Contact scraping is an integral part of just about every business’ operation. Without it, brands both big and small can struggle to supercharge not just their list of prospective clients, but of actual clients. The question is: Why don’t more companies use it effectively?
Once upon a time, the contact scraping process itself was the primary issue. It was tedious and/or opaque. There was a barrier for entry to understanding and executing it. That is not a problem anymore. In fact, contact scraping is easier than ever. You can check out IGleads, and every step of compilation is done for you.
Nowadays, the problem comes after contact scraping. So many businesses have no earthly idea how to make the most of the prospective-client list they’ve just amassed.
The use of artificial intelligence to send out mass emails has exacerbated this issue. But it is also part of the solution.
The Biggest Mistake People Make When Using AI for Cold Emails
The largest problem businesses run into when automating cold emails can be summed up using one word: personalization. Swathes of text written by large language models sound more human than ever, but they are also overtly generic.
Even if people cannot tell the email they’re receiving is written by AI, a vanilla-sounding subject line or intro can fast-track their decision to hit the “mark as spam” button.
Multiple studies and thinkpieces have shown that AI-generated sentences and email structures are too formulaic. It isn’t just that the subject matter fails to catch peoples’ attention. It’s that they may have seen similar, if not identical, framing before.
Remember, you are not the only one using AI to capitalize on your post-contact-scraping process. Other corporations and small businesses are doing the same. You must figure out a way to stand out.
This is true now more than ever. Not only are cold emails more important than ever to business models in the digital age, but entrepreneurs, marketers, advertising agencies, etc. are up against plummeting response rates.
Just two years ago, the average response rate on cold emails was around 6.8 percent. That number has dipped to 5.8 percent for the first half of 2025. This equates to almost a 15 percent decline in the span of less than 24 months.
3 Tips to Stand Out When Using AI for Cold Emails
1. Personalize, personalize, personalize
If you are already using a service to scrape contacts, chances are the software will let you group your contacts into buckets based on personal details included as part of the process.
You have access to information such as which industry they work in, their specific job title and even their recent browsing history.
Use these details to your advantage. Figure out a way to work them into the subject line, as well as the first one to two lines of the body.
This invariably lets you send out fewer emails at once, but you can still group contacts into large groups if you sort them by job title or data-driven interest (i.e. people who visited custom t-shirt websites in the last 30 days.)
2. Modify AI Prompts
Your LLM of preference will do a great job crafting a clean email body relative to the personalized details from above that you input. However, it’s still important that you inject your own flair or voice into the email.
Does your company branding use a certain lighthearted tone? Is it looking to strike a more severe or hyperbolic theme?
Do you want to include certain punctuations for emphasis, such as the use of exclamation points or italics?
These details are still best handled by you, or one of your employees. Editing an AI-driven email for a large body of contacts even slightly increases the chances that yours gets opened—not to mention past any spam filters.
3. Including Call-to-Action…with a Twist
Whatever product or service you’re selling, make sure you set up email recipients to act on it. However, we are past the age of ensuring there is a “simple request” at the end of each pitch. Instead, you want to set up “one-touch” options.
Consider this like a call-to-action button or link. Really, it is anything that allows clients to take the next step with a single click.
While most of these CTAs take the form of directing recipients to a website, plenty of AI technologies can close out emails with a one-click link that calls your company, or that even sends an automatic response inquiry on the recipient’s behalf.
Playing around with this specific tool is important. In the end, it could be the difference between getting new business, and missing out on it entirely.
