Your Enriched Leads Are Generating Zero Revenue
How I turn enriched leads into revenue.
You have thousands of enriched leads, a database brimming with potential. Yet, it sits dormant, generating zero emails and zero revenue. This is a common scenario for businesses stuck in Level 1 of AI automation — you’ve successfully aggregated data, but lack the systems to activate it. You’re sitting on a goldmine with no tools to excavate it.
I am going to show you the exact workflow I use to transform that static data into dynamic, revenue-generating email campaigns that run on autopilot. We will move beyond simple data collection and build a true automated process, a critical step toward reaching Level 2 and Level 3 of AI maturity.
In a previous breakdown, I demonstrated how to scrape over 50,000 leads using Apollo with Apify and enrich them with personalized messages. That initial method involved a chain that took websites, found relevant links, and then performed a manual search. While functional, that process was prone to error and inconsistent. It wasn’t a scalable system.
The focus isn’t on manual, brittle processes, but rather on building a resilient, streamlined workflow. Unlike the old method, which required constant oversight, this new system leverages Perplexity to create a robust and automated research and outreach engine.
Building an Automated Research Agent
The core of this upgraded system is Perplexity, which automates the entire research process for you. The advantage of this approach is its flexibility and depth. Depending on the model you choose, you can gather just enough data for a light touchpoint or perform deep research for hyper-personalized outreach. Using a model like Sonar, for instance, costs only a few cents per lead but delivers powerful insights.
To illustrate the depth possible, a recent test using Sonar’s Deep Research feature uncovered that one of my leads had just given birth. This is a profound piece of personal information. An immediate thought might be to use it in an outreach message: “Congratulations on your new arrival! As you adjust, perhaps our product could help…”
As powerful as this sounds, it walks a fine line. It could be perceived as invasive or, if your product genuinely solves a new parent’s problem, incredibly timely and helpful. The decision of how deep to go with personalization rests with you and your brand’s ethics. For most applications, the standard Sonar model provides more than enough context without crossing personal boundaries.
The automation begins with a system prompt designed to guide the AI in its research.
- Company Research: The first step is to gather relevant, recent information about the target company. This forms the foundation of your personalization.
- Data Consolidation: The new research is then merged with all the previously scraped information, such as the lead’s name, title, and company details.
- Intelligent Summarization: With all the data compiled, another AI model summarizes the key points, extracting the most salient information needed to craft a compelling message.
- Personalized Message Crafting: Finally, an AI agent uses the summary to construct the personalized email.
This is the base template I use for the final message generation. It’s direct, value-driven, and built on a proven structure.
Hi {first_name},
{ai_summary_personalization_line}
I help {title}s like you save 20 hours per week by automating repetitive tasks. To prove it, I want to build you one pilot automation for free.
Are you available for a quick call next week to find a task we can take off your plate?
{signature}
This template is short, personalized, and gets straight to the point. Its structure is no accident. It’s derived from the principles taught by Matthew Lucero, an expert in cold email outreach. I’ve compiled his teachings into a comprehensive playbook covering subject lines, body copy, calls to action, and follow-up sequences.
A quick tip for those managing costs: if you want to handle the summarization and personalization steps for free, you can use OpenRouter with a model like Google’s Gemma 3 (27B parameter version). It’s a powerful and free alternative, but be aware of the trade-off. Using a free, open-source model may come at the cost of data privacy, so proceed with that in mind if your lead data is sensitive.
Once the personalized message is crafted, the entire record is saved to a Supabase database. I’ve included a brief wait command in the workflow to avoid hitting API rate limits, ensuring the process runs smoothly without interruption.
From Database to Outreach Platform
Now we have a database full of perfectly crafted, personalized outreach messages. The next challenge is moving this data from Supabase into an outreach platform like Smartlead or Instantly. While you could build another n8n workflow for this, I created a small, dedicated application to handle the export cleanly.
It was tricky at first to set up the Supabase table and the export script. So if you are not tech-savvy, I will have the full detailed instructions in our upcoming Corporate Automation Library (CAL), which will host the n8n code and steps required to get this running on your server. Click Here to get notified of the launch of CAL. We plan on having over 50+ automations with 2–4 corporate automations uploaded weekly.
This exporter solves a subtle but critical formatting problem. The AI-generated summaries contain new lines to structure the text for readability. When you export this to a standard CSV, these new lines are preserved. However, some outreach platforms, like Smartlead, strip them out, collapsing your carefully crafted message into a single, unreadable block of text. Platforms like Instantly handle this correctly, but if you prefer Smartlead for its price point or other features, you need a solution.
My script addresses this by running a secondary command. It takes the exported CSV and splits the multi-line summary across several columns (summary_1, summary_2, summary_3, etc.). Each column holds a single line of the original text. When you map these columns in Smartlead, it reconstructs the message with the intended line breaks, preserving your formatting perfectly. This small technical detail makes a massive difference in the professionalism of your outreach.
Launching the Campaign
With our contacts properly formatted and exported, it’s time to import them into an outreach tool. I’m currently testing Smartlead, which has a basic plan starting at around $39 per month. The first and most critical step inside any outreach platform is setting up your email accounts correctly.
Do not use your primary business email for cold outreach. You risk damaging its reputation and having your primary domain flagged for spam. Instead, set up secondary email accounts on similar domains. Crucially, you must enable email warm-up for every account you connect. This process, which can take one to two weeks, involves the platform automatically sending and receiving emails between a network of inboxes. To email service providers like Google and Microsoft, this activity makes your new account look like it’s being used by a real person.
Warming up your email is non-negotiable. It is the single most important factor in ensuring your emails land in the inbox instead of the spam folder, directly impacting your campaign’s deliverability and success.
Once your leads are imported, you can build your email sequence. Here is a preview of the first email, showing how the personalized fields come together:
Hi Michelle,
Given RCH Consulting’s focus on optimizing client service delivery, I can imagine efficiently managing workflows is a constant priority.
I help Operations Managers like you save 20 hours per week by automating repetitive tasks. To prove it, I want to build one pilot automation completely for free.
Are you open to a quick call to find a task that we can take off your plate?
Ritesh Kanjee Founder, Augmented AI | 121k+ YouTube Subscribers
The follow-up emails in the sequence are just as important. The principle is simple: each subsequent email should be shorter than the last and offer additional proof or value. You are not just reminding them you exist; you are demonstrating your expertise and building trust.
These follow-ups can showcase case studies, share relevant insights, or highlight successful projects, reinforcing the idea that you have the experience to solve their problem. The complete strategy for structuring these follow-up sequences is detailed in the playbook available in the Corporate Automation Library.
We now have the three core components of a scalable outreach system:
- A list of highly enriched and researched leads.
- A sequence of personalized, value-driven messages ready to be sent.
- A robust platform to manage the distribution and warming process.
The manual, error-prone tasks have been replaced by a reliable, automated engine. All that’s left is to press send and begin the conversation.
Ritesh Kanjee | Augmented AI
(121K Subscribers | 58K LinkedIn Followers)
