Smart Email Assist Overview

Objective

The purpose of this article is to provide information about Smart Email Assist, a feature designed to streamline email communication by drafting AI-based emails. It eliminates the need to start from scratch and empowers users to respond to emails more efficiently.

Applies To

• Outreach User
• Outreach Admin

Notes

• Outreach recognizes the importance of ensuring Outreach AI is lawful, ethically adherent and technically robust. 
• Customer data used by the models is visible only to Outreach and to the customers to whom the data belongs. 
• Availability of this feature is subject to your pricing plan.
• Smart Email Assist is currently available in Outreach, Gmail extension, and the Outlook add-in.

Smart Email Assist does not:

• function as an AI assistant for spell-checking or providing real-time tips while composing email responses
• it is not intended for generating content such as Sequence email steps, Templates, or Snippets 

Best Practice: 

• Always review responses generated by the feature for accuracy and branding tone.

What is the feature?

Smart Email Assist leverages AI to draft initial sales engagement emails, email replies or meeting follow ups to buyers based on the provided context. By bringing the power of generative AI directly into the current processes, Smart Email Assist increases seller productivity so they can focus their time on editing and personalizing the AI-generated content, rather than starting from scratch.

The benefits of incorporating generative AI into current sales processes include:

• Gain efficiency by focusing their time on editing and personalizing the AI-generated content
• Avoid writer’s block by removing the daunting task of starting with a blank screen
• Focus on activities that matter - building relationships and selling

Key functions of the feature

The Smart Email Assist feature is accessible to Outreach users in the email compose window. This feature is available in the following locations:

• Outreach web app
• Gmail extension
• Outlook Add-in

To utilize the Smart Email Assist feature, users can invoke Assist (see the gif below), optionally provide more context in the prompt and hit Generate. This will automatically generate three different versions of the response for users to select. Users should review the generated content, make any necessary modifications, and click "Send" to proceed.

 

Smart Email Assist is available in 4 scenarios.

Scenario name	Description	Context used	User provided inputs	Availability	Required for enablement
Engage - email reply	Drafts an email reply based on the previous email exchange	Last 3 email replies in the thread between buyer and seller	User prompt, length setting, voice setting, references	Web app, Gmail, Outlook add-in	Org setting and user-level setting are enabled
Engage - first email	Drafts initial sales engagement email to the prospect	Prospect and seller info (Name, Job Title, Account name, Account description)	User prompt, length setting, voice setting, references	Web app, Gmail, Outlook add-in	Org setting and user-level setting are enabled
Meeting follow up	Drafts meeting follow up email based on generated Kaia meeting summary	Meeting summaries generated by Kaia Smart Meeting Assist	User prompt, length setting, voice setting, references, meeting summary	Web app, Gmail	Org setting and user-level setting are enabled Meet license is available;   Smart Meeting Assist enabled
Call follow up	Drafts call follow up email based on generated Kaia meeting summary	Call summaries generated by Kaia Smart Call Assist	User prompt, length setting, voice setting, references, call summary	Web app, Gmail	Org setting and user-level setting are enabled Call license is available; Smart Call Assist enabled

 

Engage - first email

Smart Email Assist is particularly beneficial for sales reps, helping them to draft initial sales engagement emails when connecting with prospects. Within a seconds reps can draft prospecting emails, make updates or add more personalization and send to the prospective buyer.

To access this feature, users should just open a new email compose window in Web app, Gmail or Outlook add-in, click on the “Assist” button, add any needed inputs and hit “Generate”.

In this version, prospect and seller information is used to increase email relevancy. This information includes: Name, Job Title, Seniority & Department and Account name.

In parallel, we are working on extending personalization capabilities to include more data insights that will be available in the near future.

 

Meeting & calls follow up

By leveraging meeting or call summaries generated by Kaia Smart Meeting Assist, users can now draft a meeting follow-up email in seconds. In this case, Meeting summary is used as an input to LLM to generate the followup email.

To access this feature, there are 2 paths:

Assist

1. Open an email compose window (new or a reply) in Web app or Gmail, 
2. Click on the “Assist” button, 
3. Choose “Follow up” email type, 
4. Select a required meeting or call from the list of Kaia recordings, 
5. Optionally add any other inputs
6. Hit “Generate”.

