Has anyone moved away from “manual” growth and actually seen results with automation tools?
I’ve been doing most of my outreach and lead gen manually so far, LinkedIn messages, emails, basic prospecting, etc. It works, but it’s slow and honestly not very scalable.
Lately I’ve been debating whether it’s time to start using more automation/AI tools to speed things up. Not just for scraping leads, but also for things like follow-ups, personalization at scale, and keeping pipelines active without spending hours every day.
I’ve looked into tools like Cracked AI, PhantomBuster, Instantly.ai, but I’m a bit skeptical. My main concerns is:
- Does automation actually convert, or just inflate numbers?
- How do you avoid burning domains/accounts?
- Does it end up feeling too “spammy” over time?
For those who’ve used these tools seriously: Did they actually improve your pipeline, or did you end up going back to manual methods?
Trying to figure out if this is a real upgrade or just a shortcut that causes problems later.