Learning how to best leverage AI outreach tools can help you streamline your sales workflows.
In this article, we’ll cut through the AI buzz to talk about what really matters—closing those deals. We’ll explore how AI can help with cold outreach and give you our picks of some of the best AI outreach tools available at the moment. We’ll also take a look at some tips for making sure you hit the ground running with implementation.
First up, let’s examine the role for AI in cold outreach.
AI and cold outreach: Helping you save time, personalize at scale & more
Using AI for sales outreach delivers a wide range of big-picture benefits beyond all the obvious immediate upsides of implementing conversational intelligence tools.
Here are some of the top advantages companies using AI for outreach gain when they incorporate it into their workflows:
Save time through automation
Research by lead generation specialists Belkins demonstrated that sending a follow-up email boosts reply rates by 49%.
Though it’s one of the most time-consuming element of a sales rep’s job, outreach AI agents have streamlined this process. The best AI-based outreach tools can automate email sequences and reminders, so that you never miss a follow-up.
You can even configure your outreach AI agent to detect when an email is opened, so it can trigger a follow-up reminder in near real-time. Overall, the time savings you get by implementing AI automation really add up for your team, freeing them to focus on more high-level tasks.
Make better data-driven decisions
Many businesses are missing opportunities to make the most out of the data they collect. Manually analyzing huge datasets is very time-consuming, and most companies don’t have the staff to spare.
Analyzing huge datasets is exactly where AI comes into its own. And using techniques like predictive analytics, it can generate much more nuanced insights than more traditional systems do.
Based on these insights, you’ll be able to make more effective data-driven decisions to boost your company’s sales performance.
Personalize at scale
You’ll see a lot of figures out there claiming that personalization is always a winner. But an interesting 2023 study by independent researchers Tekila Harley Nobile and Lorenzo Cantoni found that the reality is more nuanced.
In particular, the following contextual factors seem to be crucial:
- Decision-making stage of the customer
- Whether the customer data used is collected openly or not
- The customer’s age (younger people favor personalization more, on average)
Personalization is more effective with customers who are already engaged. But it still works for cold outreach as long as it feels sincere to the customer and doesn’t come across as a box-ticking exercise.
The great thing about using an AI sales agent is that it has the capability to retain the personal touch at scale. Thanks to its ability to analyze large datasets fast, it can generate personalized messaging that’s completely relevant to each target customer.
Ensure compliance
Most companies operate within some form of regulatory framework. Some organizations, in industries such as healthcare or finance, have very specific compliance needs. Making sure all messaging is compliant with any relevant regulations is therefore a key focus.
AI outreach tools can be configured to ensure all your brand messaging across different platforms remains compliant automatically. This can help simplify your compliance workflows while maintaining an excellent standard of regulatory adherence.
What is an AI outreach tool?
An outreach AI tool is any tool or solution that uses artificial intelligence to assist with sales outreach tasks.
These tasks include any element of the outbound sales process that can be automated. That means everything from the data-collection procedure, through to data analysis, and outreach content generation.
One of the biggest benefits of using an AI outreach system is that it will be customizable to your specific business needs.
The best use cases of AI for outreach
AI outreach tools come in many forms, some hyper-specializing in one element of the workflow, and others taking a more general approach. Here are a few examples of some of the parts of sales outreach AI can assist with:
Researching potential customers
One of the most common uses of AI in sales is for conducting the kind of granular research that most companies don’t have the resources to do manually, in-house.
The best AI outreach tools can monitor publicly available company data and social media activity, then notify you of trigger moments such as job changes or income reports. They can also use predictive analytics to rank those prospects most likely to convert, helping you fine-tune your lead-scoring system.
Automating outreach
There are a number of ways AI can help with automating outreach. First, it can generate personalized emails that are well adapted to each individual recipient’s circumstances and interests.
It’s also a great way of implementing A/B testing on email or social media outreach. Because it’s trained on a large dataset, it can automatically test different subject lines or messages and continuously improve via iterative learning.
It can also automate workflows generally, too. You can set it to respond automatically to common queries or schedule and manage multi-step campaigns across a number of different channels.
Implementing real-time coaching
It’s a common experience for sales reps. They need to check the details of a customer-specific deal their company is offering while they’re on a call, which means having to switch between apps to find what they need.
Another of the best use cases of AI in outreach is providing on-the-spot information. Instead of having to juggle numerous apps, a sales rep can simply ask the AI system in-call to find the info they need at the very moment they need it.
It can also give general tips. For instance, AI can use sentiment analysis to determine the attitude of the potential customer and notify the sales rep if it’s time to switch approaches. It can then give guidance based on AI-driven customer insights into how best to proceed in each individual case.
