Outbound 2.0: The Guide to AI-Personalized Outbound Emails

Hi there —

In today’s deep dive guide, I’m going to break down exactly how to do AI-personalized outbound emailing for your B2B company.

I call this Outbound Email 2.0.

B2B cold email is not dead—but lazy, generic cold email is. 

I’ve found that AI personalization for each recipient based on their LinkedIn Profiles is the key to scaling outreach that actually gets clicks and responses.

In my experience, AI-outbound prospecting works very well at any B2B company where you get at least $2,000 per year per customer.

We’re doing lots of AI outbound email invitations at SaasRise, and it’s improved the click through rate of our outbound email campaigns by 465% compared to the old non-personalized emails. Now, 2/3rds of our new member signups come via AI-personalized email reachouts.

Below we break down exactly what we do to send out 125,000 automated prospecting emails per month to our target market — and how you gain a big edge on your competition by doing it before they do.

Below is an overview video and the full 12-page guide.

Watch this 11 minute Loom video on how to do AI Outbound

Outbound 2:0: The Guide to Sending AI-Personalized B2B Cold Emails
By Ryan Allis, CEO of SaasRise

In this deep-dive guide, I’m going to break down exactly how to do AI-personalized outbound emailing. 

Cold email is not dead—but lazy, generic cold email is. AI personalization, combined with automated, high-deliverability sending, is the key to scaling outreach that actually gets clicks and responses.

Cold emailing into a target market has long been a staple in B2B Rev Ops, but with AI-driven personalization of each message, it’s now working better than ever for firms with annual contract values (ACVs) north of $2k.

Today, we’re diving deep into how AI can supercharge cold email strategy and be part of building a predictable revenue machine for the fastest growing B2B firms. 

This guide will walk you through exactly how to do AI-powered cold outreach:

1. How to Use Gen AI to Write Personalized Cold Emails with Clay

2. Setting Up Instantly for Efficient Cold Email Sending & Deliverability

3. Optimizing Your Cold Email Content Strategy to Maximize Replies and Clicks

We’ll also provide actual examples, video tutorials, and templates. Save this post and pass it along to your CMO/CRO/Head of Growth.

By the end of this, you’ll have an AI-driven outbound machine that gets 5x the click and reply rates of traditional outbound campaigns.

These days prospects are bombarded with sales pitches. If your email looks even remotely templated, it’s getting ignored. AI personalization changes the game by making your outreach feel tailor-made for every recipient.

Using tools like Clay and Instantly, you can pull real-time data from LinkedIn, company websites, and other sources to craft a hyper-personalized opener that makes your email impossible to ignore.

What Is AI-Personalized Outbound Prospecting?

What do we mean by AI-personalization of cold email?

It means that a custom, personalized email message is generated for each recipient, based on their LinkedIn headline, LinkedIn summary, and website homepage. 

We generate this AI-personalized cold email copy using Clay (An ABM list building tool that integrates with many different data providers and generative AI platforms including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini)

Once the AI-personalized emails are written, we send out the emails themselves using our cold emailing tool Instantly. 

Step 1: Building the AI-Personalized ABM Lead List in Clay

Step 1: Building the AI-Personalized ABM Lead List in Clay

Step 2: Set Up Your Message Sequence in Instantly

Step 2: Cold Prospect Email Sequence in Instantly

Example: AI-Personalized vs. Generic Openers

Compare the differences in the below emails.

🚫 Generic Email Opener:

"Hi [Name], I noticed you are a [Job Title] at [Company]. Let’s connect and explore synergies."

✅ AI-Personalized Opener (Generated via Clay):

"Hey [Name], turning a negative 146% margin business into +51% within three quarters is next-level. As a fellow SaaS founder, I’d love to invite you to our private mastermind call next week."

Why it works: It highlights a specific achievement from their LinkedIn profile, making it personal, engaging, and relevant.

This is all done at scale via AI — allowing you to easily send out 1000-2000 of these AI-personalized outreaches per day.

While you could do this using 11x.ai, the costs there are ~$5000 per month for 3,000 leads. Using the below method you can reach 30,000-60,000 new leads per month for that cost.

The Video Guide On Exactly How to Do AI Outbound

Here is a 27 minute video tutorial on how to do AI-personalization for a list built within Clay. I made it last week.

And here is an 11 minute video tutorial on how to do AI-personalization from any lead list, regardless of where it was originally built.

