Look…there’s no getting around it, you’re going to have to start using AI. And I don’t mean prompting ChatGPT every once in a while, I mean REALLY using AI. Exploring the multitude of powerful tools available to you, getting comfortable working with them, and making it part of your day-to-day. It’s not an option anymore, and it’s not a “bubble” that’s going to pop. It’s the future of work, and you need to prepare yourself for that future now or you’ll be scrambling to catch up to the early adopters in 6 months.
That said, there’s a difference between using tools and using them well. What good does 10x-ing your output do, if most of that output is bland and generic? You’d be much better off 2x-ing your output, but in a way that actually achieves results. And if you’re wondering how to accomplish that, well, you’ve come to the right place. This is the first in series of articles that aims to equip you with all of the knowledge and skills you need to thrive in our now AI-enabled world. In today’s post, we’ll be talking about how to properly leverage AI for personalized email outreach.
Knowledge Hub Media – A Leader In AI Innovation
Before we do that though, I wanted to give you a little bit of background information on who we are, and what we know about AI in Marketing. Knowledge Hub Media is a renowned B2B technology publisher, industry leading demand generation provider, and award-winning technology services platform. We’ve always had a strong focus on B2B marketing and advertising, and have spent the better part of the past 20 years designing and executing hugely successful demand generation campaigns for many of the top companies in tech.
While that’s still a huge part of what we do, in 2019, we began branching out a bit. We’ve since evolved into a full-fledged generative AI, predictive intent data analytics, and B2B SaaS technology company. And just recently, we were named the 2026 Global 100 winner for Best Data Processing & Technology Platform in the United States, in large part due to our proprietary AI lead generation technology. You’ve probably seen YouTube videos of people using AI and automation platforms to generate “leads” via API calls, but they’re not really leads per se. They’re just spreadsheets filled with scraped contact information. There’s no actual interest, and no real intent behind them.
Here at Knowledge Hub, we do things differently. We’re using AI to enrich our data, optimize our targeting, drive better engagement, strengthen messaging, and elicit genuine interest from motivated buyers. In essence, we’re generating authentic demand for our partners, not recycling scraped email addresses. The point of all of this is, we know a thing or two about how to utilize AI the right way, and we’ve been doing it for a long time now.
The Main Event – How To (and How Not To) Personalize Outreach
So let’s get into it, how do you leverage AI to automate personalization? Well, the short answer is, you don’t. And more than that, you can’t! Automation isn’t personal, and AI agents aren’t people. If you rely on mass-produced, LLM generated “personalized” emails, you end up with a bunch of, “Hey {name}, I read your LinkedIn post about {topic} and we share a similar interest. You should buy my company’s completely unrelated product!”
Anybody who reads this knows it isn’t authentic. And if the first message they get from you is a lie, how are you ever going to convince them that your brand is trustworthy, or that your solution is worth investing in? Throwing a bunch of slop against the wall and hoping some of it sticks is not a viable business strategy, and especially not when it comes at the expense of your hard-won reputation. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use AI to help you do things better and more efficiently!
The actual personalization part of the equation is better left to you, but what about everything that comes before? It can take hours to properly research a B2B contact. You need to know who they are, what they do, what their role is and what they’re working on. You need to know who their company is, what their values are, and what products or solutions they sell. You need to internalize all of this, and come up with a reason to reach out. What does your company have to offer that the contact might be interested in, and why?
This is where the AI comes in! Build out an automation workflow that takes in a contact’s name and company, researches them both in depth, and feeds the info into an AI agent. Connect it to a knowledge base that details all of your services and value propositions. Prompt it to write up a report of everything that you need to know about the contact and their company, and ask it to provide some suggestions for which of your offerings they might want to learn more about.
You’ll spend 10 minutes reading through everything instead of all morning searching the ends of the internet for all of the necessary information; and all afternoon wracking your brain, trying to figure out how the various pieces of the puzzle fit together. Let AI help with the tedious, time consuming groundwork, and maybe even have it scaffold out a rough email draft. Then you (a person) can take over and provide the human element.
Wrapping It All Up
In summary, personalization only works if a person is doing it. Otherwise, your efforts (or lack thereof) come across as disingenuous at best, and slop at worst. But there’s a lot of difficult work that needs to be done before you can even begin to write a well-personalized message, and that’s where AI truly shines! Have it streamline your behind-the-scenes research and planning, and then step in to add your personal touch where you need it most. You’ll end up with a much more authentic message, and you’ll get there a lot faster than doing it the old fashioned way!
