In this episode of the Book More Show, we welcome automation expert Daniel Spence, who shares his journey from managing e-commerce operations to mastering AI-driven lead generation. 

Daniel reveals how tools like ChatGPT helped him shift from time-consuming, manual processes to a streamlined, automated approach, allowing more time for strategic planning and innovation. His story highlights the importance of balancing what AI can achieve with what businesses truly need, showing how a thoughtful, personalized communication strategy builds stronger client connections.

We dive into niche marketing within the B2B world, where Daniel discusses how LinkedIn can be a powerful platform for connecting with prospects who already understand their needs. He explains how AI-driven outreach can personalize communications without sacrificing relevance, using iterative processes to refine messaging and ensure it resonates with potential clients. This approach helps maintain the accuracy and appropriateness of automated communications, fostering meaningful engagement despite the high volume of outreach.

Daniel also introduces us to the game-changing potential of personalized AI video technology for client engagement. From sending custom video messages to using AI-generated videos for tasks like abandoned cart reminders, he shares success stories of businesses that have captivated audiences through innovative video approaches. 

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1. I discuss with automation expert Daniel Spence his journey from managing e-commerce stores to mastering AI-driven lead generation, focusing on how AI tools like ChatGPT have allowed him to streamline processes and dedicate more time to strategic innovation.

2. We delve into the advantages of niche marketing within the B2B landscape, emphasizing the potential of platforms like LinkedIn for reaching prospects who are already aware of their needs, and how AI can enhance the personalization of outreach efforts.

3. The conversation explores how businesses can maintain the accuracy and appropriateness of automated communications through iterative processes, allowing for impactful engagement despite high volumes of messages.

4. Daniel shares insights on personalized AI video technology, illustrating how AI-generated videos can revolutionize client engagement by adding a personal touch to automated messages, such as tailored video messages for abandoned cart reminders.

5. We discuss the integration of AI into communication strategies to enhance personalization at scale, setting a new standard for authenticity across various industries, and invite listeners to explore resources on automationxaicom for more insights.

6. The episode highlights the strategic benefits of leveraging platforms like LinkedIn to find problem-aware individuals and customizing messages based on personal data and current events, while stressing the importance of manual oversight in automated communications.

7. We examine the evolution of personalized video messages from generic to highly customized, using AI technology such as voice cloning to integrate client-specific details seamlessly into videos, improving client engagement.

8. The discussion covers how businesses can use personalized video marketing strategies to surpass generic communications, providing examples of using videos for abandoned cart reminders and LinkedIn outreach to enhance customer engagement.

9. We explore the potential of AI-generated content in personalized outreach, highlighting how AI can target specific audiences and automate transactional layers while maintaining a personal touch in communications.

10. Throughout the episode, I emphasize the importance of building intrigue at each stage of communication, encouraging potential clients to engage further, such as by exploring a book or scheduling a call, to build credibility and enhance the effectiveness of sales efforts.

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Matt Ferri:
Website: AutomationX
LinkedIn: Daniel Spence

TRANSCRIPT

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode in the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today super excited to join by Daniel Spence. Daniel, how's it going, buddy?

Daniel: Yeah, I'm good, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Stuart: Ah, pleasure, this is going to be interesting. So you and I were talking in the week. We've known each other for a little while, introduced through a mutual friend, but when we got to chat I think there's a couple of things that you do that's going to be really interesting for our audience because it's really around that personalization and, well, it's really around automation. But the bit that really kind of pushed my buttons was the personalization around some of that automation. So why don't we start off with a bit of background about you and the organization and then we can kind of bridge into those thoughts and how it ties in with some of the authors or what would be authors listening here yeah, of course.

Daniel: Yeah, that sounds like a plan. So I started off and, in fact, my background in e-commerce. I started off my first e-commerce store while I was a university and covid happened and everything else, so I'd suddenly had a load of free time on my hands. So I kicked that off, um, and basically scaled that and got to the point where, all of a sudden, I had no life because it took up all of my spare time. So I was looking at kind of what automations I could put into place to kind of free up all of my time. And then chat GPT came along, which is just a miracle in the same means. So we were looking at kind of what tools I could put into my business so that it kind of automates that. So the e-commerce stores are still running. I've now got three and I think I've spent probably 20 minutes on them today, just because they're automated and all of the systems are in place. So it just happens from there.

I got talking to a couple of other people and implemented similar things into their companies and was able to do all of this really cool stuff like implementing ai and kind of automating all entire processes and things like that.  