Kaia Follow-up

1. Go to Kaia recordings page
2. Select a Kaia recording you’d like to follow up
3. Choose “Compose follow-up”  option over meeting or call summary
4. Smart Email Assist UI will appear with Kaia recording pre-selected
5. Optionally add any other inputs
6. Hit “Generate”.

Considerations for when using this feature through Kaia follow-up

• Customers with Kaia enabled for voice calling can draft call follow-ups using Smart Email Assist. However, a Kaia (Meet) license is required to draft meeting follow-ups
• Smart Call and Meeting Assist should be enabled in order to user follow-ups in Smart Email Assist
• In the UI, the 10 latest Kaia meeting recordings are loaded based on the following rules (in order):
  • [if recipients specified in <TO> field]
    • recent meetings or calls where a user is either a host or participant
    • AND recipient/s (any) is a participant
  • [if no recipients specified]
    • recent meetings or calls where a user is either a host or participant
  • [if no results from above or results < 10]
    • recent or calls meetings accessible to a user (as on Kaia listview page) based on governance profile
• Users have possibility to search specific Kaia recording by a name

User provided inputs

To maximize the effectiveness of using Smart Email Assist, we encourage reps to provide additional context. They can input relevant information into the prompt, specify the desired response length, adjust the tone of voice, and leverage References—such as Templates, Snippets, and Kaia Content Cards—available within the Outreach platform. This ensures that each email is tailored with precision, adding specificity and context to their outreach efforts.

ADD MORE CONTEXT VIA PROMPT

By default 3 last email replies (if available) are used as a context to generate an email response.

 

To increase the quality of the AI-generated responses, users are highly encouraged to provide additional context in the prompt. This context helps generate more accurate and relevant replies.

 

By customizing the prompts to suit different scenarios and objectives, sellers can harness the power of Smart Email Assist to generate high-quality and targeted email responses.

Note: user prompt input field is limited to 500 characters.

ADDITIONAL PROMPT SETTINGS

Users can apply the following settings to the prompt to adjust the output response:

• Length of the response in seconds (default: 40 seconds)
  • The read time affects the length of the text. It determines how long it should take an average person to read the text while still being able to understand it.
  • Options available: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 40 / 60 seconds

• Tone of voice (default: Professional)

Note: user prompt, length and voice settings are used as a guidance to LLM for a desired response generation that does not guarantee the generated response to have those instructions enforced. 

References

References can be used to provide seller-specific context to the prompt that helps generate more accurate and relevant responses. References are content types that exist in Outreach platform, that include: Templates, Snippets and Content (Kaia) cards.

 

 

Suggested Content cards

If available, Content cards can be automatically matched based on email intent defined from the conversation between buyer and seller. Users have the option to exclude these matched content cards from being used for response generation by unchecking the checkboxes

Search for Content cards, Templates and Snippets

Alternatively, users will have an option to manually search and select specific Templates, Snippets or Content cards. Once selected and after clicking “Generate”, chosen references’ content will be used as additional context to generate a more relevant response.

It's important to note that there's no limit to the number of References users can select. However, the final response generated will depend on the length of previous email replies used, the user's input prompt, and the length of the selected references' content.

How to enable Smart Email Assist [for Admins]

Smart Email Asisst is disabled by default on org and user level. In order to enable this feature, Admins must enable it on org level first and then enable on user level through Governance Profiles. Note: Admins are the only users that have access to enable this feature.

Enable Smart Email Assist on org level:

1. Access the Outreach Platform. 
2. Go to Administration settings (gear icon in the bottom left corner of the navigation sidebar)
3. Click Org info under the Organization section in the Settings panel.
4. Click on the Email tab in the Organization settings.
5. Scroll down to the Smart Email Assist section.
6. Enable Smart Email Assist for the org using toggle button.

Enable Smart Email Assist on user level (through Profiles):

1. In the Administration settings, click Profiles under the “Users and permissions” section in the Settings panel. 
2. Click the applicable profile.
3. Scroll down to Mail section.
4. Check the checkbox “Enable Smart Email Assist”.

How to access Smart Email Assist [for Users]

Outreach web app

1. Open the Outreach Platform.
2. Navigate to your regular workflow for replying to a prospect (e.g., Prospect > Emails > Open an email thread > Reply).
3. In the email compose window, you will find Assist located in the top toolbar among other options.

