AI writes the hook, a human signs the message

The debate about AI in outreach is usually framed as all or nothing. Either you automate and accept that it sounds like a robot, or you write everything by hand and accept that you will send fifteen messages a week.

There is a third option, and it is the one that actually works: let the AI write the two sentences that must change for every person, and keep everything else fixed and human.

The structure we use

A first message has five parts. Only two are generated:

• The greeting. Fixed. One line, no exclamation mark.
• The fact. Generated. One sentence of eight to sixteen words: something verifiable about the person or their company, naming where we saw it. No compliment, no question.
• The stake. Generated. One sentence of eight to eighteen words: what that fact implies for a company like theirs, said the way someone in the trade would say it. No question, no pitch.
• The invitation. Fixed. Ten to fifteen minutes to talk about it, because it is exactly what you spend your days on, and genuine curiosity about how they handle it on their end.
• The closing question. Fixed. “Would you be open to a virtual coffee?” Nothing more.

Two generated blocks out of five. That proportion is deliberate. It is enough for the message to be unmistakably meant for this person, and little enough that a human can read and approve it in fifteen seconds.

What makes a good fact, and a good stake

The fact has to be verifiable and you have to say where it came from. “I saw on your site that you work with manufacturing SMEs” proves you looked. “Your career path impressed me” proves nothing at all.

The stake is the hard part. Most sentences an AI writes after a fact are compliments in disguise or generalities: “that is impressive”, “you must have challenges”. Nobody reacts to them. What works is a sentence that says what the fact implies, seen by someone in the trade:

• “Two locations means twice as many clients to go and find.”
• “People who can read an underwriting file from end to end are rare.”
• “When a company opens a second location, the image has to follow everywhere at once.”

What AI must never be left alone with

Three things, in our experience. Tone, because a model drifts toward enthusiasm and enthusiasm reads as sales. Facts, because a model will happily infer a funding round that never happened. And the ask, because a model will try to close, and closing on first contact is exactly what makes people stop reading.

The test to run on your own messages

Take a message you are about to send and remove the name. If it could go to anyone else on your list without editing, it is not personalized. It is a template with a merge field, and the person on the other end can tell.

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