AI Lead Generation: Definition, Tips and 7 Tools for 2025

76% of companies rely on automation tools for their marketing efforts.

Learn more about using AI for your lead generation and the top tools to implement today.

What is lead generation?

Lead generation essentially consists of gathering leads or potential clients for your business.

Leads are the backbone of your business, and because conversion rates tend to be around 12%, it is crucial that you only gather quality leads that are likely to convert and will not waste your time or resources.

Lead generation can work two ways:

• Inbound lead generation
• Outbound lead generation

Inbound lead generation intends to attract leads toward the business. This involves a content marketing approach that will establish your business as an industry leader, while also establishing trust within your leads.

On the other hand, outbound lead generation requires a more proactive approach in which you will have to find leads and contact them directly.

Outbound lead generation is a more demanding approach as finding quality leads can be tricky and time-consuming, so implementing AI lead generation will completely change your lead generation game.

Whether it is outbound or inbound.

How to automate lead generation

Although lead generation is a vital component in actually acquiring clients, it’s also a very time-consuming and demanding process.

However, by automating the process, you’re saving up on time, money, lost leads, and lost deals.

But how do you go about it?

When to use AI for lead generation

First of all, lead generation doesn’t only consist of finding leads. There are many sectors in which AI lead generation can help you.

• Find leads

AI lead generation can help you find quality leads quickly and easily, by using AI powered lead databases, email Finders and Verifiers, web scraping techniques, and much more.

• Lead enrichment

Although having a tool that will help you find leads, it’s also important to have a tool that will enrich those leads for you.

Lead enrichment is essentially a process in which you complete and update the information you have gathered.

For example le enrichment can add emails, job titles, phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles, or other useful information that will come in handy when you automate personalization.

• Contact leads

Reaching out to each lead one by one can be completely inefficient.

Fortunately, you can depend on an outreach tool that will take care of that for you.

If you choose well, you could get multichannel prospecting with high level personalization that can be done in seconds.

This will engage your leads much further and motivate them to move down the sales funnel.

• Lead segmentation

Lead segmentation consists of classifying your leads into smaller groups based on location, technology, budget, engagement-level, needs, behavior, and more.

This will help you create even more targeted outreach campaigns that will resonate with your leads.

While you can do it manually, it would be very time-consuming and there could be mistakes. However, AI can take care of lead segmentation with the click of a button.

Once AI has segmented your list of leads, you’ll have shorter lists ready for outreach.

• Lead qualification

Similarly to lead segmentation, a lead qualification strategy will help you prioritize your leads and allocate your time and resources much more efficiently.

And while we’re thinking of efficiency, what could be better than having AI qualify your leads in seconds based on your team’s criteria?

• Lead capture

Lead capture will allow you to gather accurate information of interested and qualified leads.

There are many lead capture tools that will help you do this efficiently while you personalize your forms so you target the right people with each lead capture form.

Benefits of AI lead generation

Although AI can’t (and shouldn’t) take over the entire process, it is the best way to leave you time for the most important part of the process: building relationships with your leads.

Additionally, AI in lead generation comes with many more benefits, including:

• Increased efficiency
• Save time and money
• Enhanced data analysis
• Less mistakes and missed opportunities
• High level personalization in all your outreach
• Receive detailed insights of your leads and sales process

Where should you use AI in lead generation?

1. Define your ICP

Your buyer persona is your ideal client and the exact person you wish to target.

However, mapping out an entire personality can take quite long.

The first step in lead generation where AI can kick in is defining your ICP. You can do so right now with this free persona generator.

Simply answer the preliminary questions and you’ll receive three examples in your email in a few minutes.

2. Find leads

As we mentioned earlier, AI is particularly useful in finding people to form your lead base.

Building a list of leads manually is useful if you’re just getting started with outreach, however it is not a scaleable method.

AI lead generation software will offer you several points where you can find verified contact information and, sometimes, outreach capabilities too.

Some of these points include:

• Lead databases

Lead generation databases can be AI-powered.

This means that the database uses advanced algorithms to offer the most qualified and appropriate leads based on intent signals, technology, customer behavior, and much more.

• Chrome extension

Chrome extensions have the ability to scrape contact data even when it’s not publicly available. Although, your lead will have to have included it in their profile themselves in order to stay compliant to anti-spam rules.

• Email Finders and Verifiers

Email finders use AI to scrape the web, other available databases, or a combination of data providers, or by carrying domain lookups and pattern recognition. For example, firstname@company.com

Verifiers, on the other hand, check for syntax and formar and validate the domain through DNS lookups.

3. Attract inbound leads

Attracting inbound leads can be much easier with the help of AI lead generation.

AI can offer certain characteristics, such as:

• Lead captures embedded in articles or with chatbots
• PPC Ads
• Content suggestion
• Automated engagement on social media

Using AI for inbound lead generation will help you improve your conversion rates by resonating more deeply with your leads and receive insights in order to perfecto your marketing strategies.