Gmail extension

1. Make sure you have the latest Outreach Extension installed and enabled.
2. Access Gmail with the Outreach Extension active.
3. Choose an email thread with a prospect you want to reply to.
4. In the email compose window, Assist will be visible alongside other Outreach action buttons on the top.

Outlook Add-in

1. Make sure that you have the newest Outlook add-in version installed. Read how to install the new Outlook add-in here.
2. Access Outlook with the Outlook-add in active.
3. Choose an email thread with a prospect you want to reply to.
4. In the Outlook add-in UI, “Assist” button will visible alongside other Outreach action buttons.
   

Frequently Asked Questions

General FAQ

What AI technology does the smart email assist feature use?

Smart Email Assist uses Large Language Models (LLMs) that provide generative AI technology. We are currently using Azure OpenAI service from Microsoft. With Azure OpenAI, customers get the security capabilities of Microsoft Azure while running the same models as OpenAI.

The Assist button does not show up in my email or it is disabled.

This feature needs to be enabled by an Outreach Admin.

What inputs can I give to generate an email reply with smart email assist?

Users can add a prompt to provide additional context or to specify what needs to be added to the response, for example: “Suggest meeting agenda”.  Additionally, users can specify the tone and length of the desired response. 

Is smart email assist available only in english?

Smart Email Assist uses Large Language Models (LLMs) which are designed and tested to understand and generate text in English. The LLM models support other languages and will be able to generate results in different languages, however, the accuracy and quality of other languages is not guaranteed in the initial scope. 

For example, if users receive email replies from prospects in French, Smart Email Assist can generate responses in French too. Users can also enforce the desired output language by specifying that in the prompt (example: “create a reply in French''). 

Best Practice: always review responses generated by the feature for accuracy and branding tone.

Is smart email assist able to pull data from Outreach and CRM to generate more personalized email responses?

For the first email we are using Prospect and Seller information to personalize an email, such as Name, Job Title. We plan to expand to more data points in the future iterations.

Is Smart Email Assist pulling data from my calendar when suggesting meeting times with a prospect?

Not in the first iteration. If the user adds a prompt for Smart Email Assist to suggest meeting times with a prospect, Smart Email Assist will generate meeting time proposals. Still, those suggestions are not being pulled from the user’s calendar. The meeting times should be treated as placeholders and should be edited by the user.

Is Smart Email Assist able to generate a response that includes prospect/deal-specific data from Outreach?

Not in the first iteration. The user should always check the accuracy of the generated response.

Governance and Security FAQ

Is Smart Email Assist optional to turn on?

Smart Email Assist is optional to turn on. Only Admins will have control to turn it off/on on org level or user level (via governance profiles).

What data is shared and with whom (3rd party)?

Smart Email Assist uses Azure OpenAI by Microsoft. Microsoft has no access to Outreach and Outreach's Customer data. Customer data is also not incorporated or used to train Azure OpenAI models. Smart Email Assist calls Azure OpenAI Service for reply generation. 

Outreach has opted out of (1) content filtering; (2) abuse monitoring, so Microsoft has no access to Outreach’s data. Customer data is not shared with other customers, nor is it incorporated/used to train the Azure OpenAI models. 

Where and how is the data stored?

Smart Email Assist uses the same storage mechanism (Amazon Web Services) that is used for storing Prospects, Accounts, Emails, and other customer data. The same security and privacy measures apply to Smart Email Assist data. Customer’s data is not stored in Microsoft Azure.

Can the data be deleted on customer request?

Yes. The data is stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and can be deleted upon request with the compliance service.

How is data being processed (e.g. PII anonymization, etc)?

For Smart Email Assist, we apply data masking (replacing data with placeholders, e.g., phone number, email address, etc.) to the prompt we send to Azure OpenAI service. After the response is received from Azure OpenAI service and before returning a response to the user interface, data unmasking is performed where placeholders are replaced with real data.

Does Smart Email Assist use the text my organization inputs to generate text for other customers?

Outreach does not share data that’s attributable to, or expose, one customer’s data with another customer. This includes the outputs of Outreach's AI/ML models. Additionally, Outreach does not allow Microsoft to utilize our customer data for their own purposes, including the ability to train their models.