Once you finish your AI-personalization of your list, just import it into a sending tool like Instantly to send out.

The Exact Steps on How to Do AI-Personalization Outbound

Here are the steps to follow, they are a bit technical so watch the above videos to do it properly. The key is to experiment and learn.

1. Import CSV file of your ABM Lead List into Clay (you can create the list in Clay directly or import from Instantly, ListKit, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Lusha, Adapt, Seamless, LinkedIn Sales Navigator etc.)

2. Make sure the file has LinkedIn Profile URL as a column already

   1. If it doesn’t, add a new column called “LinkedIn Profile” and enrich list (use APIs if doing in bulk). Once you have the LinkedIn Profile URL…

   2. If you don’t have LinkedIn URLs, you can enrich your data using Clay’s built-in LinkedIn profile scraper or third-party tools like Evaboot, Findymail, or Snovio.

3. Enrich with “Full Profile” (1 credit) and add LinkedIn Headline and LinkedIn Summary columns (education column optional).

4. Then add a column (“Use AI”) and create your custom AI prompt (example below)

5. Then use the latest model of Claude (currently 3.5 Sonnet) or ChatGPT (currently 4o) (3 credits or use APIs to save $)

6. Test prompt on ~10 records a few times before you run it on all

7. When pleased with results, run on full list

8. When done, import CSV file to Instantly to send out emails

How to Set Up AI-Powered Personalization in Clay

Here’s some extra details on how to do this right…

1. Building a High-Quality ABM Lead List

To get started, you need a highly targeted Account-Based Marketing (ABM) list in Clay, ListKit, Lusha, Adapt, ZoomInfo, Seamless or a similar tool with the following data:

• Full Name

• Job Title

• Company Name

• LinkedIn URL

• Work Email

If you don’t have LinkedIn URLs, you can enrich your data using Clay’s built-in LinkedIn profile scraper or third-party tools like Evaboot or FindEmail.

2. Generating AI-Personalized Openers

Once your ABM list is loaded into Clay, here’s how to personalize at scale:

1. Import Your Lead List – Upload your ABM list into Clay.

2. Enrich Profiles – Use Clay’s data enrichment to extract insights from LinkedIn summaries, company websites, and headlines.

3. Craft Your AI Prompt – The magic happens here. Your prompt should be detailed and specific to generate high-quality openers. Example:
   "Act as a top-tier cold email copywriter. Generate a compelling, two-sentence email opener using specific insights from the recipient’s LinkedIn profile. Make it engaging, natural, and unique."

   1. We give a full even longer prompt example below.

4. Choose the Right AI Model – Use Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) or ChatGPT 4.0 for the best results.

5. Run AI Generation – Clay will generate customized openers for every lead. You can do this on 1000 leads in about 20 minutes of background processing.

6. Export and Use in Email Campaigns – Once finalized, download your enriched lead list and import it into your email-sending platform (like Instantly, SmartLead, Apollo, Reply.io, Outreach, SalesLoft, etc.)

More Examples of AI Personalized Emails

To grow our SaasRise community membership, we reach out to CEOs and Founders of SaaS firms to invite them to join.

Below are examples of AI-generated subject lines, opening lines, and P.S. line, all generated by Claude Sonnet 3.5 based on the lead’s LinkedIn profile (Headline, summary, and education) using Clay and then sent with Instantly.

These types of messages, as you’ll see below, are currently getting us 5x the results of our non-AI personalized campaigns.

The first email looks like the following inside Instantly. 

What the email looks like before the mail merge variables are filled in from the table

These fields get mailed-merged when sent out, which turns into this final opening email…

This prospect responded very favorably to the reach out

We’re currently sending out invitations to 35,000 new leads per month (125,000 total emails due to there being 4 emails, 3 days apart, in our sequence) and the overall email strategy is generating 2/3rds of our new members.

The AI Prompt We Use to Get Great Results

When using AI (whether via Clay, Instantly, or directly on ChatGPT or Claude) you need to put in a prompt explaining what you want to get a good output.

Here’s the prompt we use. You can modify it for your target market and call to action. Play around with various options before you run it on all your leads. 

(Why do we give so much good stuff away, well, because we want you to join our community and take our next B2B SaaS Growth Program starting May 22, 2025)

#CONTEXT# Act as a great cold email copywriter designed to get these Software-as-a-Service CEOs to join our next weekly mastermind call. I am a peer to them, not a salesperson. I sold my SaaS business for $169M. I am a successful SaaS CEO and founder like them who is inviting them to join my private mastermind group focused on helping them grow their business faster and have an even more successful exit (sale) of their company. We already have 500 members in our community and based on their background they have qualified to join our community as well.


