Top 7 Cold Email AI Tools & How to Use Them to Scale Your Outreach

Why should coders have all the fun?

So many professionals now use AI daily that it’s become impossible to separate it from work life.

But AI is not just for coding, content writing, or debugging.

Why? Because I have used some cold email tools that have used AI to make cold emailing efficient and more impactful.

Using them will make you feel like the owner of a factory that runs on your command.

Interested? Good – here’s a lineup that will save your skin in your next quarter meet.

What Is the Role of AI in Cold Emails?

Limitation does not exist in marketing.

And when it comes to AI, startups didn’t hold back any punches.

In the last two years, so many features were rolled out related to cold emailing and sales prospecting, which is now saving hours of tedious work.

How? I’ll explain.

See, earlier I used to find potential leads, bucket (categorize) them as per the buying intent, and then send automated cold emails.

Now – I let AI do the work while I sit back and see results.

I’m not kidding. Here’s what I do.

I use AI to define my ICPs and buyer persona. (Honestly, it does a better job than most marketers)

After that, I feed the buyer persona and ask AI to find potential prospects from the lead database and bucket them.

Then again, I use AI to send personalized cold emails. This improves my chances of getting positive replies as I have customized my outreach as per their needs.

Bonus: This helps me improve my email deliverability and build a good sender reputation.

PS. This is done by professionals, don’t try this at home!!

But how do I do it? – Of course, with the help of tools. (Which I am sharing below)

7 Cold Email AI Tools You’re Probably Overlooking

1. Saleshandy (Recommended)
2. Lemlist
3. Instantly.ai
4. Klenty
5. Reply.io
6. Outreach.io
7. Apollo.io

1. Saleshandy

Saleshandy is an AI-assisted cold outreach platform to generate more leads and grow your business.

User Ratings

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (650+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (125+ reviews)

How Saleshandy Works?

Cold emailing has multiple stages, but is there a tool to help you with AI in all of those stages?

The answer is yes. Why?

Because Saleshandy helps you from creating your first email sequence to managing replies – all with automation and AI.

Here’s how.

When you’re creating your cold email sequence, the AI checks your email copy to see if it could be flagged as spam by ESPs (Email Service Providers).

Then, it suggests what you can do to follow the best practices.

Also, Saleshandy recently launched a feature that will help you create multiple email variants with AI (with personalization). All you have to do is feed it in one email with all your USPs (Unique Selling Points).

But it does not end here. Saleshandy helps you improve your email deliverability with AI.

Here’s what it does. The AI detects if your email is rejected by ESPs and automatically pauses emails from that account. This helps you avoid ruining your sender’s reputation.

Bonus – You also get AI reply management,

• Your replies get categorized by AI into Interested, Meeting Scheduled, Booked, Not Interested, and more.
• If AI detects an out-of-office auto-reply, it delays the following scheduled follow-up email by 24 hours from the expected return date.

The best part? You can even check urgent replies from your phone with the Saleshandy mobile app.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Outreach Starter – $25/month
  • 10K emails/month + 100 Lead Finder Credits
• Outreach PRO – $74/month
  • 125K emails/month + 500 Lead Finder Credits
• Outreach Scale – $149/month
  • 250K emails/month
• Outreach Scale Plus – $219/month
  • 350K emails/month

PS. Saleshandy offers unlimited email warm-ups (at no extra cost).

For more details, check Saleshandy pricing.

2. Lemlist

Lemlist is a cold outreach platform that enables you to reach out to potential prospects via multiple channels.

User Ratings

G2: 4.5/5 ⭐ (260+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (380+ reviews)

How Lemlist Works?

The cool thing about Lemlist is that its AI features help improve your outreach performance.

You can launch AI-powered email and LinkedIn campaigns with just a few prompts. Plus, it supports multiple languages (currently, you can create campaigns in eight different ones).

There’s one small limitation. You can create a maximum of 20 AI campaigns per day.

Lemlist’s AI also helps you create custom merge tags so that you can have highly personalized merge tags.

For example, you can tell the AI to analyze your prospects and give you pain points relevant to them.

This can help you create some really good icebreakers.

For better clarity, I have covered Lemlist reviews seprately.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Free Plan: $0
• Email Pro: $55/month
• Multichannel Expert: $79/month
• Enterprise: Custom plan

3. Instantly.ai

Instantly is a sales engagement and lead intelligence platform that helps you to scale your outreach campaigns.

User Ratings

G2: 4.8/5 ⭐ (3520+ reviews)
Capterra: 3.8/5 ⭐ (5+ reviews)

How Instantly.ai Works?

Its AI features primarily help you improve email deliverability and conversion rates.

One of the best AI features of Instantly is its AI sequence generator.

All you have to do is give a detailed prompt, and you will get a whole sequence in no time.

