If you’re in sales and concerned that AI-generated outreach email might turn customers off, you’re not alone. Many sellers worry that automated outreach can feel impersonal, potentially eroding trust and damaging relationships. But our recent study paints a different picture—one that’s surprisingly optimistic. Survey responses from 45 businesses across industries–including education, banking, healthcare and tech— a different perspective and offer fresh insights into how AI-generated B2B outreach emails are actually being received.
The Emotional Rollercoaster of Outreach Emails
Before diving into AI topics in our survey, we mapped the emotional journey of customers with traditional outreach emails.
The typical experience? Overwhelming, confusing, and often frustrating. Customers scan their inboxes, wary of spam and irrelevant offers. Even when an email seems promising, unclear next steps and clunky unsubscribe processes leave them annoyed.
What they crave is simplicity: clarity, relevance, and control.
Consent Is King
Customers want absolute control over their inboxes. They define consent as an active opt-in—not a passive assumption. They expect clear unsubscribe options with confirmation messages and, ideally, deletion of personal data.
Tone, Trust, and the AI Factor
Customers are savvy. They verify senders, research companies on LinkedIn, and judge emails by their subject lines. Trust is not just built by who sends the email—but also how it’s sent. Personalization, transparency, and a clear value proposition matter more than whether the sender is human or AI.
In fact, 33 out of 45 customers felt comfortable with AI agents doing outreach, and 5 were neutral. That’s 84% who didn’t mind—or even preferred—AI, as long as the message was relevant, concise and respectful.
AI vs. Human: It’s Not a Battle—It’s a Balance
Most customers said they wouldn’t treat an AI outreach email any differently than one from a human. The catch? They want the option to escalate to a human when things get complex—especially around pricing, payment, or sensitive data. As more companies use AI in outreach emails, customers may become more receptive to engaging with AI.
They’re fine with AI handling initial outreach, answering basic questions, and even creating invoices. But when it comes to trust-building moments, human touch still matters.
What Selling Companies Should Do
If you’re considering AI outreach, here’s what our research suggests:
- Humanize the message: Make AI-generated email copy more engaging and relatable by using everyday language, align it with your brand’s voice and tone, and personalize the email with customer names and purchase history.
- Be transparent: Clearly state that the email is AI-generated—but make it indistinguishable in tone and quality from human.
- Respect consent: Offer easy opt-outs, confirmations, and data privacy assurances.
- Transparency on data security: Emphasize robust data security and privacy protections of info shared with AI as it is critical to building trust
- Know when to hand off: Let AI handle the routine, but bring in humans for negotiation, escalation, and final transactions.
Ready to engage with your customers using AI?
Dynamics 365 Sales offers Sales Qualification Agent, which works around the clock to automate pipeline qualification and improve lead quality. Sales Qualification Agent proactively researches information about the lead and company, and can identify customer fit and stage in the buying journey. The agent can also engage hundreds of leads at once with personalized e-mails and follow-ups. Your organization can configure the agent to meet the needs of your business, like handoff criteria for when it’s time to pass the lead to a seller.
Final Thought: The Bar Is Low—Raise It with AI
Customers aren’t rejecting AI—they’re rejecting bad outreach. Poorly crafted emails, pushy tactics, and irrelevant offers have set the bar low. AI-generated content, when done right, can raise that bar by being efficient, respectful, and surprisingly personable.
So yes, bots belong in the inbox. Just make sure they’re the kind your customers want to talk to.
Please Note: This is a developing area, and we will keep updating the information as we gather more information through further research. This study had a skew towards customers who have higher AI proficiency and were buying SaaS and logistics/ops products. The questions were asked strictly keeping transactional high volume low value B2B outreach in mind.
