What are your thoughts on building a cold‑outreach system that sends personalized Loom videos to prospects and how would you approach building it?
I've built something very similar. The main hurdle was the hidden API for uploading Looms—it worked but was painful; Gloom's auto‑GIF embeds in emails make it a good option. People are now accustomed to Looms so the format feels native. To build a personalized Loom outreach machine: 1. Use a variable (e.g., {{name}}) that a voice‑cloning model (like Be Human) replaces with the prospect's first name spoken in your voice. 2. While the name is being spoken move the Loom window across the screen to hide any mouth artifacts. 3. Prepare a library of video templates—about 30—each tailored to a specific niche or offer (e.g., B2B agencies buying cold‑email services B2B agencies buying fulfillment systems manufacturing companies buying cold outreach manufacturing companies buying fulfillment etc.). 4. When you scrape a list of leads run an AI classifier that reads the prospect's company info and assigns them to one of those categories. 5. Pick the matching template insert the prospect's first name into the voice‑over and stitch the personalized video together. 6. The result feels like a custom‑made video: “Hey Peter hope you're doing well… I've been following you… I love your no‑frills approach…” 7. To increase perceived personalization overlay a screenshot of the prospect's LinkedIn/Instagram/etc. and do a quick screen‑grab before the Loom plays. 8. I currently run a $300 k/month content business and saw that this approach could save prospects significant money with a simple tweak—hence I recorded this video to share the idea. 9. The method works well; it's not perfect but delivers strong results.
You know, I actually did this exact same thing using a service called Be Human a while ago. I'm not affiliated with them and don't use their service anymore; I'm not even sure if they're still around, but it was a pretty cool service. You could record a video, say the person's name in it, and the AI would find that point, blur over your mouth, and use a training sample of your voice to say the name. For example, I'd say, 'Hey, really cool seeing you. Thought I'd record a quick video just putting this in front of you to see if you get some value out of it.' The video would then say, 'Hey, Peter.' The issue back then was that the models weren't good at distorting your face, so my hack was to grab the Loom video recording bubble (or equivalent) and say, 'Hey, Peter.' While the video was moving fast, you couldn't see my face, and if someone paused on the name to double-check, they'd see me halfway through a transition, making it unclear. Some of the best sales and lead gen cold email campaigns a couple years ago used this approach and flew under the radar. You could create and record the video, give it total plausible deniability, make it seem super customized, and then pass it through. If you're a hacker nerd wanting to build your own pipeline, you could do this for about 5 cents per 200 videos by renting GPUs on a service like RunPod, running a video name‑change model, or using whatever model Be Human uses, treating it like an API point. So yeah, I'm not going to discourage you.
I don’t run a fully automated cold‑email system with Loom videos because it doesn’t scale well. Instead, I keep a simple Google sheet with columns for first name, last name, company, email, icebreaker, and a Loom link. I add each lead to the sheet, automate the icebreaker, then manually record a short Loom video (2‑4 minutes) for each prospect, talking about their specific needs. Sending 15 personalized videos takes about an hour of recording plus an hour to set up—so it’s doable but not highly scalable. The nuance is that customized Loom videos conflict with the goal of high‑volume automated outreach; the best approach is to do the recordings yourself when you want that level of personalization.
Obviously you're very financially and resource‑constrained, lacking a laptop, webcam, microphone, and custom domains, yet you’re actively thinking about how to get things done despite those limits — that mindset will take you far. When I say ‘asset,’ I’m referring to the asset‑based outreach strategy I’ve discussed before: you create a high‑quality, customized piece of value that solves a specific problem for a prospect, give it to them with little or no ask, and use it to break the ice instead of sending a plain cold email. These assets are high‑value and very effective when they truly address the prospect’s pain points, though they do require considerable time and effort to produce. Examples of assets include: using AI to generate newsletters from a prospect’s website, then formatting them into a polished newsletter (about 80‑90 % complete) that you send for free; for coaches or consultants, running an automation that pulls the top‑10 trending videos in their niche, feeding those titles into AI to generate a set of strong title ideas, and delivering those titles; video editors editing a prospect’s video and sending it over with a note like, “I love your channel; I’ve edited a bunch of your content for you — just wanted you to have it”; taking long‑form video content, running it through a short‑form clip generator (e.g., Opus, Stockclip) to produce a bunch of short clips, then sending those clips to an influencer or creator with a message such as, “I clipped your content for free; feel free to use it — I do this professionally and would be happy to help you further.” You can mix and match any of these ideas in your outreach. In your situation — no Loom video, no custom domain, no paid cold‑email tool, only an old PC and Gmail — your best leverage is your ability to build such assets rather than relying on pure sales skill. If you need a laptop for a Zoom call, borrowing one from a friend works well. Your resourcefulness and gumption are exactly what will move you forward.
Treat personalized video outreach as a separate campaign from your regular cold email. For the video campaign, gather prospects using Apollo or social‑media scrapers, then send customized DMs that reference specifics from their profiles or websites so it’s clearly not a template. Keep your standard cold email process distinct. Within that flow, I’d record a Loom video for about five to twenty prospects per day — enough to add a personal touch without overwhelming your workload — and run the video outreach alongside your usual cold email sequence.