This helps you create personalized emails and improve your engagement rate in addition to improved email deliverability.

That’s the first part of Instantly’s AI features.

There is a next set of AI features that help you manage replies smartly.

The first is Automated Labeling. It checks your replies and labels your emails (which saves a ton of your time). It can understand more than 50 languages.

In addition to this, Instantly also came up with AI-generated suggestions when you are trying to reply.

This helps you wind up the replies in nearly half of the usual time.

Check out Instantly reviews for more details.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Growth: $30/month
• Hypergrowth: $77.6/month
• Light Speed: $286.3/month

4. Klenty

Klenty is a sales engagement platform that is made to automate and optimize cold outreach across multiple channels.

User Ratings

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (1,300+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.7/5 ⭐ (150+ reviews)

How Klenty Works?

Klenty’s AI helps you improve every step of outreach. Here’s how it works.

When you set up your campaign, Klenty’s AI Writer (Ask Kai) helps you create hyper-personalized emails.

All you need to do is provide prompt details about your business and prospects.

The AI will skim multiple data sources and find information that will help you personalize your outreach.

When it comes to email deliverability, Klenty’s AI warms up your domains and email addresses with a varied sending volume and frequency.

Why does this work? 

Because they avoid the usual patterns that normal email warmup platforms do.

Plus – Klenty’s AI reply management categorizes responses (e.g., Interested, Not Interested) to prioritize follow-ups.

There is one small issue, though. Some users have reported that the AI Writer’s prompts can take time to understand and learn. Also, the platform’s extensive features might feel overwhelming for those who want a simpler cold email tool.

If you are considering Klenty, but prefer easy-to-use tool, then check out Klenty alternatives.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Startup: $50/month
• Growth: $70/month
• Pro: $99/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

5. Reply.io

Reply.io is an AI-powered platform that can automate and scale your cold outreach across multiple channels.

User Ratings

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (1,300+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (100+ reviews)

How Reply.io Works?

Reply.io helps sales reps take cold outreach to the next level by combining AI automation with multi-channel.

Talking about emails, Reply.io allows you to create AI variables so that you can personalize your email outreach for each of your prospects on the scale.

The AI is programmed to customize each message so that your recipients would feel that the email is custom-made. It’s even better if you prefer to build trust and connection.

The best feature of reply.io – Jason AI.

It’s an AI assistant that helps you generate personalized email sequences, handles responses, and books meetings autonomously.

Here’s what you need to do – Feed it a prompt about your business or target audience.

It will generate a full email sequence with personalized intros and follow-ups.

It even researches prospects to suggest relevant talking points, which can save hours of your manual tasks.

But of course, there is a special price for using AI SDR. Starting price – $300/month.

So, you’ll need to prioritize its use for larger or important campaigns.

Note: Since there are a lot of use cases when it comes to AI, there can be a short learning curve, but it’s all worth it!

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Starter: $49/month/user
• Professional: $89/month/user

Note: There are additional charges for multichannel outreach and Jason AI.

If you feel that its pricing is too extravagant, then you can check out some Reply.io alternatives.

6. Outreach.io

Outreach.io is a leading sales engagement platform that provides AI features to help sales teams close more deals efficiently.

User Ratings

G2: 4.3/5 ⭐ (3,400+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.4/5 ⭐ (300+ reviews)

How Outreach.io Works?

Outreach.io is built to handle the full spectrum of cold outreach. One can use it for prospecting as well as outreach.

And the best part – it has AI as its core driving mechanism.

Let’s start with its Smart Email Assist.

It uses AI to create personalized emails by pulling insights from your past (successful) interactions with prospects.

You have the freedom to tweak the tone, length, or any variable to fit your email feel more human.

Plus, it integrates with tools like Salesforce and HubSpot so that you can sync data to keep your outreach aligned with your CRM.

The best part – The sentiment analysis reads replies and sorts them into categories. It helps you prioritize hot leads and reply to them sooner.

The catch? Outreach.io’s pricing isn’t transparent.

Note: Outreach.io is not suited for small teams or those new to cold outreach because it has a steep learning curve.

Pricing

You’ll need to request a quote, and it’s rumored to start at $20k/year, which makes it a hefty investment.

7. Apollo.io

Apollo.io is a B2B sales platform (powered by AI) that is meant to help businesses find, engage, and convert prospects through AI-powered cold outreach.

User Ratings

G2: 4.5/5 ⭐ (4,500+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (300+ reviews)

How Apollo.io Works?

Apollo.io combines a massive B2B database with AI-driven outreach tools to streamline the entire sales process.

Its major forte in emails is the AI Writing Assistant.

You simply have to input a prompt and let it find your ICPs from its lead database. It can then score the leads and create highly personalized emails with the help of AI.