#OBJECTIVE# Write a compelling yet brief two sentence email opener for {{First Name}}, who is the {{Job Title}} at {{Company Name}}, demonstrating that you've done substantial research on them, reviewing their {{Headline}}, {{Summary}}, and {{Company Domain}}. Use specific facts or knowledge about {{First Name gained from their {{Headline}}, {{Summary}}, and {{Company Domain}}. Choose quirky or lesser known facts to highlight that you've done real research and so that your message is memorable and stands out. Be sure to invite them to join next week's growth mastermind call in the second sentence while building credibility by mentioning that I am also a SaaS CEO who exited my company for $169M and now I'm building a community of peers. Keep the email intro to a maximum of two sentences and 30 words.


#INSTRUCTIONS# 1. Research First Name's LinkedIn profile, focusing on their {{Headline}}, {{Summary}}, and {{Company Domain}} to gather unique insights. 2. Create an engaging and personalized email opener. 3. Use a tone that is entrepreneurial and casual, avoiding corporate jargon like leverage.


#EXAMPLES# Example Input: First Name: John, Job Title: CEO, Company Name: Tech Innovations, Headline: "Revolutionizing cloud storage," Summary: "Experienced leader with a passion for cutting-edge solutions.", Company Domain:"techinnovations.com" Example Output: "John, loved how Tech Innovations is democratizing cloud storage. I'm a fellow SaaS CEO and sold my last business for $169M--I'd love to have you join one of our upcoming SaasRise growth masterminds!"

The Results We Got After Switching to AI-Personalized Cold Email

The proof is in the pudding…

What results did we see after making the upgrade to AI-personalized cold email?

We saw clickthrough rates (CTRs) on our outbound prospecting email reach outs increase by 465% from a baseline of 2.0% without AI-personalization to 11.3% with AI personalization. Here are the actual results from within our Instantly account.

Our actual CTR on Instantly, before and after AI-personalization of the messages

After the initial emails go out, we send a short follow-up every 3 days for a total of 4 emails over 9 days (day 0, 3, 6, and 9).

If the prospect unsubscribes we don’t contact them again, but if they engage (click), we put them on a longer 15 email sequence (with long-form article content like this) designed to provide a LOT of free value to help demonstrate the value of joining the SaasRise growth mastermind community.

There are 450,000 SaaS CEOs and Founders globally (we know, we built a list of all of them) and so if we can reach 35,000 new leads per month, it will take us one year for us to reach out to all of them using personalized AI. We are working on ramping up our infrastructure so we can go faster.

Of the 35,191 cold SaaS CEO and founder leads we’ve reached out to over the last month, 3,976 CLICKED on at least one email (11.3% of the leads), resulting in 150 additional qualified applications to join our community per month and 30 additional paying SaasRise members (resulting in $336k in New ARR in just the last 30 days).

This means that in a 12 month period if we keep seeing the same results, this strategy will yield $4.03M in additional annual recurring revenue for our business.

So yes, this is working. 

Combining Cold Email With Digital Ads for B2B Brand Omnipresence

We recently passed 500 paying SaasRise members and people ask me how we’ve grown so quickly (we started the community just 18 months ago).

The answer: AI-personalized outbound + content + ads → all targeting the same ABM lead list.

AI cold email alone is helpful – but it’s cold email COMBINED with putting out GREAT CONTENT WEEKLY, and making your brand omnipresent through matched audience ads, retargeting ads, lookalike ads, and thought leadership ads THAT REALLY MOVES the needle.

1. Use AI-personalized cold email. Target sending to about 30k-60k new cold leads per month depending on the size of your ABM lead list.

2. Show these same people ads everywhere they go on the internet.

3. Put out great content (like this) once per week.

We’ve bootstrapped from $0 to $3.9M in ARR in 18 months using this content-led, invitation led strategy combined with retargeting ads, matched audience ads, and lookalike ads on Meta, LinkedIn, Google, and Adroll (plus some Thought Leadership boosted post ads on LinkedIn which work like jam on hotcakes).

Our ARR has gone from $0 to $3.9M in 18 months using this strategy

Outbound Campaign Costs 

We are spending about $5k per month on our cold email strategy. This breaks down as:

Expected costs to send out 125,000 cold AI-personalized emails per month

Here’s an Outbound Email Calculator you can copy and use that will estimate your costs and ROI depending on your volume.

