How to Use Instantly to AI Personalize B2B Cold Email

Cold email has changed more in the last eighteen months than it did in the previous decade. What used to be a numbers game—spray, pray, hope—has quietly transformed into something far more sophisticated. Today, the teams winning outbound aren’t sending more emails; they’re sending smarter ones. And the biggest lever behind this shift is AI-powered personalization.

The problem is that most people still think “personalization” means adding a first name. But modern AI allows you to do something completely different: craft messages that reference a prospect’s background, career arc, accomplishments, industry, hobbies—even their writing style. Emails that feel like they were written just for them, even if you’re sending 50,000 a month.

And the best tool for doing this today is Instantly.

Instantly isn’t just a sequencer. It’s a full personalization engine layered on top of your outbound pipeline. Once you understand how to use it, it becomes the difference between a cold email that gets ignored and one that sparks curiosity, engagement, or even admiration. (“Was this written with AI? This was impressive—what tool did you use?”)

Let’s walk through how Instantly enables this level of personalization—and how to use it to transform your outbound sequences into something that actually works in 2025.

Why AI Personalization Is No Longer Optional

Executives and decision-makers today are inundated with cold emails. Many receive 5–10 outbound messages a day, every day. They skim, delete, archive, block, ignore. Most emails blur together into a wall of interchangeable corporate language—just more noise in an already noisy inbox.

AI personalization breaks through that noise.

Not because it’s “smart,” but because it feels familiar. Something in the subject line or opening sentence signals that this message isn’t random. That the sender actually paid attention. That there’s something here worth noticing.

The magic moment happens when the reader thinks:

“How did they know that?”

Instantly personalizes at this level by using contextual clues from LinkedIn, company websites, job descriptions, summaries, achievements, headcount, industry signals, and more. It then synthesizes those clues into a cohesive sentence or line that sounds shockingly human—sometimes more human than an SDR could write manually.

This is why we consistently see AI personalization double click-through rates and meaningfully increase reply rate. It’s not just a gimmick. It’s a pattern interrupt. It disarms the reader, lowers their guard, and opens the door to engagement.

The Foundation: Enriched Leads Inside Instantly

AI personalization is only as good as the data you feed it.

Inside Instantly, everything begins with your ABM list—ideally enriched with:

• LinkedIn profile URL
• Company description
• Summary or bio
• Job title
• Website
• Industry
• Headcount
• Relevant context

If these fields are present, AI can use them to generate unique:

• Subject lines
• Opening sentences
• PS lines
• Full email variants

This is where the real differentiation happens. Instead of the typical “{First Name}, quick question,” you get subject lines like:

• “Surf school to SaaS—your product pivot story is wild”
• “From Verizon to ag-tech: your data journey caught my eye”
• “Saw your Babson double-valedictorian post—impressive dedication”

These aren’t fabrications. They are pulled directly from your prospect’s digital footprint. And because they’re true, they resonate.

That resonance creates familiarity.
Familiarity creates trust.
Trust creates attention.
Attention is everything.

The Personalization Workflow: Turning Raw Data Into Magical Openers

Inside Instantly, personalization happens at the lead level. Once your leads are imported—either from SuperSearch or as a CSV—you’ll see the enriched fields lined up in your lead dashboard.

From there, you can add new personalization columns powered by AI.

This is where the fun begins.

Instantly gives you the ability to generate:

• A unique opener for every recipient
• A custom subject line
• A custom PS line
• A fully AI-generated email

Let’s break down how this works.

Personalized Subject Lines

The subject line is one of the easiest places to stand out. Most companies use the same five subject lines for everyone. But imagine receiving a line that references:

• Your company’s mission
• A hobby you posted about
• A recent role change
• Something quirky from your bio

You’re almost guaranteed to open it.

Inside Instantly, you can create a column called “AI Subject Line,” choose “Use AI,” and select a prompt template that writes a subject line tailored to each lead’s background.

