Mastering Cold Outreach: Top Strategies for Success

1TL;DR:

• Cold outreach involves contacting individuals for business purposes through email or LinkedIn.
• There are a number of strategies you can implement to maximise your deliverability and response rates.
• AI-powered videos can supercharge cold outreach by creating personalized messages at scale.
• Personal avatars mimic your voice and likeness, making outreach more engaging and trustworthy.

What is cold outreach?

Cold outreach involves contacting individuals without prior connections for business purposes, typically through email or social media platforms like LinkedIn.

That means prospecting, finding contacts, and sending personalized messages with the primary goal being to introduce your product or service, build relationships, and address prospects' needs.

Effective cold outreach requires thorough research, personalization, and addressing specific pain points of the recipient. It can be cost-effective, scalable, and allows businesses to expand their reach globally. Automation tools can optimize time, increase deliverability, and provide real-time campaign reports.

Success rates may vary between industries, necessitating tailored strategies for different sectors.

When done correctly, cold outreach can generate leads, build brand awareness, and convert recipients into paying customers.

Cold email outreach

Cold email outreach is the most common form of cold outreach. It involves sending personalized emails to potential customers, partners, or influencers.

This approach requires research and creativity to craft specific, engaging messages that stand out. Cold emailing is often considered a numbers game, with higher outreach volumes increasing response chances.

Strategies for improving cold email outreach deliverability and response rates

• A/B testing, email deliverability, and analysis are crucial for optimizing cold email outreach.
• To improve deliverability, use strong email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and keep emails short, concise, and honest.
• Employ multiple email addresses to segment lists and test different approaches.
• Verify email lists to reduce bounces and improve deliverability rates.
• Send follow-up emails to boost response rates, but avoid being overly assertive.
• Continuously update outreach lists and remove addresses that increase bounce rates.
• A/B test elements such as subject lines, calls to action, tone, and length to optimize campaigns.
• Include unsubscribe links to respect recipient preferences and avoid being marked as spam.
• Analyze and evaluate outreach strategies to discover top-performing emails and campaigns, improving overall results.

LinkedIn outreach

LinkedIn outreach is a powerful strategy for generating leads and connecting with potential customers.

It involves sending targeted connection requests to individuals who match your ideal customer profile. Once connected, you can use InMails to communicate and nurture relationships.

Strategies to improve your LinkedIn cold outreach results

• Personalize Every Message: Use their name, mention something specific about their work or profile, and tailor your outreach to their role or industry.
• Focus on Value, Not Selling: Lead with how you can help them, offering insights or solving a pain point instead of making an immediate sales pitch.
• Engage Before Messaging: Like or comment on their posts to build rapport before sending your message, and avoid being pushy right after connecting.
• Include a Clear and Simple CTA: End with a straightforward call-to-action, like suggesting a brief chat, but keep it light and not overly aggressive.
• Test and Tweak: Experiment with different approaches to see what resonates best and refine your strategy based on response rates.

How to use AI to supercharge your cold outreach

Cold outreach used to rely on the "pray and spray" approach, where sales teams would send generic emails to thousands of prospects, hoping a few would stick. 

Fortunately, automation tools have evolved, allowing marketers to leverage data and craft personalized messages that resonate with individual recipients. But even these refined tactics are losing their effectiveness. According to Klenty, cold emails now have an average open rate of 23.9%, with response rates dipping to 8.5%.

That’s where AI-powered personalized videos come into play, moving from the "bleeding edge" to a practical strategy. Early adopters already use this technology to engage prospects in more meaningful, personalized ways. Here’s how you can too.

Can you really record 100 unique videos every day?

In 2019, you'd have laughed if someone told you that recording videos for every lead was the best way to get a full pipeline. Even when you know that personalized videos are 35% more likely to get engagement, cold outreach is still a numbers game. 

And no sane salesperson has time to record hundreds of videos that might never get clicked on.

But what if it didn’t take you more than 30 seconds to record and edit a 10-minute video? Well, that puts an easy 35% engagement boost in your reach.

While creating videos this quickly might have seemed impossible in the past — AI tools have changed the game entirely. Now the workflow for creating personalized videos is refreshingly easy:

1. Record a short video of yourself
2. Generate your digital double (also known as a personal avatar)
3. Write your base script

Here’s a video example of what your outreach might look like to your prospect:

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When it’s time to personalize, you just change your script, hit generate, and your video is done. You can address prospects by name, talk about their specific challenges based on your data, or speak in their native language. You can even integrate with automation so it’s fully automated. Now you’re doing personalization on a whole new level, making prospects feel like you’ve gone the extra mile — when, in reality, AI has done the work.

