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AI usage has surged in recent years, with almost three-quarters of organizations adopting the technology in at least one business function as of 2024.
So it’s no surprise that a growing number of agencies are looking to integrate artificial intelligence into their lead generation process. But, as with any technology, there’s a big difference between doing it well and doing it for the sake of it.
To help you get it right, we’ve rounded up four smart ways to use AI for lead generation.
Let’s get into it…
1. Level Up Your Buyer Personas
B2B lead generation campaigns are only as effective as the buyer personas they're based on.
Developing robust personas for each client is a heavy lift – and AI can save you some serious time here.
One smart technique is to use AI’s analytical capabilities to draw valuable insights from past conversations with promising leads.
Start by defining the information you need to create stronger personas based on your client’s ideal customer profile (ICP). This will likely include some or all of the following:
Industry
Location
Company size
Budget
Pain points
Business goals
Challenges
Objections
Now for the AI stuff. Gather up all the transcripts of calls and emails on behalf of your client, feed them into an AI tool like ChatGPT, and ask it to group responses into shared themes based on the above categories. To give a simple example, common challenges like “lack of resources” and “limited budget” might be grouped into the same cluster.
Then it’s simply a case of feeding all that detail into your existing persona template (or, if you don’t have one, asking your chosen generative AI tool to create one for you based on all the information you’ve gathered).
The best thing about this technique is that it’s quick and easy to keep your personas up to date by constantly feeding new transcripts into the AI machine.
So if a new industry trend causes a headache – or presents an opportunity – for your client's ICP, it’ll be reflected in your personas.
2. Qualify Prospects Faster
Three in five sales professionals fell short of quota in 2024, with inconsistent prospecting cited as one of the most common challenges.
Just like persona research, effective sales prospecting is a labor-intensive and repetitive task. Or, at least, it is if you do it all through manual tasks.
As you’re probably aware, AI prospecting platforms promise to save you vast amounts of time without reducing the quality of potential leads you target. But the sad fact is that none of those tools truly go deep enough in the search process – their filters are just too generic. So you might be able to massively scale up your prospecting, but it’ll likely result in a higher volume of activity with minimal (or zero) upturn in conversion rates.
In other words, it’s basically a waste of time and money.
Fortunately, there’s a smarter way to use AI in the prospecting process. We like it so much that we use it here at QuickMail. It involves checking the prospect’s website to make sure they’re a good match for your client before you send your initial outreach message.
Done manually, this process is just too slow. So we used to pay a virtual assistant to qualify websites, helping us build a “premium prospect list”.
But now we get AI to do it for us. We’ve found that it’s not just faster and cheaper, but it also delivers better (i.e. more accurate) results.
Which means that when we reach out to promising prospects for the first time, they're already qualified leads. So we’re already confident they have a genuine need for our product, meaning they’re more likely to reply.
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3. Improve Your Email Deliverability (Without All the Manual Effort)
Arguably the single biggest thing you can do to generate more high-quality leads is to improve your email deliverability.
Because no one’s going to reply to a cold email that lands in their junk folder.
Traditionally, email deliverability has involved a bunch of time-consuming tasks, from setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication to using email warming tools to rotating underperforming inboxes with low deliverability rates. All important stuff – but it chews up time that your reps could be using to make LinkedIn connections, write cold emails, and make calls.
That’s why we decided to streamline the process with two AI-powered email deliverability tools:
With Deliverability AI, all your cold emails will be automatically sent from your top-performing accounts, saving you hours of manually analyzing data and switching out senders with low deliverability scores.
It allows you to cycle accounts in and out of recovery as necessary, extending the life of your domains – with zero manual monitoring – and helping you maintain a healthy deliverability rate without burning through domains.
By giving you daily insights across hundreds of data points, Deliverability AI gives you the tools to generate more replies (and leads) from fewer sends.
Now that’s what we call a smart use of AI for lead generation.
