u/ACan099

been running cold outreach for my agency for about 2 years now and i keep going back and forth on this. everyone on linkedin is screaming about how AI 10x'd their reply rates but when i actually try it the emails come out sounding like... well, like AI.

i've tested a bunch of stuff:

• clay + claude for personalization (decent but expensive and the "research" line at the top is starting to feel super obvious to prospects)
• instantly's built in AI rewrites (mid imo)
• just using chatgpt to brainstorm angles and writing the email myself (this actually works best for me?)

my honest take so far is that AI is great for the thinking part - researching the company, finding pain points, drafting variations of subject lines, summarizing 10-K filings, etc. but the moment i let it write the actual email body i can see reply rates drop. prospects are getting really good at smelling it.

curious what's actually working for people right now in 2026. like specifically:

1. are you using AI for the whole email or just parts of it?
2. what's your tech stack look like? (clay, smartlead, instantly, lemlist, custom?)
3. anyone found a way to do personalization at scale that doesn't sound like "I noticed your company recently [generic milestone]..."?
4. has the reply rate boost from AI personalization disappeared for anyone else as more people use it?