With so many Ai writing tools on the market, it might be hard to decide which one would be best for your business and if it’s even really worth it.
Is automation the way to go or does human written personalization still take the cake?
In order to answer this question, we decided to test out Smartwriter and see how it compared to real-life human engagement. Can prospects really not tell the difference? Is it worth paying for?
Is it time to throw in the towel as personalization writers for outreach and let machines take over?
This is what we found.
What is Smartwriter?
Smartwriter.ai is a personalization tool that helps companies write personalized Linkedin outreach messages or personalized emails for cold email outreach.
It does this by simply taking information off someone’s website, or Linkedin profile and automatically generating that information into a personalized message, ie: icebreakers.
For example, we took Salesbread’s website, added it to the URL section, and below is an example of an icebreaker, that Smartwriter generated for us.
(Just a side note: In the icebreaker message that Smartwriter wrote for Salesbread, it mentions that we help clients get more qualified leads with SEO. Unfortunately, this is not correct. We will get into more detail below.)
Smartwriter also generates personalized messages for:
- Backlink personalizations
- Contextual pitches
How does it work?
As mentioned above, Smartwriter takes data from a website, or Linkedin profile and then converts it into personalized AI content.
It then writes an intro paragraph for personalised Linkedin outreach or cold email campaigns.
How much does it cost?
Smartwriter offers various pricing, from a basic plan to a pro plan. You could either pay monthly or yearly with an 18% discount.
There is also a free trial which you can sign up for, to make sure that it’s worth your time and money.
What did we find? – Case Studies with teardowns.
Example 1:
“Hi David, your company CipherTrace 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’ve done a lot of consulting work which has been really educational for you both professionally and personally, it’s really great to hear how much you enjoy it!”
As you can see above this message was generated from David’s About page on Linkedin.
Let’s tear it down
At a quick glance, the message seems as if a human has written it. It would be very difficult to tell if this was machine-generated at first glance. It mentions the prospect’s name, as well as what they have been doing with regard to their work.
BUT what we noticed is that the message is not specific. It doesn’t mention exactly what “amazing work” the prospect has been doing. Yes, it does mention economic growth and security, but it is still too broad.
Another thing that we noticed is that in the Ai-generated message, it says that David has done a lot of consulting work, but when we looked at his Linkedin social media page, there was nothing on it that mentioned consulting.
Therefore, this could be an awkward message to send if you didn’t check that the prospect actually did consulting work beforehand.
If the info in the message is incorrect and you haven’t checked, it could burn your entire message and mess up your outreach campaigns.
But we did like the ending of the message where it engaged the recipient by saying “It’s really great to hear how much you enjoyed it.” You wouldn’t expect this from an AI copywriting tool.
Example 2:
“Saw your recent post on LinkedIn about blockchain and cryptocurrency, and I love the way you mentioned the need for more data on cryptocurrency transactions, it’s really important since it’s such a new thing. “
Let’s tear it down
With this message, we needed to edit it a little in order for it to make a better impact, but what we do like about Smartwriter, is that it does the research for you. All you need to do is double-check and edit what works and what doesn’t in the message.
It wouldn’t be a good idea to generate these messages and send them out, before having a human set of eyes checking that they make sense. But this tool could save a lot of time when it comes to research, which might be worthwhile.
Example 3:
“I love that you’ve read The Execution Factor and it has changed your outlook on life. It’s an awesome book and I know that it will prove to be very helpful for you.”
Let’s tear it down
At a quick glance, this message was supposedly generated from the prospect’s recent activity on Linkedin.
This message might seem a bit condescending as it says “I know this book will prove very helpful for you”, but on taking a deeper look when we looked at Eli C’s Linkedin profile, there was no mention of the book “The Execution Factor.”
This could be a real problem because if your content generator is producing info that’s incorrect, then it can really affect the results of your lead generation campaigns.
People might be very confused as to what you’re talking about or offended that you’re wasting their time, writing things that are just not true.
Our takeaway from the above examples –
Do robots work?
Smartwriter could save time in the sense that you might not have to do tons of in-depth research on each prospect.
But the problem comes in when some of the content produced is incorrect. You will really need to check everything in the message and edit it so that it is correct and well written.
We found that some of the messages might also come across as condescending towards the prospect.
(Which could be a major problem when it comes to sales email… You don’t want to irritate a prospect.)
So having a human set of eyes on these messages, will be important for it to be a success and to increase your reply rates.
Messages that don’t really capture a person’s attention, or that are incorrect will affect your conversion rates negatively.
Yes, it is incredible that a machine is able to generate messages for prospects, and it sounds pretty legit.
In most cases, you wouldn’t even be able to tell that an AI writing tool wrote the messages for you, which is great.
But the trick is to find the balance. It can come in handy, by saving you time on research, but it can also cause issues if the messages are not checked.
By using both AI content creation along with human written personalization, you could find the winning recipe to make your personalized email campaigns or Linkedin campaigns a success.
Pros and Cons Quick List
Pros
- Can help speed up research
- Can’t really tell if it has been written by an AI writing tool
- It can help give you some ideas about what to write, especially if you have writer’s block.
Cons
- Some of the information generated in the messages are incorrect, meaning that you have to double-check the info.
- Because the message has been written by a machine, it might come across as condescending, or random.
- Some of the messages were slightly long.
What’s the verdict?
If you are an entrepreneur who would like to use ai writing tools for your outreach campaigns, it could come in handy, but making use of an outbound agency that specializes in human written personalization and outreach might be the best way to go.
Why?
Well, they will make sure that each message is perfectly written and not just some generic template. The information will be correct and bound to capture the attention of your prospect.
Not only will Salesbread follow up with your prospects, but we can also book meetings for you. All you need to do is close the sale. Contact us today for our done-for-you lead generation package, guaranteeing 1 lead per day.