But yeah, I couldn't find anybody who wanted to sit down and talk to me about it and kind of like almost a sales opportunity for me. It was really hard to come by. So from there I kind of started looking at, okay, how can I generate leads for myself? And basically was doing all of these manual, different jobs and things like that to kind of get in front of people and get people sat down and then realize that, hold on, I could automate all of this and like for somebody who's building automations, well, what am I doing? These one by one. So it was a bit of a mind shift and change. And then from there it was all of a sudden I was getting more people on calls. But more people were actually interested in the lead gen services and they were on me automating that whole entire workload. They were more interested in more business and more time back and it's kind of gone from there really I think that's interesting.

Stuart: Isn't the whole kind of scratch your own itch type problem of building the thing that's most useful to you and then suddenly that hits the right kind of angle in the marketplace so that there's more interest? The automation, ai, automation agencies there's a stack of stuff there. I wonder if part of the problem is that it's too broad of a problem set. It's almost like you're going out to the audience and saying, well, we could do anything, so tell us what you want. And then the audience, on the other hand, is saying, well, tell us what you can do, because we're not sure what we want, because all of this is new, and that's what makes it difficult in the conversation yeah, that that's a big gap you've got to bridge is their knowledge of what's possible times by like what actually they need doing.

Daniel: Like most of, I almost always get well used to go in with like look, pretty much everything's possible, use your wildest imaginations of like what we could do. But almost always the call ender is like okay, what do you find useful? What do other people do in the space?

right, it's like well at the time it was like oh well, I'm working on this lead generation thing for me and that actually got more interest than anything else. But yeah, a lot of it was about kind of almost educating and then kind of solving the problem yeah, I think that's what ties in nicely with the book conversation.

Stuart: So a lot of times we're working with business owners who do multiple different things financial advisors there's many different types of clients that they're working with vets working with different types of animals. Coaches are working with different types of clients. So it really is that mindset of dialing in the specifics of where you want to start the conversation and something that makes it easier for the audience on the other side to recognize themselves and say yes to and raise their hand, which I guess is very much your experience. Start talking specifically about lead generation and how people can personalize. That and people who are interested just makes it so much easier for them to say, oh, that sounds like me, let's have a conversation.

Daniel: Yeah yeah, and I mean with the lead generation side. There's two sides of it that I kind of was discovering while doing it. You can either do mass or you can do really personalized. Mass doesn't really work because, like everyone, from reading the first line of a cold email you know that nobody has taken any time to read this, they have no idea who you are and that they've sent a million other people, same on linkedin, same on pretty much any platform.

and then the personalized side is great, but you can do nowhere near enough volume to start the conversations, which similar to the kind of book. You're being able to build the credibility and then share it in multiple places and you've put the time into it, whereas to be able to do both is really complex. So that's kind of where AI can kind of plug in and fill that gap is adding the customization to a mass system.

Stuart: Yeah, so that's a great point. So let's talk a bit more specifically, then, about what the solution is, or at least one of the solutions that kind of start in place for that conversation, and then, once we've kind of set the scene for people, we can bridge it more specifically into their books, because I think there's some ideas that we were talking about the other day that were percolating in my mind a little bit. We'll kind of close that gap a little bit. So why don't we start by talking about the, the solution, and what tool or what, what strategies can people put in place for using ai to get some kind of if not mass, then more volume, but keep that personalization?

Daniel: yeah. So I think one of the biggest things is there's simple to do. You can do this fairly. It's still somewhat manual, but if you were able to upload a list of leads, names and websites, you can get normal chat, gpt or publicity or any of the other ai tools to write a custom email to each person by them going onto the website. We've built it out on scale so that we can literally dump a list of 10,000 people in and it will write 10,000 emails to these people mentioning whatever specifics that you want. If you want to mention numbers, or normally we request like, add some information here that only somebody who's been on the website could know.

And then in the right kind of kind of, in the right kind of tone, addressing the right kind of people, and that's where the real value is. So instead of you send like handwriting out 500 emails to send to these people, we can do 5 000 emails. But ai does all of the legwork of spending that time looking into it and discovering what it is that they do, what kind of the synergies are and if like, and you can kind of put all of these things together and the beauty of it is we can kind of prompt it and change it according to company. So we build these out across multiple different people. So that's a really good place to start.

