Are bots taking over?
If you have nightmares of I-Robot happening in real life…
Don’t panic just yet.
Yes, Ai definitely has a place in society and is making our lives easier in many ways.
For example, if you lack the time to write personalized cold emails or Linkedin outreach messages, you might be wondering if investing in AI could simplify your workflow.
Perhaps, even bring in more qualified leads because it might help you reach out to more prospects.
But with some research and real-life examples, we have seen that even though Ai is helpful, it’s not quite there just yet.
Especially with regard to sales personalization.
In this article, we will chat about if personalization ai-powered tools are worth purchasing and specifically about Lyne.ai.
But first…
Is Personalization Ai Worth it? – Yes and No
Let’s start off with reviewing a one-year-old first-line Ai personalization sentence. This message was probably written for the founder of a company.
Here is what an AI tool wrote a year ago:
“Hi, David. Your company #### is making an impact in areas that are necessary for economic growth and security. What you’re doing is a real game-changer! I also noticed that you do a lot of consulting work, which has been really educational for you both personally and professionally. It’s really great to hear about how much you enjoy it!”
Mouthful right?
Here’s another intro, written a year ago by Ai…
“It’s great to see you’re in the strategy and execution business, as these are two major skills I value highly. You also mentioned that your work has a focus on financial models and synthetic portfolios, which is something that I’m very interested in. I look forward to talking more about your work with you.”
We can flat-out say that this second personalized message written by Ai is pretty bad. (Okay… Really bad)
So if you used AI a year ago, it was at your own risk. (Especially if you didn’t check each message to make sure that it made sense.)
It would be better to use AI as a starting point and then add more from there.
But something we also noticed with many Ai tools is that they tell you things that you already know.
So oftentimes these messages add no value to the reader.
Example:
“I see you’re the founder of XYZ and you have been in the business for 30 years… etc etc”
But if the tool had to say something along the lines of:
“I really enjoyed your TED Talk on XYZ. This (specific point) resonated with me.”
It would have a greater impact than just stating facts.
Why?
Because people like knowing that you watched their TED talk AND that it resonated with them.
So all in all this isn’t the best personalization.
But let’s compare it to what ai wrote a year later and see if machine learning evolved and got better.
Here’s what an AI tool wrote a year later… Did it evolve and get better?
Note, we asked a few different tools to write a personalized intro line. The personalization is based on Linkedin profiles.
Example from Ai tool 1:
“Jack, I’m positive that you’re an amazing mentor. Thanks for all the advice that you’ve given me.”
Example from Ai tool 2:
“Jack, Mark had many good things to say about you on Linkedin. Especially your strong networking skills and expertise. I bet that you are really good at meeting new people and helping them be more successful.”
Both these messages come across as really odd.
These messages are very much in line with the message that was written a year ago. The only real difference is that the messages are shorter, which is good.
Example from Ai tool 3:
“Hey, Jack. I came across your podcast and I’m intrigued to know about how you help sales teams book more meetings with decision-makers. You have a great understanding of how to engage with people and create connections with them. I’d love to hear more about your experience with closing sales.”
As you can see this last AI-generated message was pretty damn good. It hit the nail on the head.
The only problem is that it’s too long.
Example number 3 seems like a human could have written it.
We, unfortunately, can’t make a recommendation on which artificial intelligence tool is the best because most of them are pretty much across the board.
Occasionally you will get a really good hyper-personalized message but unfortunately, most of them are still odd; You can see that it hasn’t been written by a human.
So is it time to start firing humans and let robots take over?
Not yet…
These tools are pretty cheap compared to hiring an SDR but at SalesBread we will never not have a human handle personalization.
Why?
Because It’s just too important to hope that Ai gets it right.
Ai is coming along, but it’s not 100% there yet.
It would be wiser to start with researching the prospect.
Either by checking their Linkedin profile, or Googling their company and having a trained expert write proper personalized outreach messages.
It’s not to say that Ai can’t speed up the process, these tools can save time by cutting out the amount of time that you need to do in-depth research.
But we suggest always having a human check the information and make sure that the messages make sense.
Machines can make mistakes, and when they get it wrong it will affect your positive response rates.
Pros and cons of Ai personalization tools
Pros
- They can speed up research and save you some time
- Most are pretty affordable
- If you have writer’s block it can offer some inspiration on what to write
- With some of the better tools, you can’t tell if a machine has written the messages or a human.
Cons
- Sometimes the information generated by these tools is incorrect – So you have to double-check the messages being written.
- Because the messages have been written by ai, they might come across as odd or random.
- The messages are usually way too long.
Now that, that’s covered… Let’s chat about Lyne.ai
Lyne.ai is a personalized intro writer for your cold email campaigns.
You can also use it to build a list of prospects off Sales Navigator and scrape Linkedin profiles
This ai model can help salespeople write more than 500 intro lines for personalized emails per hour.
How does it work?
Once you sign up and log in, this will be the screen that you see:
You can use their Chrome extension to find contact details from Sales Navigator.
Or you can use your own data from tools such as Apollo and manually add that data in the “Use my contacts” section.
Once you have your data, you can start creating “Lynes”.
You have 2 options:
Either:
- “No-Touch Lynes”
or
- “Classic Lynes”.
No Touch Lynes is where your entire campaign is run on autopilot.
This means that there will be no manual checking and it will be based on Linkedin profiles only.
Whereas Classic Lynes are hyper-personalized with only a 5% error rate.
You can then check which Lynes you want to swap out if there are any errors.
Next, you will need to upload a CSV file of your prospects.
You will then be directed to this page:
This is where you can choose your sales personalization settings.
Here you can click where you would like the personalization sources to come from.
You can either choose personal sources, company sources, or both.
Based on these sources an intro will be written. There are a few more steps to the process, which you can see in their demo, where their co-founder talks you through all the steps.
In the end, you will receive a document like this:
Lyne also offers integrations with various tools, such as the ones listed below.
Pricing
Lyne has a free option, as well as a paid option. You could either pay monthly or annually with a 20% discount.
You can also choose the amount of Lynes you want per month, but this will obviously increase the price.
Then they also have the option of using their Linkedin Scraper.
Lyne.ai Reviews
The reviews for this article have been taken from g2.com out of 5 stars Lyne.ai received 4.5.
This is what some users had to say:
As you can see the reviews differ quite a lot. And as we mentioned at the outset of this article, Ai tools can be useful but they aren’t perfect just yet.
What’s the conclusion?
Whether you use Ai or not is entirely up to you.
In some cases, these tools can make your workflow faster because the research is being done through automation. (Interested in comparing tools? Read our article on Smartwriter.)
BUT it’s always wise to check each Lyne to make sure that they make sense.
Prospects are more inclined to reply if they sense it’s a human on the other end of a computer.
When prospects think that it’s the same random spammy message being sent to everyone else, your open rates and cold outreach efficiency are going to suck.
So just remember, that if you want to use Ai, take a bit of time to have a human check the “ice breakers”, this will make sure that the messages make sense and that the information is correct.
(Wondering what a lead generation agency like SalesBread can do for your personalization and sales outreach? Book a free strategy call below to find out.)