Uptics is a simple, all-in-one sales automation CRM that helps grow sales 24/7 through personalized, multi-channel customer outreach — entirely on autopilot. 

We sat down with Patrick Spielmann, Founder and CEO of Uptics, to uncover:

1. Why companies should double down on personalization and automation
2. How to maximize campaign effectiveness using human touchpoints 
3. The outsized value in activating a customer’s emotional response

“Personalized user comms, at any level, show that you care. I think that’s the cornerstone of any brand that truly values customer support and relationships.” 

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Why companies should double down on personalization and automation

For brands personalizing outbound emails, Patrick highlights four growth points to expect: 

1. Open rates — Even as iOS and Gmail complicate recipient tracking, personalized subject lines, video messages, etc. clearly drive a greater percentage of opened emails. 
2. Click rates — Personalized links (like custom product recs) encourage more clicks. 
3. Reply rates — Personalization humanizes your emails to encourage replies that lead to one-on-one conversations. Of course, every great sale also starts with a conversation. 
4. (Un)subscription rates — By keeping your emails relevant and your open rates high, you prevent the dreaded creep of unsubscription and bounce rates. 

In terms of the benefits of solid automation, Patrick describes three below. 

1. Saving time and money

Savings on time and capital are Patrick’s first and foremost perk of automation. 

For instance, if you’re hiring an SDR to generate basic outbound leads or conduct outreach, that work can easily be automated away. As a result: 

• More work gets done by a machine than a person in an eight-hour workday
• It becomes easier to scale rapidly since you'll have to hire and onboard far less people

2. Seamless hiring and retention

An inherent part of hiring at scale? You will experience staff turnover, especially in sales. 

It's harder to quantify, explains Patrick, but if you don't have rock-solid training flows in place, that turnover can slow sales growth and become another resource drain. 

Again, automating a percentage of sales efforts becomes a solution. 

3. Driving down the cost of human error

With the current state of AI, you'll need a human to set up and train the system. But, once it's up and running, the system is far more consistent and predictable than the human using it. 

For instance, a project that could've launched in one month might take three — simply due to turnover and human error or inconsistency — leading to downstream opportunity costs. 

“It’s harder to quantify right now. But, ultimately, automation is about doing more with less: less human lift, less capital, and less wasted resources overall.” 

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How to maximize campaign effectiveness using human touchpoints 

At face value, what’s personalized vs. what’s automated at scale seem like polar opposites. 

As Patrick puts it, personalization is key to maximizing campaign success. The more uniquely personalized your outreach is, the better your chances are of receiving a response. 

Naturally, the reverse also applies. The less human you make your outreach, the worse your chances are of encouraging the human on the other end to reply. 

In a perfect world, brands could continue engaging with every buyer one-on-one to maintain that sales relationship along every stage of growth. But we can’t. So, we automate. Unfortunately, Patrick points out, “People can smell personalized templates and formulas from a mile away.” 

That kind of phoniness will, at the very least, drive consumers to quickly click away and, at worst, get your marketing attempts marked as spam. 

This calls for a fine balance — one both Uptics and Windsor attempt to strike.

The outsized value in activating a customer’s emotional response

As automation shifts specifically toward AI and Windsor’s deepfakes, this begs the question: “How do users respond if and when they realize their personalized video isn’t 100% authentic?” 

Patrick tacks on the question: "Do customers actually care if it's deepfaked?" 

He first anticipated that Uptics customers would be upset at the realization. However, after reviewing the platform's response data, he was surprised to see the total opposite: 

A lot of users clearly knew they were Windsor-produced deepfakes. They still loved them. 

Patrick attributes this to a couple of factors: 

1. What’s new and exciting

Although the message isn't truly personalized by a human, the customer is usually still just impressed by the realism of the deepfake tech. 

Even more, they’re struck by the uniqueness of the campaign, especially when the rest of their inbox is likely flooded with plain-text marketing emails and static images. 

To give an example, we saw the same trajectory occur with personalized greetings (“Hi, Jack” or “Welcome back, Jill!”) at the top of ad emails within the last decade or two. 

In Patrick's words: “Pattern interruption stokes emotional reactions: novelty and excitement at something new. And ultimately, emotion is at the core of any personalization — even at scale.”

2. Clear attention to the details

As another differentiator from the competition, going beyond the industry standard for email marketing demonstrates a level of effort and care for your users’ opinions. 

Patrick concedes that, with video marketing (or any creative marketing), you'll always have a camp of users who go, "This is automated — so fake" or "This is unnecessary," and click out. 

There’ll also be the more important camp that subconsciously thinks, "Whoa. If they care enough about the details to make thank-you videos, what are their products or services like?" 

"Even if users know the video is deepfaked, they think, 'Damn. How'd they do that? It's kind of impressive.' They respect the uniqueness of the marketing." 

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The Uptics playbook: how to optimize post-purchase email campaigns

For the early-stage brand looking to start automating and/or personalizing in small ways, Patrick advises working backward from the end of your sales or marketing funnel. 

The immediate pre- and post-purchase points tend to have less volume for you to work through. Plus, your next steps to encourage that final push to purchase or to retain the buyer are simpler. 

With Windsor, Patrick and Uptics have run close to ten AI-personalized video campaigns across: 

• The post-purchase “thank you” — A natural step up from the basic thank-you email, a common Windsor use case is sending personalized thank-you videos from the founder. 
• Post-purchase onboarding — Patrick has recorded and is in the process of launching (through both email and SMS) a series of onboarding or product tutorial videos. 

Prioritize engaging your inactive subscribers

Aside from maximizing your post-purchase flow — an often underutilized part of the funnel — Patrick recommends leveraging Windsor to engage your existing subscriber base. 

For example, the Uptics team occasionally puts out feelers for demo requests. 

If a user has been on their email list for some time and opened a certain number of messages, they’ll reach out with a video, saying something along the lines of: 

“Hi! You’ve been on my mailing list for a while. I wanted to invite you to potentially hop on a call.” 

Embed resources and compelling customer CTAs

Patrick’s final customer comms tip: Bake resources and CTAs into your thank-you messages, whether they’re written or video. 

He or the Uptics team will reach out to any individual who: 

• Connects with him on LinkedIn
• Joins Uptics’ Facebook community
• Enrolls in Uptics University, their course platform

The message or video script usually reads: “Hey, thanks for connecting,” or, “Hey, thanks for joining our Facebook group. We’re glad to have you.” That then segues into: 

“By the way, we run a sales university with free training on how to automate your sales.” 

The impact here is threefold: 

1. The basic “thank you” reminds the recipient you’re there
2. Providing a helpful resource communicates that you have their benefit in mind
3. The CTA or resource linked to your site leads them to take a closer look at your business

"Working backward from the end of your funnel makes the most sense. There's way less volume to go through, and your next steps are clear."