It's also a good way to kind of narrow down whether or not people are relevant to you. So we work with a events company that does everything from like your christmas parties all the way through to like massive corporate international events and kind of, where you're hosting thousands of people, and we were tasked with their lead generation and with the tools we built. We were sending, basically scrapers off to their website. Ai would read through their website and decide which package was most relevant for them and then they would get a custom proposal based on the package and what it expects.

So let's say you, you've got a panel of speakers, so therefore we know we need at least six microphones. So therefore you need the silver package over the bronze package, which has just got two microphones.

Stuart: So, yeah, you can really take it to the next level with that and actually that's quite interesting way of thinking about it because it's not just kind of variable substitution of is this person, this type of company versus that type of company and fill in the blanks type thing, which does get very robotic but to be able to customize the packages or customize the approach. So when I liken it to the book business, we often talk to people about titles first, because it's oftentimes the starting point of the conversation. People are wanting to narrow in their title before they then think about the content. So with the title types, we've got five types that we typically talk to people about. There's how-to books, name it and claim it, just do it information, gold mines and question magnets, and those five have got criteria around each of them.

So say, for example, you were in an industry that was pretty data heavy and you had access to specific data sets because of the industry that you worked in, but the end user didn't have that kind of like a market data type position, then that's more of an information goldmine because that's a differentiator that you've got. If your website talked more about motivating people to get it done, to kind of encourage them to take that step, then it might be a just do it type book. If it was more of, uh, technical steps or there was a learning process, then it might be a how-to. So using that intelligence to tailor the message to talk about one of those packages really might just make it more. It really increases the likelihood that you're kind of intersect in the conversations going on in in their mind. Yeah, absolutely, and you.

Daniel: You can take it to the oh sorry, satellite delay came in.

Stuart: You were saying that you were gonna be taking it to a further level yeah.

Daniel: So a further level like that is, if you've got like different attachments, that or decks or so, you would send to a client, based on which kind of book you were going, proposing that they write. You would then send that over and say like look, I've looked at your profile. I think that this style of book would be ideal for the fact that you're in a very data heavy environment, and then that outreach can be completely tailored to them. So not only are you adding that personalization of like oh, I saw that you're in this kind of space, you've been doing it for 20 years. How impressive. Wow, you must be an expert in this space. I was thinking about doing x, y and z, and then you can move on to like I've attached a pdf document about talking about a bit more in depth about kind of what kind of book I think would work really well for you and then it's another layer of personalization above that, and then the idea, and then the other side of it you can change is the tone, sorry no, that's okay.

Stuart: I think zoom is having some issues with the massive distance in between us, but it looks like it's caught up again now. What was the last thing you said talking about the?

Daniel: you can tweak the tone as well as the content yeah, and then the other lever you can pull is who you're targeting. So if you well, we have a couple of our own scraping tools so we're able to find exactly who it is we want to target. We like to go to the problem aware people. It's always a nice market to kind of find. There's lots of that on linkedin. So if you're able to kind of find people that are aware that they need more leads, need more whatever it is that you're offering, then when you contact them they're even more interested. But within that you can like sub niche people. So if you know that you're going after accountants to write x style of book, then you've already made a personalization by choosing to just target them right, so you can kind of niche down and niche down within that as well is this solution?

Stuart: is this kind of automation best for a b2b role, because typically businesses have got more information out there rather than b2c, which might be more difficult to find information on them?

Daniel: so so, yes, we but saying that one of our clients does the absolute best out of this is in the pr space. So they are still going for. They're still going for kind of like the c-class coaches or kind of people in those kind of spaces. However, they don't really they're not targeting companies. They're targeting people with personal brands and, yes, they might be a founder of a company, but there is kind of still fields that you can do within that.

Stuart: Right. I wonder whether the B2C play. There's still some level of intelligent integration into the message. So being able to send out a customized message but using some of the automation to pull in elements around the time of year, the conversation that's likely to be going on in their head. When you think about parents, we had a college prep. We've done a couple of books for kind of like the college prep type area, either on the financial side or the enrollment side, and sending out messages to those parents but based on the time of year in a way that might be onerous to do manually but to have some automation to be able to give it that level of intelligence. I guess those are the opportunities for those people, whereas there might not be the website scraping opportunity, but there's still an intelligent element that comes into it.

Daniel: Yeah, absolutely yeah. You can definitely still narrow that down and kind of find the people that are kind of in that space, even if it's like you're able to. I'm just trying to think of a good example here. If you're able to, let's say for Facebook, for example. Here, if, if you're able to, let's say for facebook, for example, so if you can tell that they've got children or so on, then you know that kind of like that's a relevant field. There's no point pitching somebody for that kind of service if they're like retired, like they're probably having kids about to go to college. So, yeah, there's other elements of that. It mainly works with b2b because that kind of data is available. There's not many people with their own website about what they're up to and information about them.

