Lookalike Campaigns in AiSDR: Setup and Messaging

Last updated: May 20, 2026

A Lookalike Campaign targets companies that resemble your best-performing customers. Pair Lookalike sourcing with messagingc that mirrors those success stories for the strongest reply rates.


🛠 Step-by-Step: Setting Up a Lookalike Campaign

AiSDR gives you two ways to find lookalike companies — pick the one that fits how you think about your best customers:

  • Lookalike search — paste up to 3 successful customer URLs and let AiSDR find companies with shared traits.

  • Live AI — describe your ideal audience in plain English (e.g., "DMs in Sales at companies similar to aisdr.com in the US") and let AI turn it into a structured search.

Both end up in the same Campaign Builder flow — pick whichever matches your starting point and open the matching section below.

How to build a Lookalike search?

  • Go to Campaign Builder → Cold Outreach tab.

  • Open the Lookalike database.

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🔍 Configure Your Lookalike Input

➕ Add Up to 3 Customer Websites

Paste the URLs of successful customer websites that you want to model your campaign on.

💡 Make sure the input websites:

  • Are from the same industry

  • Offer similar products or services

  • Target a similar customer profile

🎯 Why this matters:
The lookalike algorithm performs best when input companies are consistent. It uses these examples to find others with shared traits.

🎛 Apply Additional Filters

🏢 Company Filters

  • Required: Location (e.g., country or region)

  • Optional: Company size (e.g., employees or revenue)

👤 Lead Filters

  • Job Titles (e.g., Marketing Director, CTO)

  • Management Level (e.g., VP, C-Level)

  • Lead Location (to match geographic relevance)

⚠ We do not recommend adding industry filters as it may limit the search results.

Example of the well-set-up setup search:

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Final Steps:

🔎 Run the Search

  • Scroll down and select the number of leads you'd like to pull per search.

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✅ Enrich and Launch

  • Once the system returns lead results:

    • Click Next to enrich leads.

    • Continue with campaign setup as you normally would.

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How to find lookalikes with Live AI?

  • Go to Campaign Builder → Cold Outreach tab.

  • Open the Live AI database.

  • Under Essential audience filters, make sure People is selected

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🔍Write your Target audience prompt

In the Target audience field, describe both:

  • Who you want to reach (role, seniority, department), and

  • What kind of company should they work at. Phrase it as "at companies similar to [yourcustomer.com], [yourcustomer.com], [yourcustomer.com] " to trigger the lookalike behavior.

  • Optionally. Specify a location and company size.

✍🏻 Prompt Examples for Lookalike search in Live AI

Copy these as starting points and swap in your own seed URLs and roles:

  • DMs in Sales or Partnerships at companies similar to aisdr.com and located in the USA

  • VPs of Marketing at SaaS companies similar to hubspot.com with 50–500 employees

  • Founders and CEOs at early-stage startups similar to linear.app, headquartered in the UK or EU

  • Heads of People or Talent at fast-growing tech companies similar to notion.so, US-only

  • RevOps and Sales Ops leaders at B2B SaaS companies similar to gong.io and clari.com

  • Directors of Demand Gen at agencies similar to refinelabs.com, North America

  • CTOs and VPs of Engineering at fintech companies similar to ramp.com or brex.com

  • Customer Success leaders at PLG SaaS companies similar to figma.com and miro.com

After writing a description of your audience, press Enter to review the Search Criteria Live AI creates.

Live AI splits your prompt into individual Search criteria rows (e.g., "Currently holds a decision-making position in Sales," "Employer is a company similar to AiSDR," "Employer is headquartered in the United States"). Edit or remove any row, or click Add criteria to add more.

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Final Step:

🔎 Run the Search

Select the number of leads you'd like to pull per search and start it.

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Start with 10 leads as a test batch. If the results look right, scale up; if not, tweak the Target audience prompt and rerun before pulling a larger list.

Toggle "Continuously add new"

Set Yes if you want Live AI to keep adding new matching leads daily, or No for a one-time pull.

Continue with the standard flow

Move on to Suppression lists → Basic CRM sync → Choose your messaging → Sequence → ... → Create.

