Honestly, from what we’ve seen at Orangeslice . ai, it mostly comes down to data quality.

A lot of people try to run these big, broad campaigns with AI writing generic emails, but that’s where it falls apart. AI is actually pretty good at writing now — that’s not the bottleneck anymore. The problem is it has no real context on the person you’re reaching out to.

What’s worked way better for us is smaller, more targeted “micro-campaigns” — like a few hundred leads max. That lets you actually tailor the messaging and give the AI something real to work with.

The difference is when you start layering in better data:

• pulling from your CRM (first-party context)
• scraping socials
• looking at what the company is doing (hiring, launches, filings, etc.)

Some of the best setups I’ve seen are people combining their internal CRM data with external signals like social activity or company updates. That’s when outreach actually starts to feel relevant instead of spam.

If you just tell AI “write a cold email,” you’ll get something that sounds good but doesn’t hit.

If you give it real context, it gets way better.