However, the linkedin is a great place to kind of be able to gather data about, especially if you're targeting people within certain job roles or even down to kind of like expected income levels and stuff like that. All of that data actually job balls.

Stuart: That's an interesting one as well. I'm trying to link it back to some of the clients that we've got on a top of mind. So, for example, one again financial planner type organization that we work with. There's a number of large employees in the large employers in the area and and they've worked quite a lot with because these are high net worth, high salaried individuals in long-term careers at these places and bridging across to corporate website news that's out there that may affect the individuals, that's still a bridging opportunity.

So John Smith himself might not have a website talking about what he's going through, but the fact that he works for Verizon and Verizon announced layoffs or changes or updates or policy initiatives being able to bridge some of that data in and tie it back into the thing that you're talking about, particularly if someone has a book, because there's so much source information that the ai can then bridge the subject into. So you've got the target person here, the data information of what might be relevant for them and then the book information, which is the conversation that you want to jump off, to ask it to go out and find a bridge between the latest verizon news and some subject that's mentioned described within the book well, you could actually train the ai on your book and therefore may ask you to look for similarities or recommend chapters or paragraphs out of your book to them right, yeah even more valuable, yeah, to identify like, let's say, I don't know, you've done a coaching book on leadership, you're a coach trying to sell leadership programs.

Daniel: You could go on to somebody's linkedin, see that there is cfo or whatever kind of whatever c-suite and it could. The ai could go through and find something that's relevant to their most recent linkedin post, or something along those lines or kind of something that aligns with the company's values, and then kind of insert that quote and just like, if this is something that sounds interesting, that's just a small part of my book and use that as an introduction right.

Stuart: What are the guardrails? Or what kind of guardrails do people need to be aware of? I guess at some point you always want to have kind of like a manual hand on the throttle just make sure it's not going off the rails. Is it just that and it's a case of checks and balances, or is it more? If you you never try and one and done it, but instead think about it as an iterative process and then build into your thinking that you need two or three iterations to make this right and then you can let it go?

Daniel: yeah, there's a couple of elements of it. I mean the first one is because we've got the beauty of customization and volume. You can let a couple fall through the gap. If one in a hundred emails isn't perfectly worded or not to the person you're trying to target exactly. It's not the end of the world. You've still sent 99 to the correct people and it. It works well that way. But yeah, there's making sure the ai is competent in what you want it to do. A lot of that's around the prompting and just kind of aligning it in the right direction so that it's able to say what you needed to say, target what you want to target.

One of the things we do to kind of mitigate some of that risk is like, for example, for the events company, we have the first line be personalized. So when you get a preview of an email you often get hi, your name, and then the first line, so we're able to ensure that the open rate's higher because there's that customized element immediately. And then the same kind of body of text is the same each time, other than the last kind of part that says we think for your event the best package would be, and then we insert the variable of the gold, silver, whatever hyperlink or attach the pdf normally. Hyperlink just so that they land in the inbox instead of the spam, so that you can add like multiple personalizations throughout it. However, the main body of it is still very much the same, so you get once again we go back to the mass and customized, so it's still kind of done in in the correct blend.

Stuart: Yeah, actually that's a good point as well. On the first couple of lines, knowing that typically appears in the preview on someone's phone or the desktop, knowing that you've got however many characters are in those first few words to make an impact if you're going to make it. I imagine the scenarios where people don't necessarily think about that and put all of the personalization efforts below the fold, as it were, and maybe the most useful bit where just a little bit of strategy and structure around it and make it much more effective. One of the other things that we were looking at when we were talking about the talking about this the other day was that level of kind of like name personalization in video. This one, I think, is something that's super interesting we talked about. Did you have a example that you can share?

Daniel: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I will just give some more context before we start. So with the customization and stuff we were doing, you're able to basically insert name, insert variables throughout LinkedIn, email, kind of all of the platforms, and we were also attaching video. So we would do a video kind of talking through the platforms and we were also attaching video. So we would do a video kind of talking through basically what we were offering, just in a way that we could stand out against everybody else in the noise and kind of like cut through, because our thumbnail of a video is much more interesting than just a black and white text on a piece of paper text yeah, yes, and then we got to the point where we could pre-record the audio of me chatting and then change what I was sharing on the screen so we could then insert their website.

