Personalization or Automation?

Sooo need some help. We have recently implemented a new prospecting tool at our company and I'm in the pilot group for it, so I am expected to use it and tell everyone how great it is so they can make a case to buy more licenses. the only drawback I see with this tool is automated emails. are automated emails really the way to go?! I get way more responses when I personalize an email, though I know it takes significantly more time. thoughts??? success rate with automated tools realistically?? help !!! 
💌 Cold Emailing
💼 Productivity
🔎 Prospecting
13
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
5
☕️
Are you able to personalize the emails in the cadence/sequence before sending them? If so, do that, and you'll get the same benefits of personalization without the time suck of doing each of them as one-offs.
ragnarlothbrok
Politicker
2
Key account manager
What @poweredbycaffeine said, I think if you could find a nice mix of the 2 you would be winning with keeping the response rates up but minimizing the amount of time spent on the personalization aspects 
Chineek
1
Account Manager
Agreed with @poweredbycaffeine. Even just the option to add a name/company name in addition to the cadence is a huge plus. I know some programs allow you to edit emails to specific individuals as well, if you want to really personalize it. Picture being able to address 200 individuals with one click vs writing an email to all 200 individuals.
UrAssIsSaaS
Arsonist
4
SaaS Eater
If you are in a highly transactional role with short sales cycles, automate the shit out of it. If not, do what @poweredbycaffeine says. 
Diablo
Politicker
2
Sr. AE
Personalized Automation for me... I would still build a sequence with manual sends(in one or 2 steps) instead of auto sends (pre-drafted but I 'd tweak some parts to make it relevant). Little time confusing but probability of email getting read.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
2
🦊
If you can change the emails up to add info that would help a particular client then great. Otherwise I am not a fan of automated emails.
CaneWolf
Politicker
1
Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract
It depends on how many people/accounts we are talking about. The best answer for dozens of contacts vs thousands is gonna be different.
Money
Executive
0
Head of Sales
If you are hitting a massive (1000s) list of prospects and can afford most to be ignored as spam with the hopes of driving a handful of responses, then you can automate.
If have a refined list (like enterprise targeting) you will definitely want to be able to personalize the sequence to get any measurable hit rate.
cw95
Politicker
0
Sales Development Lead
Automation for cold initial (make the template a bit personal) then when warm use very personalised ones. 
ilovemondays
Executive
0
Senior Account Executive
Cold outreach cadences with only auto-emails averaged out at a 6% conversion rate in 2019 and 8% in 2020 while semi-auto  (personalize before send) averaged out 14% in 2019 and 26% in 2020.

Its a matter of what's the size of your ToFu and does the low conversion rate of automated ruin your pipeline in the long run or can your market support burning that many leads for an indefinite amount of time?

Also, do the leads you have convert well enough if you personalize that you can afford to spend the time doing so? Does the ACV/LTV/commission/ticket/whatever justify spending your time personalizing?

Should you instead be automating other parts of the sale rather than the Demand Generation?

Find leverage that does not kill you in the long term and use it.
LordBusiness
Politicker
0
Chief Revenue Officer
NO….NO…..NO….automation will get you a shit ton of unsubscribes and shitty responses. The secret sauce is personalization at scale. Anyone can do small volume personalization, any shitty bot can do automation. The great sellers figure out personalization at scale
SaaSyBee
Politicker
0
Founder
You can have both! I'd recommend using AI to personalize in bulk and then upload to your outreach platform via CSV and automate the sequences.

Warmer.AI is a good option. If you have the LinkedIn URLs for your prospects, you just upload them via a CSV and the AI automatically generates intro copy for each email. Then you just download that list and upload it into your outreach platform. 

There's also a direct integration with Mailshake if you're using that for your email automation.
deal_whisperer
Fire Starter
0
BDR
Not sure what tool you're testing (actually curious about that) but Sam Nelson is an absolute wizard with his cadences. Check out his blog, he's completely transparent with what they're using and what's working at Outreach (and at minimum, get familiar with the Agoge sequence). Not all prospects fit into one sequence, build out multiple with different balances of automation:customization -  https://samnelson.substack.com/p/agoge-sequence-example-copy
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17% Nah, email blast all the way!
6% Comments for any scalable tips
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