Additionally, it will enable to scale your strategy as your business grows without having to make constant changes and investments.

4. Qualify and segment leads

This will allow you to predict how likely it is that your leads will actually convert.

We’ve mentioned, you can run both lead qualification and segmentation manually, chances are it will take a very long time and there is a lot of room for error being that some factors may be slightly subjective.

However, AI will optimize this process due to the fact that it can handle large amounts of data at once, and can therefore accurately determine their status.

AI plays a role in predictive and behavioral analysis by tracking how your visitor interacts with your brand. For example, if they visit your website and how much time the spend on key content (such as pricing pages). AI takes this into account and is able to predict how likely it is that they will decide to purchase.

Additionally, leads can be segmented by behaviors and intent, to allow you to carry out an effective and personalized outreach.

5. Send personalized messages

Sending personalized messages that engage your leads, add value, and move them down the sales funnel is definitely once of the most time-consuming and difficult tasks.

However, up to quite recently, personalizing messages implied only adding first names at the beginning of an email.

And let us let you in on a little secret. That is not personalization.

So how can AI really personalize your messages?

With proper data collection, clean and enriched lists, and lead segmentation, your outreach tool has everything necessary to add much more personalization to your messages, such as dynamic content, your leads’ achievements, fun intros, mentions to your leads work, and much more.

6. Track your leads’ status

CRMs and lemlist unified inbox

This will allow you to know where your leads stand and in which follow-up campaigns you should include them in so you can move them down the sales funnel without letting them cool down too much.

It is essential to track your leads’ status, especially if you’re preparing follow-up campaigns.

There is plenty of lead tracking software that will help you capture the data on your leads and customers’ behavior and engagement with you and your brand.

Other tools that will help you track your leads effectively are CRMs and Outreach tools with Unified inboxes.

7 best AI lead generation tools

There are many aspects of lead generation that can be improved with AI lead generation tools.

However, not all tools are useful for everything, so we’ll walk you through our 7 favorite lead generation tools.

1. lemlist

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.5/5 (261 reviews) \ Capterra 4.6/5 (382 reviews)

Overview

lemlist is an all-in-one sales lead generation and cold outreach platform.

It is designed to send highly personalized and AI-generated multichannel sequences with advanced conditions. Helping you to engage your leads with personalized images, videos, landing pages, and much more.

With lemlist, you can send cold emails, LinkedIn visits, connect requests, messages, and voice note, and cold calls all directly from the app.

Additionally, you can find your leads and build your lead lists without having to invest in a separate tool.

You can find your leads with:

• Email Finder and Verifier
• Chrome extension
• Database with 450M contacts and 63M companies

lemlist also offers a phone number finder so your cold calling is that much easier.

Other features include:

• High level personalization
• AI variables (cleaning lists and messages, lead segmentation, lead qualification)
• Unified inbox
• Warm-up and deliverability booster
• Seamless CRM integrations
• Intent and signals targeting

Pricing

lemlist offers 4 competent pricing plans, which include a free trial and a completely free plan.

In all plans you can access email and phone number finders (including the database and Chrome extension), and email personalization.

Pricing plans range from $55 per month when billed annually to a custom price, which is only available for anual subscription.

As your team scales, you can add extra sending emails to your subscription for $9 per month each.

✅ Pros

• Unified inbox to track all of your interactions from one place
• In-app support
• Free access to lemwarm

❌ Cons

• Set-up can be challenging
• Doesn’t offer unlimited email accounts

With all the data available on LinkedIn, AI-powered personalization is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. Lemlist’s seamless AI integration boosts deliverability and conversions effortlessly, making your outreach smarter, not harder.

Lucio Laria

CEO @ Agence Onze

2. Taplio

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Product Hunt 4/5 (26 reviews)

Overview

Taplio is an AI-powered lead generation tool that is specific to LinkedIn lead generation.

It covers everything from inbound to outbound lead generation on LinkedIn.

For inbound LinkedIn lead generation, Taplio can help you:

• Generate personalized content
• Generate carousels
• Offer inspiration from industry experts
• Write and schedule posts

To take care of your LinkedIn outbound lead generation, Taplio offers:

• Automated LinkedIn engagement
• Find people who have engaged with you
• Lead database

Taplio also offers analytics to track engagement, follower growth, and post performance.

Taplio is especially valuable for individuals and businesses looking to build relationships and improve engagement on LinkedIn without resorting to automation-heavy approaches.

Pricing

Taplio offers 3 pricing plans that range from $39 to $199 when billed monthly. If you choose to go for an annually commitment, you receive a 20% discount.

Taplio offers inspiration for your posts on all plans, however, generating posts with Taplio’s AI is not available on the Starter plan.