So then all of a sudden, instead of it just being a video that I've sent to everyone, there's a video that I've made just for you on your website, but the pre-recording was still the same one, so it was still me saying the exact same thing.

It was just fairly generic, kind of like talking about websites, not particularly yours, but it was still a nice way and it did work and people were more impressed by the personalized element of it. And then, all of a sudden, places like 11 labs and some other kind of big AI companies came up with video and voice loaning. So we then moved it to removing my face from it. So we were sharing the screen and we just did basically a voiceover using the AI voice and we were able to say their name, say company name and stuff like that. But as the technologies emerged and kind of developed, even over the last couple of months, we've now been able to add in video and the voice seamlessly as well as sharing any screen or anything like that as well, so now we've gone from sending them a video all the way to a completely personal, completely bespoke video that we're kind of sending to clients I think that's the exciting thing.

Stuart: It's the speed at which this changes and develops. I was looking at this six months ago and it was okay, but still a little kind of uncanny valley, clunky a little bit. But the example that we were looking at early in the week, I mean it really is. You'd really have to look hard to be able to notice the seams on anything and in fact you had a funny story of the only time that someone had questioned whether it was AI was because they'd actually pronounced the AI pronounced the name correctly rather than incorrectly, and which seemed inconceivable to the person yes.

Daniel: So it was like hold on, how did you get my name right?

It must have been AI.

We've been chatting with kind of a variety of different people and business owners even and you'd be surprised by the number of people that either don't know about gpt exists or knows it exists, but I've used it a couple of times and it's all right.

I guess some people have no idea that you can clone somebody's whole entire face and have these personalizations. I mean, there are some people that, like I, can watch these videos and spot them, but because I've made it and kind of built some of the technology behind it, it's just like, oh yeah, I can see it. However, some people wouldn't even know that's an opportunity. So this level of personalization is just so different to what they're not used to receiving, and I think it will get to the point where, if you haven't sent somebody a personalized ai video, they're going to be blown away by the fact that, oh, you haven't bothered, but we're such a nice time now that we're on the edge of the technology that we are getting those really good responses and engagement and everything with it, because it's something different yeah, good enough that it's worthwhile doing, and early enough that it's not just another piece of noise.

Stuart: It's still different enough to be unique. Yeah absolutely did you have an example we can share?

Daniel: yeah, I can put an example up yeah, let's screen sharing should be on.

Stuart: So I think if you've got one and that way as people watch, I think it just really crystallizes it, because it's not until you actually see it that you can see the difference. So I'm not 100 sure whether audio will come through. I think it will, but in case it doesn't, I'll quickly describe what's going on yeah, that's fine.

Daniel: So this one is a bit of a demo that we just use for people. I will show you one that we actually use live for clients, but you can play. Spot the ai hi dan. My name is elise, your personal travel agent. A trip just came across my desk and I instantly thought of you. I know you love action-packed getaways full of adventure and lots of adrenaline, so there's two variables in there.

The first one is Dan Hi Dan, and then the next one is action-packed getaways. So we just did this as an example. You could change it to romantic getaways, you could change it to whatever you fancy. The next bit goes on to say about a hot air balloon ride across the desert, which is really exciting and adventurous, but also quite romantic if it's framed in that way. So just an example to kind of show the difference on there yeah, and even the quality of that.

Stuart: So the this is a full screen image and the mouth placement and movement, I mean it's you would even looking and watching for it. I mean, like you say, we kind of see these behind the scenes a little bit so I could probably spot where the section was and and also, knowing that we were looking for variables to be implanted, you kind of tune to that type of thing. Even with all of that, this is still, I mean, really good and I would imagine that 99% of people wouldn't notice it because they're not looking for it no, let me just play the high down again at the beginning, is it?

Daniel: it is, yeah, surprisingly good.

Stuart: Hi there, my name is elise, you just wouldn't notice at all, particularly someone. When you think about the use case I mean, we're on a 30 minute podcast specifically talking about this and looking at it when you think about the use case of someone receiving it and probably looking at it on their phone because it's come from an email and they're clicking through and they might be doing something else the audio is absolutely seamless and the video is 99.99% seamless. So the use case of someone actually it's funny. So we send out so our mailing lists. We're a marketing company and so our lists are full of other people who are interested in marketing and kind of in this world, in marketing and kind of in this world.

