Outbound Sales Automation: Why (& How) to Start With AI

3 April 2023
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What is outbound sales automation?

Outbound sales automation uses advanced technology, often artificial intelligence (AI), to automate various tasks involved in outbound sales. These tasks include lead generation, appointment setting, lead tracking, and more. 

The extent to which you automate your outbound sales strategy depends on a few factors, like your company size, niche, and resources. For example, small businesses with limited resources may start by automating basic lead generation processes. But a larger company may use AI-based automation to predict customer behavior and send automated emails.

That said, sales automation tools have come a long way. 

They’re now more affordable and accessible to small business owners and allow scalable growth with limited budget. By automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, outbound sales automation can help sales teams become more efficient, productive, and profitable. 

Why automate your outbound sales efforts? 

There are many reasons why a company would automate their outbound sales efforts, including:

  • It's more efficient: Reduce the time and effort required to complete repetitive tasks like lead research and data entry through automation. In turn, sales reps can free up more time to focus on higher-leverage tasks like connecting with clients and building long-lasting relationships that ultimately increase profits. 
  • It's more consistent: Standardize how leads are contacted and tracked to ensure a more consistent experience for all your prospects. By automating tedious aspects of your team’s workflow with reliable software, fewer leads will slip through the cracks.  
  • It's more personalized: Personalize major portions of your customer journey with automated tools to increase sales and reduce churn. AI is the perfect solution for building personalized relationships with clients at scale.  
  • It's more affordable: Automation is a cost-effective solution as it saves time and resources on tasks that, before, would have needed manual intervention. These monotonous tasks, like data entry, lead research, follow-ups, etc., no longer require a mindless human grinding away. When you free up your team's time to focus on high-leverage activities, metrics like your LTV:CAC ratio.
  • It consistently improves your strategy: Many outbound sales automation tools come with powerful analytics dashboards that collect and analyze large amounts of data on your leads. This gives you actionable insights that improve your sales strategies, provide more accurate forecasting, and help you achieve sustainable growth. 

What parts of your sales funnel can you automate?

Cold outreach copywriting

Advances in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning have created powerful AI writing assistants. And many of these platforms allow you to automatically generate copy for your cold email outreach. 

More advanced tools, like Copy.ai, allow you to personalize the copy based on a user’s public data (such as their LinkedIn profile, for example). 

This can save your sales teams hundreds of hours each year as they struggle to personalize pre-written email templates. 

Plus, by leveraging technology over human intuition, you’ll make sure your copy is written consistently regardless of the sales rep. An AI copywriter gives new sales reps an advantage by empowering them to create, test, and optimize email copy like seasoned pros.   

Tools to automate sales outreach copy

1) Copy.ai

Copy.ai enables sales teams to quickly generate dynamic and personalized sales emails and content for outbound campaigns. It uses AI to create persuasive and engaging content tailored to each customer's needs.

While you can use the freestyle tool to create cold email templates for your team, you can have each sales rep take things a step further with Copy.ai’s Sales Cold Email tool

copy ai sales cold email generator tool step 1

Use LinkedIn to find your next prospect. Once you have, simply copy and paste their public LinkedIn URL into Copy.ai: 

copy ai sales cold email generator tool step 2

Next, describe your product or services: 

copy ai sales cold email generator tool step 3

And just like that, you’ll have a personalized email generated in seconds. Here’s the copy our software produced on the first try: 

Subject Line: Growth Marketing Success Story

Hey Nathan,

Between Animalz, Optinmonster, and Sphere, you’ve gathered an impressive background in copywriting, SEO, and growth marketing! And I'm sure you've faced the challenge of finding ways to create and optimize content that drives conversions. 

But I think I have a solution that could be the answer you’ve been looking for. 

Copy.ai is an AI writing tool that can quickly write effective sales emails for you, freeing up you and your team to focus on more important tasks. Plus, it integrates with your CRM and sales automation platform for complete outbound automation. 

