How AI Killed Cold Email Outreach in Less Than a Year

Only a year ago, marketers could still depend on cold emailing to generate leads. Now, however, AI-powered tools have made it borderline impossible. Here’s how we found out the hard way.

Our Journey: From Hope to Harsh Reality

At the end of 2023, we launched our video production agency with zero clients and no case studies but a rock-solid team with 15 years of industry experience. We needed leads. Fast.

Networking was our first bet, but it had its limits. Next, we tried Google Ads and Meta Ads, but the cost per lead was sky-high, making our $1,000–$2,000/month low-cost video editing packages unprofitable.

Then came cold outreach. Colleagues assured us this channel could generate 20–30 calls a month, leading to 2–3 deals. It sounded like a solid plan.

The Cold Outreach Experiment

We first partnered with an outreach agency for LinkedIn and email outreach. The result? A disaster. Out of a 10-15% reply rate, the majority were simply out-of-office autos, and in three months, we had low-quality leads with no conversions.

The decision was made, so let’s take the reins into our own hands.

We took steps to collaborate with consultants, refine our ICP, optimize lead magnets, and improve offers. In the end, we realized we needed to scale.

We built an infrastructure with 100 email accounts, sending 3,000 highly personalized emails daily. We spent thousands of dollars on this setup. We even offered a free pilot video worth $100+, yet still—no results.

Meanwhile, my inbox was drowning in cold outreach emails from agencies promising to bring us leads. These AI-powered emails analyzed my LinkedIn profile, scraped our website, and name-dropped our clients. The number of these emails kept increasing daily.

This was the breaking point. We weren’t the only ones struggling—our prospects were facing the same overload. AI didn’t just change email outreach. It killed it.

What Still Works?

So, if cold outreach is dead, what’s left?

?? Word-of-mouth: Our most reliable lead source. Happy clients bring in friends and colleagues. But this channel is unpredictable and unscalable.

?? LinkedIn outreach: Still somewhat effective, but limited. Perhaps the only reason AI hasn’t flooded this channel is that connection requests act as a natural bottleneck.

?? Content marketing: The strongest lead generation channel today. High-quality, manually crafted content—especially video—still grabs attention. AI-generated content is catching up, but for now, human-made content stands out.

The Future: Will AI Kill Social Media Content Too?

Email outreach fell victim to AI automation. Will the same happen to content marketing?

For now, video content remains king. Authenticity, creativity, and human storytelling still matter. But as AI tools become more advanced, will social media follow the same fate as cold outreach?

What do you think? Will AI eventually kill content marketing, or is there still hope for human-driven creativity?