So we'll send out also responded messages and broadcast messages to the whole list saying hi, daniel, we're getting together with a small group next week. Would you like to join us? And we send out the same message every month almost and people who we know will respond to it as if they're responding individually to us. So again, even from a text-based thing, of a cohort of people who were kind of tuned to be sending out this stuff as recipients, that people's minds are just in a different place. So I think that's what makes it so effective, it's past the threshold of credibility and into okay, this is just what happens now yeah, yeah, and I think so.

Daniel: I mean, lead generation is a massive side of this. Like being able to basically have a personalized sales letter for each person is massively valuable. You can get much more across in a video than you can in a message before somebody switches off. But you could also use this for house tours film one house tour, insert the variable multiple times to multiple people. Completely fine, you could do it for thank you for signing up to our podcast. You could do it for, kind of, the list is endless. It kind of, once you've got a video, you could insert this variable into any of it. So, even if it's abandoned, car emails, so let's say I don't know, you're selling bespoke handmade tables. Like each time somebody check gets to the car and doesn't purchase, you could send them a video from you in the workshop, like working on a table, and then explain like, oh well, this could be yours if you just like purchase that's gonna still stand out, so much more than the same generic you've.

I think you've left something in your car like everybody else does yeah as well the opportunity to so you.

Stuart: I send out a number of linkedin requests and I've actually got automation. I don't typically use automation but I do in a couple of little places. But the message that goes out it's very personalized, it's very much the exact words that I would say if I was actually typing those words. It's just I'm using it for scale a little bit and several times people have responded and said, oh hey, thanks for the message. I'm glad you know, like everyone else, in using automation for this it was actually an automated message but because there was some level of thought around the words and not just all of the thought and the effort going into the technology but actually the use case. So things like recording a message and seasonally updating it.

So if you're like short sleeves and it's clearly pretty hot here in the middle of summer in pennsylvania sending that message saying oh, thanks for signing up to someone in the dead of winter, I mean there's a incongruency there or having the automation fire on an abandoned car at three o'clock in the morning. I mean you're probably not going to be in the workshop at three o'clock in the morning, but you can add in those levels of let's actually think about the human intelligence side of this and what is the most likely. If I was actually physically doing this in person, what would I do? And now, how can I automate that? Rather than just here's an automated solution, let's just let it go, but you can definitely set the context of it, can also do a lot of the lifting of keeping that mental model going, that it's actually a real person doing something one-on-one, in real time or just move to the uk and you can wear jumpers all year around, despite the fact it's the 23rd of july I tell you what I moved across in 2018 and my UK wardrobe.

I've got a ton of sweaters and jackets and like that typical mid-season ball-y type wardrobe that you have in the UK that you wear most of the year. I tell you what across here it's either there's like one day in March and one day in late October where I can wear that wardrobe and the rest of it it's either insanely too hot or bitingly cold and too cold.

Daniel: Let me tell you one of the other examples. Yeah, I've got one that we actually use for a client, or I've got one that shows a couple of different backgrounds, which gives you a bit more of an idea of what we can do. I mean, we can do both.

Stuart: Yeah, go for it. Let's do both of them quickly, Because what I'm However, many thousand people are on the list who this gets emailed out to and we've helped over a thousand people write books. The industries are right across the range. So what I'm really hoping for is, as we show these different examples and talk about these different examples, it's going to spark something for someone and they're going to think I've been trying to do this or thinking about doing something manually, but it's just too much of a, it's just too onerous. Or I've been really wanting to do this with automation, but I didn't know how. So hopefully these examples are really going to kind of get people thinking yes, yeah, absolutely.

Daniel: So this is a good example. Hazel is one of our clients. She does, she's in the social media space, but just purely for dentists. So running dentist social media and stuff like this, and this is just to kind of show, because we've just made a random profile just for the sake of this, but you can kind of see that we're able to showcase that we're on your linkedin, we're looking into kind of this kind of stuff which is perfect for her, of being like I'm on your linkedin. You need to do x, y and Z changes, which is normally generic advice to people, and then kind of going in a bit more about her services. Let me press play on here.

Stuart: Hi, Tom. My name's Hazel and I'm owner at Lyft.

Daniel: I wanted to make a video just for you, because I know that we can help you. Your online presence oh, I mean you watched the whole thing, but it gives you a bit of an idea of another layer of personalization that you can take it to by having their profile available on on the page as well yeah, and the practical steps for that subbing out that background, that still image background.

Stuart: If someone was thinking about doing this at scale, then that's just a link to the profile or a screenshot of the image, and then there's the variable of the name yeah, just a link to the profile.