Personal avatars look just like you on video calls  

Personal avatars look and sound exactly like you do. From your accent to your webcam background, to your hand gestures — they truly are your digital double

Synthesia's latest personal avatar update mimics your voice and likeness using footage from your phone, webcam, or DSLR camera. It adds lip movements, and small human-like motions such as blinking and pausing between sentences, and your background. 

Here’s a detailed video breaking down how it works:

Using personal avatars, you can make sure that your prospect sees a lifelike version of you (or a brand ambassador), delivering a message that feels tailored just for them. While it looks highly personalized, it’s all powered by scalable AI systems.

When using a personal avatar, you get some pretty cool benefits compared to a one-size-fits-all video:

• No huge costs: You don’t need to break the bank or hire more staff. Your team can whip up polished, professional AI videos from anywhere—even from a coffee shop. No webcam? No problem.
• Scale without losing that personal touch: You can send hundreds (or thousands) of personalized videos that feel genuine and specific to each prospect. It’s like one-to-one outreach but on a massive scale.
• Automation-friendly: You can easily connect your AI video tool to your CRM or automation platform. That means once a trigger is hit—like a prospect downloading a guide—they can get a custom video automatically. Effortless and timely.
• Everyone’s into video: People love video and share it 1200% more than text and links combined. AI videos tap into that trend and serve up content that grabs attention and sparks curiosity.
• Trust-building on autopilot: Seeing your face builds trust faster than words on a screen ever could. It’s all about body language, tone, and expression. Video makes your outreach feel more human and relatable, which is exactly what you need.

Practical ways to integrate AI videos into your cold outreach tactics 

Now that you know what a personal avatar looks and sounds like, you can see that it does a pretty good job of looking like you. Not some fancy, in-studio version of you, but normal at-your-desk you.

Here are some practical ways to integrate video into your cold outreach strategy.

1. Automate video sequences using CRM and automation tools

Personalization and automation are two powerful tools on their own, but when you combine them, you get something even better.

For instance, you can connect your AI video tool directly to your CRM (Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.) or email platform (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, etc.), so the videos get sent at just the right time—without you having to lift a finger.

Synthesia integrates with Zapier, which has about 6,000 applications to pair with it. Zapier's no-code solution allows you to easily configure automation to include your Synthesia videos at key outreach stages.

For instance, a prospect signs up for your webinar, and boom! They get an automated, personalized video from your avatar, thanking them and telling them what to expect next. It’s personal, engaging, and automated. Best of all, you don’t have to lift a finger.

2. Use AI videos in email campaigns

Email is still one of the most reliable ways to reach people. And customized video is a great incentive to get a response. Here’s an example template for you to use:

—

Hey [Name],

Are you struggling to [opening question about their problem]?

We recently helped [company name], a [type of company] like yours [achieve a desired result].

We did that by [what you do].

Let me know if you would like me to send you a quick video with more info about how we can help [their company name] [desired result].

—

When you get a “Yeah, sure, send it over,” your video can also include dynamic elements, like custom call-to-actions, that feel tailor-made for your audience. And if you throw in a video thumbnail, you’ve just upped your chances of getting more clicks.

All of a sudden, you go from ignorable to someone whose emails deliver value from day one. 

3. Personalize LinkedIn outreach with video

LinkedIn can feel pretty robotic. All those “Just came across your profile and thought we should connect” generic requests and cookie-cutter messages make people more reluctant to interact.

AI videos can help you cut through that noise. So, instead of sending the same old Cold InMail, you get to use a personal avatar video to introduce yourself in a way that feels human.

[SUGGESTION! Generate a quick video with the script “Hey Sandra, thought I’d just include this quick video intro so you know a bit more about me. I’m part of the sales team at ACME Corp, specializing in AI applications. I love to chat about all things tech and usually post about industry news. Looking forward to talking more!” using this avatar to give people a good idea of how this works]

You’re not making a shallow grab for attention—you’re showing you took the time and interest. Plus, video feels more personal, making it easier to start real conversations. 

The result? You’re making them think, “Okay, this person actually put in some effort,” and you’re far more likely to get replies and start building genuine connections.

Make your outreach personal with AI videos

It’s never been easier to record, edit and send high-quality personalized videos at scale. 

Start using Personal Avatars today and see how effortless it can be to send personalized, engaging videos that increase your success rate. Get started today →