When done well, this personalization creates a moment of pattern interruption—something the subconscious latches onto. You aren’t just another cold email. You are the email that actually knows something.

Personalized Opening Sentences

This is the secret weapon.

The opening line sets the tone of the email, and 90% of deletions happen here. If your opener feels automated, generic, or salesy, your message is dead on arrival.

But if your opener feels:

• Specific
• Accurate
• Informal
• Relatable
• True

…you earn the right to continue the conversation.

Instantly allows you to generate a custom opener for each prospect using the “Use AI” column logic. And because it has access to their LinkedIn headline, experience, summary, and company description, the openers become incredibly compelling.

For example:

“Love how you turned booking chaos in a single surf school into a platform powering 250+ centers globally.”

or

“Your shift from location-based services at Verizon to automating ag-data workflows is one of the coolest career arcs I’ve seen.”

These lines feel real because they are real.

Personalized PS Lines

The PS line is massively underrated. Many people skim emails, but P.S. stands out visually and emotionally. When the PS line includes:

• A fun fact
• A hobby
• A location reference
• A detail from their background

…it creates a surprisingly powerful rapport effect.

Something like:

“P.S. Double valedictorian at Babson? That’s next-level dedication.”

or

“P.S. Loved your recent post about scaling your sales team using async standups.”

These lines humanize the sender. They show effort. They show interest. And they leave a positive impression—even if the reader doesn’t respond immediately.

Why Personalization Works: The Emotional Mechanics Behind It

When someone opens your email and sees a personalized line, three things happen subconsciously:

1. They feel recognized

People want to feel seen. Even the busiest executives appreciate when someone understands their world.

2. They feel curiosity

A highly specific detail in a cold email triggers the brain’s reward system. It feels novel. Novelty demands attention.

3. They feel safety

The personalization shows you’re not blasting random people. You’ve chosen them intentionally.

All three emotional elements open the door to engagement. The personalization doesn’t sell. It merely earns permission to continue the conversation.

The selling happens later.

The Beautiful Part: You Only Have to Build the Prompts Once

Another powerful aspect of Instantly’s AI personalization is that once you get your prompts right, personalization becomes automatic.

You can:

• Personalize tens of thousands of leads
• Across dozens of campaigns
• With zero manual effort
• At a cost of a fraction of a penny per personalization

What used to take SDR teams hundreds of hours can now be done in minutes.

Better personalization.
At higher scale.
With lower cost.
And significantly higher performance.

That’s the promise of outbound in 2025.

What AI Personalization Means for the Future of Cold Email

AI personalization isn’t just a new tactic—it’s the new baseline.

Cold email that relies on generic templates will continue to decay in performance. The inbox is too crowded, the filters too sensitive, and the buyers too discerning.

But cold email that uses AI to craft individualized experiences at scale will continue to win. Not because it’s tricking anyone, but because it’s doing what outbound should have done all along: making each email feel handcrafted, intentional, and thoughtful.

Instantly gives you the infrastructure to do this at scale:

• Thousands of unique subject lines
• Thousands of unique openers
• Thousands of unique PS lines
• All created in minutes
• All embedded into sequences automatically
• All improving engagement instantly

Outbound isn’t about volume anymore.
Outbound is about relevance.
And relevance is exactly what Instantly helps you achieve.

Final Thoughts: AI Doesn’t Replace the Human—It Enhances the Human

The fear some teams have is that AI makes email feel artificial. But in practice, the opposite is true. AI allows your outbound to feel more human because it reflects the exact details a thoughtful human would notice.

Your prospects don’t need more emails.
They need better ones.

Emails that:

• Acknowledge their work
• Understand their industry
• Reflect their journey
• Offer real value
• Respect their time

Instantly’s AI personalization engine is the tool that makes this possible—at scale, with speed, and with remarkable consistency.

Cold email is no longer a numbers game.It’s a relevance game.And Instantly, when used correctly, is how you win it.