Daniel: From there we can extract the name, we can extract. We actually send a tool on to take a screenshot of linkedin so we can kind of scrape all of that on autopilot in the background.

Stuart: Right and that as everyone was watching that video, I mean the name substitution there was. Even if you were, I would. I haven't seen the video before. I was kind of looking at the thumbnail of the girl and you couldn't tell. And if I was Tom receiving that message, I'm not looking at the person down here, I'm looking at my screen.

Daniel: And then there's absolutely no indication that it's a substitution. Yeah, and I think that's the biggest part of it, because the ai videos, while they're getting there, the full floating heads aren't quite there yet, and I think the benefit of this is that we're inserting it into a proper pre-recorded video, so you have the variables and the information already there. It's, by the time something, even if something moves slightly weird or the mouth doesn't quite sync up, by the time that it's happened, it's back to normal and it just, yeah, goes in the blink of an eye and you don't even really have time to double take it and be like hold on, what was that?

Stuart: yeah, and I think the nature of it like this isn't highly produced video. This isn't under the disguise of like a highly produced video, where people are expecting commercial grade video. This is like having a Zoom chat with someone. So even on this podcast, I mean, we glitched out halfway through because there was a bandwidth issue, but that's just in the stride. It's natural. People are so familiar with it that even if something does glitch, I think everyone just blames it on bandwidth or buffering yeah yeah, um, this is fantastic.

I mean, I think, some of the ideas as people are either doing cold outreach with their book and using the book as the example and tailoring the message slightly, or doing the video piece where you're engaging with that people, with those people, or whether it's doing the very specific kind of like. Here's your use case and here's my opinion over the top of it. There's so many examples and the fact that all of the audience listening to this are thinking about it in the context of a book. It doesn't need to be going in with the hard sell and this is a cold outreach and immediately buy. It's that taking the conversation one step at a time? Hey, here's a context, here's some useful bridging ideas and here's a low commitment thing you can do next, which is grab a copy of the book so it just ties in so well um, yeah, and I think another thing to add on to that is that we use it as a, as basically each level is to build intrigue.

Daniel: So when we first send the message, the main goal is to be vague enough in the message that they watch the video. And then, when they watch the video, it needs to be vague enough that they take the next step, whether that's book, a call, gives them a phone, arrange a meeting, whatever the next thing is. So for your audience, a lot of that's going to be like oh well, have a look at my book, which then builds the credibility. So instead of having that next call initially, you're able to build that credibility which will then improve the sale later down the line.

Stuart: Right. Are you doing anything with content at the moment? So we've talked about in terms of email and outreach? Are you doing anything with AI generated content for posting that side of things? Yet?

Daniel: So I do think it will get there at the minute the kind of floating hedge you can now clone yourself and give it a script. However, it's like on a plain white background and you do jump about a bit. It's not quite there yet. It will be and I imagine in in the next couple of months. I think we're honestly that close to it, but right now it's just it's still a bit canny valley and yeah, yeah, you, you do get the feeling that something's off and when you're kind of building that following and relationship online with people is worth kind of doing it, and if you're kind of building that following and relationship online with people is worth kind of doing it, and if you were to insert variables like this, then you've still got to record a video anyway, so it's not really saved yeah, that's true.

Stuart: Yeah, actually that's a great point, isn't it? It's kind of not trying to shoehorn one example into every use case.

Daniel: It's having a use case and then finding the ones that are worthwhile doing individually or worthwhile kind of doing at scale yeah, yeah, and I think the other thing is the really like you can make the video feel more niche and like you've taken that time, but I just tailored doing it slightly differently too. Let's say you're going after c-suite, you could do one, two ceos you can do one, two cfos you can do and like make a different one for each one. It takes a minute to record it. Two. If you mess up the first one and have to do a second one, it doesn't take long.

So just just do it and then you will get better responses from it and it's like like your cold messages on linkedin, like yes, you're using an automation tool, but because you've taken the time to actually build something that's decent and kind of a message that's well thought out and you know who you're targeting, and stuff like that, then it almost adds its own value in the longer term.

Stuart: Right, yeah, that fit for purpose idea.

Daniel: Yeah.

Stuart: This last one. This is a similar situation with the screenshot in the background taken from the linkedin profile yes, so this is a gentleman who runs paid advertising.

Daniel: In this case he's talking to accountants.

