker that’s relevant to their needs, work experience, and any other relevant information.
Because of this, most B2B sales teams are expected to start using AI for outreach in the next few years — and most of them already have.
AI and Audience Targeting
Before you can use AI to craft personalized messages, you need to know who you’re writing for. AI can help you understand your target audience, including the cross-section between your offer and their pain points.
With the right AI tool, you can hone in on your ideal customer persona and generate messages that spark genuine interest.
You won’t need more than a $20 ChatGPT subscription for this.
To write the perfect prompt for audience targeting, provide the AI bot with the following information:
- Who you are — for instance, a senior outreach consultant with X years of experience
- Your company and sector
- Your preferred tone of voice — for example, casual, easy-going, and actionable
After you provide ChatGPT with this information, simply ask it to generate a few in-depth buyer personas for people who would realistically want to purchase your product or service.
Lead Generation With AI
Knowing your target audience is great, but you must build and contact lead lists. Different AI platforms can help with that, too. You can manually dig through LinkedIn to find prospects, but this is ultimately too much work.
These days, AI-powered lead generation platforms have 100s of millions of prospects with detailed profiles. You can easily apply advanced filters to find the right people for your products and services.
Wrapping Up
Machine learning tools are reshaping every facet of our modern economy. AI has upended everything, from product ideation and creation to sales and marketing. In that regard, outreach is no exception. Luckily, AI tools can help one outreach expert complete a month’s workload in just one or two days. You can use them to improve and automate every part of your outreach process and reach more customers.
