Personalize with AI (Claude Code)

Installation Guide HERE

What This Skill Does

The /personalize-leads skill takes your lead list and generates deeply personalized icebreaker lines for each one. It scrapes each lead's actual website, reads their content, and writes a one-sentence opener that proves you looked at their business.

This is NOT generic complimenting. Each icebreaker references a concrete, verifiable detail - a specific project, a named team member, an exact number, a unique service.

Example icebreakers:

"saw the before/after gallery from that hail damage project in frisco, the TPO flat roof work looked solid"

"read that Carlos started the company after 20 years in construction management, that kind of hands-on background shows"

"noticed you guys are owens corning preferred contractors and do free drone inspections, solid combo for homeowners"

How to Use

/personalize-leads path/to/your/leads.csv

Claude will:

  • Read the CSV
  • Scrape all websites in parallel
  • Generate icebreakers for each lead
  • Save the updated CSV with an Icebreaker column

Options:

  • --workers 10 (use 10 parallel scrapers instead of default 5, faster but more aggressive)
  • --overwrite (regenerate icebreakers even for leads that already have one)

How It Works

Step 1: Load Your Leads

Your CSV needs at minimum: Email, Website, Company Name. Optional columns that improve quality: City, Rating, Reviews.

It filters to leads that have BOTH an email AND a website. No point personalizing someone you can't reach or research.

Step 2: Scrape Websites

For each lead, the skill:

  • Fetches the homepage and converts to clean text
  • Scans for internal links to /about, /team, /services, /projects pages
  • Fetches up to 2 additional pages
  • Combines all text (capped at 15,000 characters per lead)

Runs in parallel - 500 leads takes about 10-15 minutes.

Step 3: Generate Icebreakers

Claude Haiku reads the scraped content and picks ONE specific detail, prioritized in this order:

  1. Named people - owner/founder name + their background
  2. Specific projects - named locations, building types, before/after work
  3. Unique certifications - GAF Master Elite, Owens Corning Preferred, etc.
  4. Unique services - drone inspections, solar integration, commercial + residential
  5. Specific numbers - years in business, roofs completed, team size
  6. Community involvement - sponsorships, charity work
  7. Warranty details - specific terms that differentiate them

Tone: casual, slightly imperfect, 1-2 sentences max. Written like a real person, not AI.

Step 4: Fallback Icebreakers

When website scraping fails (blocked, empty, timeout), a warm fallback gets generated:

  • High-rated business: "Been researching [niche] companies in {city} and {company} keeps coming up with strong reputation"
  • Has city: "Been looking into [niche] companies across {city} and {company} caught my attention"

Expect about 70-80% website-sourced, 20-30% fallbacks.

Step 5: Output

The Icebreaker column maps directly to SmartLead's {{icebreaker}} merge field when you upload leads to a campaign.

What Makes a Good vs Bad Icebreaker

Good (specific, verifiable):

  • "Saw the 200-unit apartment complex re-roof you did in Katy" - names a real project
  • "Read that Mike started the company after 15 years at ABC Roofing" - names a real person
  • "Noticed you're one of only 12 GAF Master Elite contractors in Texas" - specific cert + number

Bad (generic, could apply to anyone):

  • "Noticed your company has been serving the Houston area" - anyone can say this
  • "Impressive track record in roofing" - says nothing specific
  • "Your team seems really experienced" - vague flattery

Adapting for Your Niche

The skill ships with general examples, but you can adapt it to any industry by updating:

  • The prompt examples in the SKILL.md to match your target niche
  • The fallback icebreakers to reference your industry
  • The "what to reference" priority list - for SaaS you'd look at pricing pages, case studies, integrations. For restaurants: menus, awards, chef backgrounds.

The core logic works for any B2B or local business niche.

Cost

Website scraping: Free (built-in)

Claude Haiku per lead: ~$0.003

500 leads total: ~$1.50

Speed: ~10-15 min for 500 leads with 5 workers. Bottleneck is website fetch time, not API cost.

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