📩 What Messaging Works Best in a Lookalike Campaign?

Once you've dialed in the filters and identified the right leads using the Lookalike Search, the next key to success is getting your messaging right.

To truly maximize your outreach performance, your message needs to resonate with the audience - and the best way to do that is by showing them proof that looks just like them.

🎯 Best Practice: Use Relevant Case Studies

Why It Works: If you're targeting leads that resemble your most successful customers, referencing those very customers in your messaging creates instant relevance and credibility.

Example: If your Lookalike search is based on marketing agencies, highlight a successful result you've delivered to another marketing agency.

This technique has consistently delivered strong reply rates across AiSDR campaigns. It creates a natural alignment between your offer and the lead’s world.

🛠 How to Create Messaging that Uses Your Case Studies?

Go to Messaging → Create messaging. AiSDR will walk you through 3 steps.

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Step 1 — Choose your messaging style ("How should we sound?")

You have two ways to set the voice:

  • Share your best message — paste a real message that sounds exactly the way you want AiSDR to write. This is where structure is learned. Use Suggest ideas if you need a starting point.

Quick tip: incorporate a case study into your example message, so AiSDR sees how you'd weave it into the message structure (where the proof sentence lands, how it phrases results).

  • OR pick a messaging framework — choose from prebuilt structures. The No Pressure and The Polite Stalker are good starts for case-study-oriented messaging.

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Click Continue.

Step 2 — Tell us about your company ("What should we know?")

  • Primary website (required) — AiSDR pulls the what, how, and why of your company from this page. This doesn’t have to be only your homepage — it can also be a service- or feature-specific page to make the scraped information more precise and relevant.

  • Target audience — click a segment chip (e.g., Procurement Leaders, Security Executives) OR describe who they are in 1–2 sentences (role, responsibilities, what they care about).

  • What else should we know? (optional) — internal positioning, key differentiators, the exact lines you say on sales calls.

  • ⚠ IMPORTANT: Additional sources — add URLs to published case studies, so AiSDR can pull facts when leads ask questions or when a case study is referenced in messaging.

    OR Attach files — drag in detailed case-study docs, one-pagers, or sales decks. This is the right place for detailed case-study documents (named client, exact metric, pain solved, outcome) — anything you don't want to dump into the small "What else" textbox.

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Step 3 — Click "Create messaging"

AiSDR generates one messaging variant per style you picked in Step 1. Review, edit, and save.

👀 Check Case Study Details

After AiSDR generates your messaging, open it to confirm the case studies you added are actually being used. Skipping this step is the #1 reason a "proof" sentence ends up generic or missing in your outreach.

1. Open the messaging

Go to Messaging and click the messaging you just created.

2. Open the Context tab

Click the Context tab in the top navigation (next to Email rules, LinkedIn rules, Phone call rules, Video rules).

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3. Scroll to the Case Studies section

You'll find it in the left margin of the Audience Context block, below Target audience, Pain points, and Values. This section should contain the case study details AiSDR pulled from your inputs.

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Look for two things:

  • 👍🏻 Named clients and specific metrics (e.g., "Taxly booked their first meeting in 3 days"). If you see your case study spelled out here, AiSDR has it.

  • 👎🏻 Warning phrases in the Case Study section like "no substantiated product information was available from the provided source" or "We cannot provide verified product outcomes…". This means AiSDR couldn't extract usable proof from your inputs, or we weren’t able to scrape them successfully (some pages or files may block scraping access).

    In this case, click the “Edit” button at the bottom and manually add a short Case Studies description. Don't forget to Save it.

4. Preview the sequence

Click Preview sequence at the bottom of the page > Generate Sequence

Read the generated emails carefully:

  • ✅ The case study is referenced by name with a real metric — you're good.

  • ⚠ The proof sentence sounds vague ("We've helped companies like yours…").

    Fix it using the “Give feedback” option.

  • Click Give feedback at the bottom of the preview, type a correction (e.g., "always mention the Taxly case study by name with the 3-day metric"), then click Send to make automatic prompt changes.

📄 Persona Feedback: How to easily make adjustments to the messaging