AI sales outreach tools to consider
There’s a huge range of AI tools out there, but they’re not all created equal. Here, we list our pick of the current crop, broken down by their main scope; all-round outreach, phone, email, and phone/email solutions.
RingSense: Conversational intelligence to support all-round outreach
RingSense is an AI solution from RingCentral that’s built into our platforms and provides all-round outreach support throughout the sales funnel and beyond. It automatically summarizes and transcribes calls, video meetings, and emails, then stores them for later review.
You can integrate RingSense with CRMs like Salesforce and set it to automatically update accounts as it captures key conversation points. It can also monitor market trends and give you crucial insights into your target customers’ preferences and pain points.
RingSense provides AI-powered coaching tips outlining your sales reps’ strengths as well as areas where they could improve.
Overall, RingSense is one of the most effective AI tools around thanks to the way it leverages machine learning and natural language processing technologies to assist with many of the core elements of sales outreach.
AI outreach tools for calls
For those companies mostly focused on AI for cold calling, there are a number of AI outreach tools for calls to consider:
Balto
Balto focuses on giving sales reps real-time analytics and in-call guidance. It’s also designed to help optimize training, as it provides data-driven insights into each of your reps’ performance.
You can integrate it with common CRMs such as Salesforce and business communication platforms (including RingCentral) to streamline your workflows and make sure all your information is kept bang up to date.
Avoma
Avoma is an AI-powered note-taking and scheduling app, but its capabilities can dovetail well with the needs of sales reps primarily doing outreach by phone.
Its AI meeting assistant can record and transcribe calls, then schedule follow-ups. You can also integrate it with your CRM to automate data entry upkeep. It’s suitable for companies doing business across borders, as its transcription tool supports over 75 languages.
AI email outreach tools
AI outreach tools for emails can also play a role in streamlining outreach. For those companies more focused on email campaigns, here are our current top picks:
Instantly.ai
Instantly.ai is an AI outreach tool that focuses on email campaigns. In particular, it aims to help you build engaging email outreach at scale.
To achieve this, it lets you add unlimited email accounts so that you can target campaigns more strategically. You can customize automated deliverability options, and use the data verification feature to make sure all your contact email addresses are up to date.
You can also use the AI Spintax and Spam Word Checker tools to fine-tune your email copy and minimize the risk of your messages getting lost in a spam filter.
Lavender
The next of the AI tools for email outreach on our list is Lavender, which uses AI to help you craft more engaging email copy. It comes as a browser extension you can add to Chrome and activate to give your email or email template a score. Based on this, it makes specific suggestions for how to improve.
It also features a Personalization Assistant that sends prospecting data directly to your inbox or email platform. Then, it suggests ideas for appropriate tweaks to personalize your messages more effectively.
In essence, Lavender is a writing tool that specializes in email messaging. You can use it to check what you’ve already written or generate emails from scratch based on your customer data. Most sales reps will probably benefit from using a mixture of the two approaches, and Lavender makes it fairly easy to do this.
Woodpecker.co
Woodpecker is a tool specializing in AI cold email outreach. Because cold outreach is its principal focus, it puts a big emphasis on deliverability. This means it features email verification as standard and offers a warm-up service. But it also has more sophisticated tools to help make sure your intended recipient sees your message.
For example, it provides an Adaptive Sending tool that monitors your campaigns behind the scenes and automatically reduces your email sending volume by 50% for 24 hours or by 10% for 10 days when it detects that you’re nearing your email provider’s send quota.
It also lets you add up to 100 email addresses per campaign to send out email from. You can then rotate between them to reduce the chances of your messaging landing in a spam folder.
AI outreach tools for emails and calls
If you’re looking for AI tools for both emails and calls, you’ll need something with a more integrated approach. The following platforms provide the kind of broad-based functionality you’ll need:
Outreach.io
Outreach.io is a well-known name among sales teams looking to scale multi-touch campaigns. It lets you combine email sequences, call logging, and task workflows all within the one platform.
It uses AI to help with email personalization and lead prioritization, and can make recommendations for further action steps based on your prospecting data. It can also track email replies and fine-tune your messaging to make it more effective.
Apollo.io
Apollo.io boasts a B2B database of over 210 million contacts and 35 million companies. It leverages its extensive contacts book and interactions database to provide data-driven insights to help you improve your prospecting.
When it comes to actually reaching out, it provides AI assistant tools to help you craft better emails. In addition, it makes sure all email addresses and phone numbers have been verified to make sure you can actually connect with prospects. You can also automate both email and phone sequences with personalization.
AI outreach strategy: How to implement your chosen outreach tool
The ultimate objective when choosing an AI outreach tool is to successfully implement AI for sales enablement. In other words, whatever solution you select needs to make your sales reps’ lives easier. It should work with your existing processes to make them better, rather than completely disrupt them.