It even suggests tweaks to avoid spam filters, which indirectly boosts your email deliverability.

The catch? There is a limitation for AI credits, so if you are a heavy user, then you might need to upgrade.

There’s one small issue.

The cost can climb fast if you need more credits or advanced features. If you want better option, then check out these Apollo alternatives.

But still, Apollo.io’s blend of data and automation makes it a strong contender in the market of cold emailing tools with AI.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Free Plan: $0
• Basic: $49/month/user
• Professional: $79/month/user
• Organization: $119/month/user

How to Create & Scale Cold Email Campaigns With AI?

Now that I have shared the necessary tools that can help you create and scale your cold email campaigns, the next step is to actually execute the process.

But how to use AI in the best possible way?

Well, it’s not that hard. But it requires a structured approach.

To clear the air, I am sharing my way of using AI for cold emails with some examples to get you started.

I will be covering it in the following three sections,

• Build Buyer Persona & Identify ICP With AI
• Find Leads (Who Match With Buyer Persona)
• Generate & Personalize Cold Emails With AI

1. Build Buyer Persona & Identify ICP With AI

There is a chance that you will get a marketing block when you are trying too hard to figure things out.

That’s where AI helps you to take a bird’s eye view of your situation. And in this case, it’s about the buyer persona and ICP.

For this, we will use the OG of AI – ChatGPT.

Here’s what you have to tell the AI,

• What is your business? What do you have to offer? or What problem does your product solve?
  For Example –We are a design agency, and we help businesses and startups create stunning websites, apps, and product wireframes that their customers will love. We also do market research and perform design audits. This helps brands that want to avoid hiring an in-house design team or want a consultant’s perspective.
• Ask it to create a buyer persona & ICP that would be interested in your offerings.
  For Example: Create a buyer persona who can benefit from our services.

This way, you can get a detailed buyer persona and ICP, which will help you with the lead-finding process.

If you invest time properly in creating a good buyer persona, you will spend less time reaching out blindly.

2. Find Leads (That Match With Buyer Persona)

Now, the next step is creating a high quality prospect list who you are confident in reaching out to.

All you need to do is, pinpoint your target audience.

Here’s how.

Step 1: Find a good lead database (You can use Saleshandy, which has 700M+ verified profiles)

Step 2: Check your ICP & buyer persona and keep adding filters until you find a group of audiences with similar pain points.

Step 3: Add those profiles to your sending list.

Now, you need to move to the next phase, ie. Create a highly personalized cold email that your recipients will engage with.

3. Generate & Personalize Cold Emails With AI

Cold emails need to get good engagement, or else ESPs will start thinking that you are just email-blasting to random people.

If you want to create highly personalized emails without wasting a ton of time thinking, then AI is your lifesaver.

But AI is not a vending machine that can give your desired output by just giving a few clicks.

You need to give a thoughtful prompt so that you get a good response.

For example, if you are a sales rep who works in a product-based startup, then you can try the following prompt.

ChatGPT Prompt 1:

I am a sales representative of XX company, and I want to create a cold email with 2 follow-ups for my recipients who are founders of funded startups and are building a product, website, or application. 
I want to sell them my company’s designing expertise. We can run design audits, create product wireframes, and more.

The above example was for a direct outreach to sell your product or services.

But what if you want to pitch a recent offer?

ChatGPT Prompt 2:

I am a sales representative of XX company (we have a product - cold emailing software) and I want to create a cold email with 3 follow-ups for my recipients who are SDRs. 
My intention is to sell the recent offer for the new year. It will focus on giving a 50% discount for yearly plans.

Starting Your Cold Emailing Journey With AI? Here’s a Tip

I have shared a list of the best AI tools for cold emails and ways to use them.

With this, you are capable of scaling your cold emails with AI.

Just keep one thing in mind. Keep editing those prompts and refine them over time to get better results.

FAQs

1. Can these cold email AI tools integrate with my existing CRM?

Absolutely, all the cold email AI tools mentioned in our blog can seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM systems. Saleshandy, Lemlist, and Instantly also offer native integrations with major CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, etc., allowing you to sync data in real time.

2. Is it worth investing in cold email AI tools?

Yes, it is worth investing in cold email AI tools. With these tools, you can find your ideal ICPs within minutes and send personalized emails at scale. This will automatically lead to higher open and response rates and ultimately generate more conversions, justifying the tool’s initial cost.

3. Are there any risks involved in using AI for cold emailing?

To be honest, there are no risks involved in using AI for cold emailing. Just make sure that you don’t directly send email copies created by AI, as they won’t be personalized. However, you can create multiple email copies using AI and then use features like Spintax or Merge Tags offered by tools such as Saleshandy to make your cold emails personalized.