And then there’s Reword with AI, which automatically rephrases duplicated copy in your emails while preserving any original content.
That means you’ll literally never send the same email twice.
This can make a big difference to your deliverability, because email providers may flag your emails as spam if you repeatedly send identical copies.
(Learn more about the inspiration behind Reword with AI in Microsoft's Email Crackdown: Secrets To Sending With Outlook in 2025 | QuickMail.)
And the best news is that we include both Deliverability AI and Reword with AI in all QuickMail agency plans. Because we believe email deliverability is simply too important to paywall.
4. Elevate Email Personalization
While we’d all love to create a single generic email template that brings in a constant stream of replies and leads, the reality is that you’re far more likely to see results with highly personalized messages.
Not just mentioning the prospect’s first name and vaguely telling them that you’re “big fans of their work”, but actually explaining the specific reasons why you’re reaching out to them as an individual.
Of course, true 1:1 outreach personalization is fundamentally unscalable. Your reps might spend hours sending a single email.
So agencies are looking for a solution – and AI is an obvious fit.
To be clear, we’re not suggesting you use AI to write emails full of surface-level personalization. It doesn’t work.
But there are some interesting use cases, such as the ability to add personalized videos to cold emails. One popular tactic we’re seeing is to have a scrolling video of the prospect’s website in the background, with an AI avatar in the foreground saying something like:
“Hey {first.name}, I’m on your website and I noticed one or two opportunities I’d love to discuss with you!”
Some agencies have doubled their reply rates by adopting this approach.
We’re not convinced it’s going to change cold outreach forever. Prospects in tech are already getting sick of it, and this will likely extend to most other industries by mid-2026 (or thereabouts).
But, for the time being, it seems to be working – so we’d definitely recommend giving it a try.
For more thoughts on this, including the ethics behind AI video, check out this conversation between QuickMail founder Jeremy and SalesBread CEO Jack Reamer:
When Not To Use AI in the Sales Process
The lead generation strategies we’ve detailed above are about using AI to do stuff that human reps can’t (mostly down to time constraints). That’s what makes them so effective.
But most outreach pros aren’t using AI like this.
Instead, they’re asking ChatGPT to write them generic cold email opening lines – or even entire emails – and expecting it to magically deliver results.
If you’re thinking of doing the same, don’t bother. Whether it’s written by an AI or a human, your prospects can see through generic copy. Why would they bother to respond if they know you’ve sent the same email to thousands of other people?
Using generative AI to write your outreach for you might help you send more emails. AI-generated emails might even read better than what your sales team could come up with. But it won’t translate to more leads.
Generate More Leads With QuickMail
By this point, pretty much every cold outreach platform has integrated AI.
But most of them have gone down the generative route by offering email writing prompts. It might be fun to play with, but it won’t make a difference to the performance of your email campaigns – generic copy is still generic copy.
You need a solution that uses AI in a way that truly shifts the dial.
Like QuickMail, which leverages AI to help you hit more primary inboxes, so you get more email opens and replies from the same volume of activity.
Find out what we can do for your lead gen agency by booking your QuickMail demo call.
FAQs
Can I use AI for lead generation?
Yes, there are lots of ways to use AI for lead generation. AI-powered tools can help agencies to identify and vet potential customers, personalize cold emails, improve email deliverability, and more. As such, AI-powered lead generation tools enable agencies to generate more leads without increasing headcount and/or sending volumes.
Can lead generation be automated?
Yes, automation tools can save time on your lead generation efforts. Common use cases include building automated email sequences, sending follow-up emails, automatically syncing prospect data to your CRM, and scoring leads based on how they interact with your outreach messages.
What is the best AI lead generation software?
Most lead generation software offers some sort of built-in AI functionality. But QuickMail is the best AI-driven lead generation solution because our AI tools improve your email deliverability (rather than, say, helping you write generic email copy). This means you hit more main inboxes and generate more opens, replies, and leads.