Here is our Outbound Email Calculator you can copy and use that will estimate your costs and ROI depending on your volume.

Setting Up Instantly for High-Deliverability Email Sending

Why Use Instantly?

AI-personalized openers are half the battle—the other half is getting your emails delivered. Instantly allows you to send at scale while keeping deliverability high.

Step-by-Step Guide to Email Sending with Instantly

1. Setting Up Domains and Inboxes

Using your main domain for cold email? Big mistake. You need alternative domains to prevent email blacklisting.

1. Sign up for Instantly and select “Done-for-You Email Setup”

2. Purchase multiple sending domains – Example: getsaasrise.co, joinsaasrise.co, meetsaasrise.co

3. Create 5 inboxes per domain (Instantly’s limit per domain)

4. Set up domain forwarding

2. Enable Email Warm-Up

Before sending real emails, inboxes need to warm up (fake emails sent/received in a closed network to boost credibility).

1. Turn on email warm-up for each inbox

2. Run warm-up for 7-14 days before sending real emails

3. Monitor inbox placement – Ensure 70%+ land in the primary inbox (otherwise tweak settings).

3. Structuring a Winning Cold Email Sequence

A well-designed sequence maximizes responses:

• Email 1 (AI-Personalized Opener) – The hook

• Email 2 (Value-Driven Content) – Share a free report or webinar

• Email 3 (Short, Reply-Oriented Message) – Example: "Hey [Name], I’ve got a SaaS M&A report with 1,000+ data points. Want a copy?"

• Email 4 (Long-Form Thought Leadership) – Industry insights or case study

• Email 5 (Final Call to Action) – A soft check-in with a clear ask

4. Tracking Performance & Optimization

Inside Instantly, monitor these key metrics:

• Click-through rate (CTR) – Aim for 6-10%

• Reply rate – 1-5% is solid

• Bounce rate – Keep below 3%

Our Marketing ROI

Our total cost to generate ~$4M in additional ARR per year? 

Well we spend $34k in Sales & Marketing costs per month currently (of which we spend $5k on this cold email strategy and the rest on ads + sales team + software). So we’re turning $34k in S&M costs into about $336k in New ARR per month, a 10:1 ratio of ARR to S&M costs.

Anytime you’re generating $10 in ARR for every $1 on S&M spend, you’re onto something. Some firms are happy with $1 in ARR for $1 in S&M spend.

I like to look at the ROI in terms of the entire S&M strategy – as while cold email might generate the lead, it usually takes months of ads + warm email + SDR reach outs to actually get them over the finish line. 

Remember it’s multi-touch that closes the customer – not one particular channel. 

Final Thoughts

Cold email is not dead—but lazy, generic cold email is. AI personalization, combined with automated, high-deliverability sending, is the key to scaling outreach that actually gets responses.

Use Clay + Instantly to transform your outbound strategy, get more replies, close more deals, and grow your business faster.

🚀 Start implementing today and watch your results skyrocket!

I hope this guide helped! Let me know your thoughts, and I’ll see you next time with another deep dive.

Ryan

P.S. - If you want the full SaaS Growth Course, it’s free inside the SaasRise community. Apply to join here and start your two-week free trial today.

Join Our Community of SaaS CEOs & Founders

Thanks for reading. We hope this SaaS M&A Report 2025 has been helpful to you. Please take a moment to learn more about SaasRise, our community for SaaS CEOs and Founders. We welcome all CEOs and Founders with $1M-$100M in ARR to join us. We hold three masterminds each week for our members and provide an in-depth library of SaaS growth, fundraising, and exit resources. You can apply here.

We’re now up to 500 members in SaasRise, representing over $3B in ARR

See you next week with more killer SaaS scaling content!

Join Our Community for SaaS CEOs at $1M+ in ARR

If you like this type of content, please apply to join SaasRise our community for SaaS CEOs with $1M-$100M in ARR here. It’s a mastermind community of growth-focused SaaS CEOs. Membership is $197 per month – but might just be the difference between your firm making it across the chasm and getting to a successful nine figure outcome from a PE firm or strategic acquirer.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, join the SaasRise community at www.saasrise.com for even more helpful growth content and weekly SaaS CEO masterminds.

About The Author

We’ll see you next time with more great SaaS growth and scaling content!