Why your “personalized” outreach gets deleted instantly
The only thing worse than a bad cold email is a bad cold email obviously written by AI.
Look, I get it. AI promises this business fantasy where you can sit on your couch, feed some prompts into ChatGPT, and magically get rich from automated outreach. But all it's doing is frustrating the people who actually have money to spend and want to solve real problems.
I'm seeing more AI-generated cold emails every day, and honestly? I hate them. They follow the same tired formula with this artificial layer of "personalization" scraped from websites and LinkedIn profiles. Just because your AI can pull a phrase from my bio doesn't mean it's good outreach. It tells me you used a tool to auto-fill blanks without understanding what I actually do.
Here's the thing: I can tell when something is written by AI. I work with AI tools all day, editing their output and trying to get something usable. When a cold email uses the same auto-complete patterns I see from generic AI slop, it immediately raises red flags. It's lazy automation with a sheen of relevance.
The biggest problems with AI-generated cold emails
1. They use obvious templates
If I see the same templated email I've been deleting for days, I'm going to delete yours immediately. These emails usually start with tired questions like "Are you tired of [obvious pain point]?" or "Did you used to work at [LinkedIn factoid]?"
I recently got an email with the subject line "1.3M downloads" because that's a stat on our website. It's ridiculous. Stop using these templates.
2. They sound incredibly fake
When I meet someone new, I don't say "Hey, congratulations on 1.3M downloads in seven months." I'd say something like "Hey, I saw that thing on your website about getting over 1 million downloads. That's really cool. How did you do that?"
I got this gem recently: A CEO who lives 20 miles away wrote that he'd be "in my city in two weeks" and included a forwarded fake email saying "I came across Edify Content in Mesa. We should try to meet up with them when we're there."
Nobody writes emails like this. Not in real work settings. Not between colleagues. It's obviously AI-generated, and the tone is completely off.
3. They lean on fake stats and claims
I got an email saying "I noticed your site's average visit is under 30 seconds." There's literally no way a random person could know my private analytics data.
Stop making up metrics.
The fake scarcity approach is equally ridiculous—"I only have two slots left this month." A bad cold email outreach tells me you need work, not that you have limited availability.
4. Nobody wants your "personalized" video
Those 90-second videos where you're green-screened over footage of someone scrolling my website? It's auto-generated garbage. I've watched a few of these time-wasters, and they're just another dumb AI tactic.
How to write cold emails that don't suck
Money comes and goes—I can always get more. But I can't get more time. So convince me that handing you money will save me headaches, and do it with something worth reading.
1. Sound like a human
If you wouldn't say it out loud in real life, scrap it. I tell my writers to imagine they're talking to a prospect at a bar after you've both had a drink—use language that sounds natural and conversational.
2. Lead with results
Everyone wants good results. Weight loss programs promise "drop 10 pounds, feel great, look better." Do the same with whatever you're selling, and put that result in your subject line.
3. Remember you're talking to humans
There are real people receiving these emails with real, specific problems. Don't blast huge lists just because you have an AI subscription. Segment your list and write targeted emails that can be modified for personalization.
Read your email out loud. This takes a few minutes and makes a huge difference. I've recorded three audiobooks, and reading out loud is the best way to catch mistakes and awkward phrasing. Print your email and read it to someone—they'll tell you if it sounds fake or stupid.
Don't use AI until you learn to write great emails. AI is here to help you scale, not do the work for you. Do the research, put in the hard work, and get practice writing emails manually first. I'd rather send one great manually written email to 100 targeted people than a bad AI-generated email to 1 million. When you perfect your email, then you can scale it out to more people.
Trigger emotions (Besides anger from receiving another bad AI email). I personally lean on "twisting the knife"—finding something that really sucks about what they're doing and pointing out they should know better or they're missing a great solution.
The bottom line
AI can help with outreach, but you have to improve the quality of your thinking, not the quantity of your output.
There's no advantage in sending thousands of barely relevant messages when a few thoughtful ones would go much further. Stop treating cold email like a numbers game. Write one great email that gets you 10% commission on five sales of a multi-thousand-dollar service, and you'll make way more than sending thousands of AI-generated duds.
Think to write a good cold email. Don't just produce thousands of messages hoping something sticks.
Need help writing great cold emails and sequences for your campaigns? Send me a good human email at anthony@edifycontent.com.