I'd love to discuss this further with you and show you how Copy.ai could be the perfect solution for your growth marketing needs. 

Would you be available to chat sometime this week? 

But the best part is that you can scale your outbound efforts by integrating Copy.ai with your customer relationship management (CRM) software or your sales automation platform. That way, you can be sure to engage with the decision-makers you need to reach.

You can do this through Copy.ai's open API in minutes and without advanced technical knowledge. This functionality allows you to create outbound email/InMail message at scale once hooked up to your CRM:

send personalized outbound inmail messages to prospects with copy.ai

These messages are then sent and tracked through your CRM with everything on auto-pilot, giving more time back to your sales team to do what they do best: build meaningful human relationships that lead to more happy customers.

Try Copy.ai at zero-risk (no credit card required) and start generating personalized cold email copy at scale today.  

2) Rytr

Ryter is another AI writing tool that can generate cold emails for you in just a few clicks. It’s a good solution for teams who only need help with short-form content, as it doesn’t generate long-form articles. 

That said, if you need to create a few versions of cold emails to test for your sales outreach strategy, Rytr is an affordable option. Like many tools on the market, it supports multiple languages, has a built-in plagiarism checker, and lets you adjust the tone of the copy you generate. It also allows you to generate images that can supplement a social media strategy.

One drawback is that Rytr doesn’t personalize the output to a specific lead. That means you’ll need to use Rytr to create a generic sales template and have your reps personalize the copy as needed. 

3) Writesonic

Writesonic is a writing assistant that handles content for your sales and marketing teams. Like Copy.ai, Writesonic handles long and short-form campaigns, including cold emails for your sales team. 

That said, Writesonic bundles the email writing tool in their AI article generator (the portion of their software that handles long-form content). 

While this can be good for writing marketing emails—which are longer in nature—most veteran sales reps understand that the most effective cold emails are short, sweet, and personal.

You might want to pair their AI Article Writing tool with their Paraphrasing tool. That way, you can have Writesonic flesh out all your ideas, boil them down to the main key points, and edit your copy to be much shorter. 

Like Rytr, Writesonic doesn’t currently offer cold email personalization based on a specific lead. 

Lead generation 

Modern AI tools can help sales teams automate lead generation and increase conversion rates in several ways: 

  • Lead scraping: AI-driven lead scraping tools automatically extract valuable data from public websites, such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. This saves your sales team countless hours of mindless lead hunting day in and day out. 
  • Lead qualification: Identify high-quality leads by leveraging AI to do what it does best: analyze massive amounts of data. Prioritize your sales efforts by getting a window into your prospect’s social media activity, browsing history, and more. This guides your sales reps to qualified leads so they can work on getting new clients, faster. 
  • Email automation: Lead generation is a marathon, not a sprint. Getting a client to engage with your business usually takes more than one cold email. AI email automation tools will help you schedule, manage, and send timely follow-up messages to all your potential leads. 
  • Predictive sales: AI-powered predictive sales tools let sales teams predict which leads are most likely to convert into customers by analyzing a lead’s behavior, purchase history, demographics, and other key data points. This focuses your sales team’s efforts on the most valuable prospects and increases their chances of closing deals. 

Lead generation is one area of your sales funnel you don’t want to skimp on. Remember, even the best copy in the world won’t work if it isn’t reaching the right audience. 

Tools to automate lead generation 

4) Outreach.io

Outreach.io is a cloud-based sales engagement platform that helps sales teams connect with prospects and customers efficiently. It provides tools that enable sales teams to create personalized outreach campaigns, track engagement, and measure performance.

Outreach.io helps lead generation by enabling sales teams to create personalized campaigns targeting specific prospects, tracking engagement with those prospects, and measuring performance over time. 

This helps sales teams identify the most effective strategies for reaching out to and engaging with potential customers, which can ultimately lead to increased sales and revenue.

5) Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform that provides sales teams with the tools they need to engage with their prospects. 

It enables sales reps to automate their outreach, track customer engagement, and measure the impact of their efforts. With Salesloft, sales teams can ensure their outreach is effective and optimized, enabling them to confidently hit their sales goals.

Lead tracking

Lead tracking is one of the most valuable aspects of optimizing your sales funnel. It allows you to better understand your audience, their needs, and when it’s the right time to engage.

Automating your lead tracking efforts gives several benefits, including:

  • Lead management: AI-powered lead management tools help sales teams automatically update a contact or lead’s information, like activity history, lead status, etc. This gives a clear view of the lead’s journey as they progress through your sales funnel. 
  • Lead routing: Assign leads to the right sales rep based on factors like lead source, lead score, and the rep’s availability. This gives your new prospects a better user experience (UX) as it matches them with the best representative for their unique needs.
  • Customer churn prediction: Understand which customers are most likely to churn. Analyze data like customer behavior, purchase history, and demographics to get proactive and have reps reach out to at-risk accounts.
  • Actionable analytics: Optimize your team’s performance with actionable analytics from a user-friendly dashboard. See which sales rep is selling the most and which ones could use additional training. This will also help uncover where (and why) some leads are slipping through the cracks.  

While lead tracking is often out of scope for smaller businesses just starting with automation, it’s never been more accessible to teams on a light budget.     

Tools for lead tracking 

6) Hubspot

Hubspot is a powerful CRM with a suite of sales tools, including lead management/tracking. This platform helps teams identify which leads are likely to convert and provides them with actionable insights to create effective lead-nurturing campaigns. 

As one of the most widely used CRMs by sales teams across the globe, Hubspot is certainly a tool you can trust. With that in mind, at a certain point, Hubspot’s sales solutions can be out of budget for smaller companies, so you’ll want to evaluate your needs and resources before investing.

7) Salesforce 

Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that enables businesses to manage their customer data, sales, marketing, and customer service operations in one place. It helps organizations centralize and streamline their operations, making tracking and measuring customer interactions and interactions with employees easier.

As a sales tool, Salesforce is a more affordable option than Hubspot. That makes it more appealing to smaller companies on a limited budget.   

8) Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software designed to help sales teams close more deals by providing an easy-to-use system for tracking and managing sales. It provides tools for managing customer relationships, tracking leads, visualizing sales pipelines, and more. 

Want more? Check out this comprehensive list of sales automation tools.

How to implement outbound sales automation 

Implementing outbound sales automation will depend on the size of your company, as well as the resources available to your team.

  • Small businesses: Small businesses may have limited resources and may not have the budget for expensive automation tools. However, there are still a variety of low-cost options that can be used to automate outbound sales processes. This could include using CRM software to track leads, automating emails and follow-ups, and using automation to analyze customer data.
  • Mid-level companies: For mid-level companies, many low-cost solutions can be used to streamline processes, reduce manual labor, and free up resources so your team can focus on higher-value tasks. Additionally, automation can increase customer engagement and make the sales process more efficient and effective.
  • Large enterprises: Automation can streamline customer service, reduce manual processes, and reduce the time it takes to complete tasks. This can help businesses increase customer engagement, as customers can get their inquiries addressed quickly and can also help businesses save time and money on manual tasks.

One of the easiest ways to get started—regardless of your company’s size/resources—is with Copy.ai. 

Without knowing any code or having any technical experience, anyone on your sales team can create personalized emails in seconds. 

Plus, you can integrate Copy.ai with your CRM or sales automation software. This will allow you to automate nearly every part of your early sales funnel before new leads speak with a human rep. 

With outbound sales automation, your team can finally focus on building human connections with new accounts to help grow your business and better serve your customers. 

Ready to see it in action for yourself? Try Copy.ai free today (no credit card required) to see how easy it is to get started with outbound sales automation today.