✅ Pros

• Automated comments
• Contact management
• Carousel generator

❌ Cons

• The database is not the most extensive
• Database is only available on the highest plan

3. lemcal

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.7/5 (58 reviews) \ Product Hunt 4.8/5 (19 reviews)

Overview

lemcal is an advanced scheduling tool which is highly customizable.

lemcal integrates seamlessly with lemlist, which will allow you to include linkes to your booking page in your messages, therefore syncing leads and booked meetings easily.

By including a booking link in your messages, you’re cutting down on back and forth messages trying to set a time.

Additionally, lemcal integrates with Google Calendar, Zoom, and Zapier to improve your workflow automation.

Other features include:

• Lead qualification
• Brand recognition
• Automated process

If you’re debating if you should invest in lemcal or Calendly, take a look at the following video.

Pricing

lemcal offers 2 simple pricing plans, a free plan and a $9 per month plan.

However, you can receive a free subscription with every lemlist plan.

✅ Pros

• Round Robin
• Multi-language booking page
• Paid booking

❌ Cons

• Lacks multi-calendar
• Lacks native integration with HubSpot (for now)

4. HubSpot

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.4/5 (12,034 reviews) \ Capterra 4.5/5 (466 reviews)

Overview

HubSpot is a an AI-lead generation tool, with many different hubs that can satisfy your sales needs, and is also one of the major players in the game.

Some of these hubs include:

• Sales Hub
• Marketing Hub
• Operations Hub
• Commerce Hub
• Service Hub
• Small Business Bundle
• Content Hub

With HubSpot’s AI you can automate tasks such as content creation, lead nurturing, sales forecasting, and one of the most popular CRMs.

Pricing

As we’ve mentioned, HubSpot offers different products, therefore pricing can scale if you’re looking to invest in more than one hub.

The image below shows the pricing for the Sales Hub, which includes most features needed in lead generation.

Pricing ranges from $15 to $150 per month.

✅ Pros

• Intuitive UI
• Offers task reminders

❌ Cons

• Complicated pricing plans
• Lacks automation features

5. Outreach

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.3/5 (3,445 reviews) | Capterra 4.4/5 (295 reviews)

Overview

Outreach.io is a cloud-based sales execution platform designed to automate your sales process from sales engagement to sales forecasting.

Some features Outreach offers include:

• Sales engagement tools
• Deal management and insights
• Sales outreach conversation intelligence
• Deal insights
• Pipeline management and forecasting
• High-quality training materials for sales reps
• Lead prioritization
• Personalization

Outreach.io’s AI-driven tools help sales teams increase productivity and lead engagement.

Pricing

Although Outreach offers many tools to automate your sales process, they are included in separate packages.

Additionally, pricing is under request, so we can’t say what kind of investment you’d be looking at.

✅ Pros

• Sequences include triggers
• Highly customizable tool

❌ Cons

• Lacks native integration with HubSpot CRM
• Dialing features need improvement

6. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.4/5 (23,111 reviews) \ Capterra 4.4/5 (18,695 reviews)

Overview

Salesforce was born as a powerful CRM which has integrated many other tools and categories, including it’s AI, Einstein.

Its sales platform includes features such as:

• AI CRM
• Prospecting
• Sales engagement
• Team collaboration
• Sales AI & analytics
• Sales programs
• Partner management
• Revenue & orders
• Sales performance

Aside from its CRM, Salesforce allows for personalized multichannel outreach.

Pricing

Salesforce has been considered to be quite an expensive platform, with 3 pricing plans ranging from $165 to $500 per month when billed annually.

✅ Pros

• Predictive analytics included
• Powerful AI

❌ Cons

• The CRM’s interface could be improved
• Reports lack customization

7. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

G2 4.3/5 (1,953 reviews) \ Capterra 4.5/5 (151 reviews)

Overview

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales tool that helps you prospect and build relationships with people that matter. It is a premium version of LinkedIn that offers advanced filters to Search for leads, InMail to message leads, and advanced lead recommendations.

Additionally, Sales Navigator integrates seamlessly with popular CRMs such as Salesforce.

Pricing

While LinkedIn doesn’t easily disclose most of their pricing plans, at lemlist we’ve gathered some data to help you out.

Disclaimer: This information may vary depending on changes LinkedIn has undergone.

✅ Pros

• Accounts insights
• Largest lead database

❌ Cons

• Maximum 150 InMails
• You can be banned or shadow banned easily

Final thoughts on AI lead generation

Leads are the backbone of every business.

No leads = no clients = no sales = no revenue

However, gathering quality leads and pushing them down the sales funnel can be difficult and time-consuming, which is why there are tools designed specifically to increase and improve your productivity when generating leads.

Before you choose your AI tool, there’s some thing you need to decide:

→ Your budget

→ Your needs

→ If the tool is scaleable

→ Your outreach strategy

And bonus tip: The more features and integrations your tool has, the smaller your initial investment will be!

lemlist team

Your source of actionable outreach tips and strategies that will help you get replies and grow your business.