Even the most deluxe tool with cutting-edge AI functionality will only perform at its best if you implement it well. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of your chosen tool:
Get buy-in from the team
Sometimes, there can be resistance to new solutions. It’s crucial that you get buy-in from your team to make sure they feel positive about your new outreach tool.
It can be helpful to give reps some say in the trial or demo process. Ask for feedback, particularly with regard to how they’d like to see the outreach process simplified.
Once the decision is made, highlight concrete benefits for the sales team rather than just listing features. Emphasize how it will save them time, and make sure to stress that the tool is meant to help them, not replace them.
Establish proper onboarding procedures
It’s often recommended to start with a pilot group—begin by onboarding a few of the more tech-savvy representatives and gathering candid feedback on the tool’s usability and effectiveness before implementing it across the broader team.
Then, develop onboarding training that’s role-specific. Craft walkthroughs that are tailored to individual job roles, and use real-life tasks to test them with. For example, you might incorporate training into live calls by setting a goal to use AI-generated suggestions during two or three conversations, followed by a review to assess their usefulness.
Align the tool with your current workflows
If you use a CRM, make sure your AI outreach tool is properly integrated with it before you do a full rollout. If sales reps have to duplicate their work, enthusiasm for adopting the new tool will decline pretty fast.
It’s also vital to set clear usage guidelines. Be specific. For instance, it will be much more helpful to state explicitly that reps should use the new tool for crafting personalized emails or scheduling follow-ups, rather than just telling them to use the tool if they find it useful.
Roll out the tool in stages
Don’t fall into the trap of over-automating too soon. While you may be enthusiastic about the tool’s potential and want to get it up and running as fast as possible, take your time setting it up properly.
For example, for email campaigns, you could try out the AI writing support first before implementing automated email scheduling. It’s also vital to test the tone and accuracy of generated content to make sure it’s fully aligned with your brand identity.
Track early wins and celebrate them
In the early stages of adoption, you can build momentum by showing that the new tool is actually working.
Set out some key metrics to track to demonstrate the tool’s operational effectiveness. For instance, you could focus on stats like AI-assisted email response rates or cold call conversions.
When a big win comes in early, share it with the team. Acknowledge the sales rep for their success and foster a culture of mutual support.
Review and fine-tune
Make sure you have systems in place to let reps report misaligned output or anything else crucial that the AI missed.
After the rollout is complete, hold monthly check-ins to get some real-world feedback.
Ask what features are working well, and which ones aren’t being used as much as expected. Try to drill down into the details of why, and whether there’s any additional support you could offer to help reps use features they’re less confident with.
And don’t forget that some AI tool vendors have customer success teams you can consult. They can be very helpful in providing suggestions for optimization or updated training resources.
Supercharge your sales outreach with conversational intelligence
AI-driven conversational intelligence tools are the key to unlocking data-driven customer insights that can supercharge your sales outreach.
RingCentral’s AI-powered conversational intelligence tool, RingSense, can unearth insights about what topics, competitors, and products your potential customers are actually interested in. And every customer interaction becomes a goldmine of new data points you can leverage to fine-tune your approach.
With automatic phone call, email, and video meeting summaries and transcriptions, you can access conversations later whenever you want to review them.
You can also take advantage of AI-powered coaching in real-time, and keep your CRM updated automatically, so all your workflows are streamlined and your campaigns are fully aligned across the board.
If you’d like to know more about how RingSense can help your business achieve new levels of sales outreach success, feel free to reach out to one of our experts today.
AI outreach FAQs
How is AI involved in cold outreach?
There are AI-driven platforms available that specialize in every step of the cold outreach process. Some focus on data collection, some on crafting and fine-tuning brand-appropriate content, and some on AI assistant tools that can give sales reps in-call coaching. There are also many tools that help to automate scheduling and notifications for follow-up actions.
What’s the difference between regular outreach and AI outreach?
The main difference between regular outreach and AI outreach is that AI-driven outreach tools tend to support much more streamlined workflows and increased productivity overall.
The main focus of AI in outreach tools is as an aid to automation. This manifests in a number of ways, from tools that help with writing email copy to those that use machine learning and sentiment analysis to help steer sales reps in the right direction in-call.
What are common misconceptions about using AI in sales outreach?
One common misconception is that AI tools are intended to replace human sales reps. AI acts as a support tool to help sales reps do their jobs more effectively.
Ultimately, there’s still no substitute for the emotional intelligence and relationship-building skills of an experienced human sales rep.
What may the future hold for AI outreach?
One reason why some AI tools have become particularly popular is their ability to personalize at scale. In the years ahead, this will likely become even more nuanced.
AI tools could analyze a prospect’s communication style, risk tolerance, or even personal values to craft messaging that mirrors their tone or tailors offers automatically according to the prospect’s inferred personality traits.
Updated Jun 10, 2025