But I'll just play the first little bit and then I'll mute it and run you through kind of the different backgrounds and stuff that he uses throughout it. Hi, dylan, I can see you are a very experienced accountant and you have a company in the London area, which is so great because so the variables that are account name, obviously, and then accountant in London area. So it goes from sharing the LinkedIn profile to actually looking at the seo difficulty and ranking of the keyword that they're after so accountants in london explains how great this could be for him. It then goes on to the gentleman's website to kind of showcase like, look, I'm on your website doing my homework. It then goes on to his own website and even goes through to show kind of like how to book and everything like that. So this bit where he's actually clicking through, it's just a pre-recorded screen recording that gets added to every single one. It's just the variables of like oh, I'm on your website, this is the keyword, this is your linkedin profile. They're the variables that you can kind of play with.

So you can have as many backgrounds as you want, as long as, like any mouse moving and like clicking around you want to do is a pre-recorded, it's that easy to do.

Stuart: Yeah, and again, like you said a second ago, thinking about this in terms of having, if you're looking for c-suite clients, have one for cfos, another one for ceos, another one for CXOs having that tailored piece and, because it's so, put the effort into the bit that's going to move the levers the most. So recording those individual ones is the high value piece and then have the automation at the kind of transactional layer. Much better way of thinking about it, rather than trying to do like a one-size-fits-all and just record something and then just spew out that tailoring. If you're going to put any effort into it, it's worthwhile putting it there as opposed to other places yeah, absolutely yeah fantastic.

I mean, the reason I wanted to jump on a call today is because the ideas were spinning when we were talking the other day. I really think that, as people are listening to this with their own business, it's well and truly worth just a couple of minutes of thinking about okay, if I could have on a limited amount of time and personalize every message, what are the kind of things that I should and could do? And now look at some of the tools that sit in place and the services that are in place to do it on your behalf and make sure it gets done. Where's I'm sure this has sparked many more questions for people where's a good place for people to find out more and kind of check in with you a little bit?

Daniel: yeah, so probably the best place is my website. It's automationxaicom. My email's on there or you. There's a currently link. So if you wanted to book some time to have a chat with me more than happy to answer any questions, yeah fantastic.

Stuart: Well, I'll make sure that we put a link to that and to your linkedin profile as well, on the show notes so, as people are listening either on the podcast player or going to the website, just scroll down a little bit and direct links will be straight there, rather than having to uh pull over as you're listening and jot it down immediately. Just hit the link and it will go straight through. But I think there's there's more information on dan's website, some more examples and use cases in the background, but I think the examples that we've shown here are just really the great jumping off point, as people are kind of dialing this in and thinking about it for their own use case, and it's not then that they need to come up with the solutions.

Daniel: It's just come up with the ideas and then speak to you guys about what the right solution might be yeah, and I think once you know that technology exists, then it opens so many more doors of what you can do like, yeah, it's a nice kind of level to maybe it's somebody that books in your restaurant every other week and you know that they're coming back or you and you can find where their birthday is and send them a personalized message on their birthday birthday messages, man, that is a great okay, well, the risk of not talking for another 10 minutes, but that's a perfect idea as well when you think about that opportunity to really improve relationships, and I'm sure that everyone who's listening in again, in an ideal world would love to make sure that they reached out to everyone and love to personally thank everyone and love to be there ahead of their events and make that personal connection, but just, it's just not possible with the time.

Stuart: But this type of thing to accelerate actual relationships, that's a really yeah, that's a super interesting use case as well.

Daniel: Yeah, yeah, okay well I won't carry on, yeah, I know, and this is the thing.

Stuart: I mean it's the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? And where we are with technology as well. I mean, like you say, chat, gpc is the kind of jumping off point for a lot of this llm level interpretation of the language that's out there. I mean zapier. We've used zapier as a automation tool for 10 years and we've got hundreds of Zaps running hundreds of steps. So automation is one thing, but the personalization, the interpretation of the language, I mean so new, but really we're just at the beginning of the curve. Yeah, absolutely Perfect.

Well, thank you, buddy, appreciate the time as well. I know it's a little bit later over there in the uk, back in the uk, than it is here, but thanks for sharing. Everyone, thanks for listening. I'll, as I say, make sure I've got links to daniel's website and the linkedin profile in the show notes so, as these ideas are percolating, just head over there and grab spenders here for a little bit and come up with some great ideas and for sure, let me know what ideas you come up with. Okay, with that, thanks again for your time, buddy. We will catch up with you again soon and everyone, thanks for listening.

Daniel: No worries, thanks for having me.