Speak Their Language: Build Your AI Content Training Database

Written by John Steele | Feb 12, 2026 5:05:18 PM

For years, "personalization" has meant slapping a first name in a subject line or recommendations driven by a vaguely similar purchase six months ago. It's a surface-level parlor trick--and no one sees through it faster than Gen Z. In fact, 75% say they'll quit a brand entirely if the experience isn't personalized.

That's what makes Persado worth watching right now. They've built an AI platform trained on over 330 billion consumer language interactions--not just what people clicked on, but how language actually moves people to act. Emotions, narrative structure, tone, word choice--the whole anatomy of persuasion, mapped at a scale no human copywriter could touch. The company claims their AI outperforms human-written copy 96% of the time. JPMorgan Chase agrees. The company boasted a 450% lift in click-through rates, later offering Persado a five-year deal. Awards too--Persado just won Tearsheet's 2025 Marketing Award for Best Product Designed for Gen Z--a generation with zero patience for marketing that feels like marketing. The shift is real: to communicate with your top prospects, you've gotta speak their language.

Today's workflow helps you create training data on your top prospects. Combine valuable CRM data with user-generated content, building a sample set AI can use to produce content variants that sound like your prospects. A/B test, iterate, improve.

From financial services (Persado's wheelhouse) to manufacturing to beauty to national defense, many top industries are desperately trying to appeal to GenZ right now. The problem is it isn't working. GenZ characters now appear in 4 out of 5 American ads, but only 1 in 3 GenZ consumers say brand messaging resonates with them. And if you fail them, you could lose them forever. GenZ most often reports bad customer experiences publicly and have standout levels of brand-switching after just one or two bad experiences.

› Autonomously create a database of Linkedin posts and behavioral and demographic data from your most engaged customers and prospects.

› Create copy variants to use across your campaigns.

› Keep track of testing data and update your database with new insights.

› As your data set gets larger, create messaging personas based on collected data, allowing you to create testing variants at scale.

› Make a Hubspot segment of your most engaged contacts via lead score. If you don't have lead scoring set up in HubSpot yet, you can use another metric to build your sample.

› Set up a Zapier workflow triggered by addition to the segment. The workflow will run for each contact who meets your engagement criteria.

› Identify the HubSpot fields you'll want the AI to consider when it creates your content variants. Start with things like company, job title, emails opened, website pages visited, etc.

› In your next step, you'll need to make sure you have Linkedin URLs for every contact. Either collect them manually, or use one of the many Apify scrapers to grab this data. If you already have Linkedin URLs, connect Apify's LinkedIn Profile Posts Scraper. This tool will use the URL to grab the last 20 posts your prospect made. Exclude comments, reactions and other data types--we only care about the posts.

› Lastly, connect a Google Sheet. Create columns for each bit of data you've collected, including the Posts Content from Apify. Next time you are preparing a big piece of content, you'll be able to train your AI to write testing variants for more personalized A/B testing.

GenZ consumers (as is true of every young generation) represents the biggest market opportunity for any brand. But even if your target consumer isn't GenZ, you need to be writing copy that speaks more directly to the needs and pain points of your contacts. Understanding what they post about, as well as the needs they are looking to fill will increase engagement rates at a time where brands are struggling to connect. Every A/B test gets you a little closer to better, more sustainable engagement rates. Get an edge today.

We're on a mission! In 2026, JSC has a goal of a 40% mission-driven client roster. If you are a mission-driven organization, let's talk and see if you can take advantage of discounted rates and services in Q1 2026. ➡️ Let's Talk ➡️

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