Without access to B2B data, ChatGPT isn't very useful for email outreach.
Ask it to find companies like your best customer and it will guess from memory: no counts, no contacts, nothing you could email today.
Best case scenario? It will use web search to look up individual companies or go off listicles and other easily available content.
But, the moment it can reach Hunter's data, that changes.
With access and your guidance, ChatGPT can do everything you can do inside Hunter and more.
This AI GTM walkthrough covers using Hunter in ChatGPT for your prospecting, covering:
- How to go from one company you already sell to well to a written cold opener, without leaving the chat window.
- Why you only need a free ChatGPT plan and no CRM
- How to get the Hunter ChatGPT app
- How to use a ChatGPT conversation to use plain language into real leads.
You can keep shaping any result just by talking to it – whether the list is too broad, you need to find leads in a region or department – ask, and you'll get the answer.
Start from a customer you already win with
The best prospecting starts from find companies you know (and want to) win.
You may not have the luxury of having clear wins to leverage, but if you do, that's where you should start.
Give ChatGPT one domain and ask it to find companies that look the same.
Try: "Here's a company we sell to well: [domain]. Find 10 similar companies I should target, with a reason each fits. Show them in a table."
You bring up the Hunter app menu by typing @hunter, and Hunter's Discover does the work.
It returns an interactive widget and lists them with the number of email addresses on file and the industry.
One domain turns into a prioritized list of leads to target.
One customer domain becomes a ranked list of 366 lookalike companies, each with an email-address count.
Narrow target companies in a sentence
You now have companies to review.
In a conventional user interface, the next step is clicking through filters.
Not here. In ChatGPT, just say what you want.
Try: "Narrow that list to companies in Europe."
A single sentence trims the market to European companies, each with a one-line reason it belongs.
Find companies with buying signals
A company can fit your profile and still not be worth prospecting right now.
One that just raised money or is hiring fast is a better first call than one sitting still.
Ask the agent to go and check.
Try: "Which of these recently raised funding or are hiring aggressively? Look for such news and hiring signals and flag them."
It researches the open web and comes back with a table. It closes with a recommended outbound order and a segmentation. The agent has done the reading and prioritized for you.
The agent checks the open web for funding and hiring signals, then ranks who to contact first.
Get named contacts with verified emails
Up to here you have companies and reasons, but you cannot email a company.
You need people, with real addresses, that are accurate. Hunter shines here.
Try: "Use the Domain Search on those companies, then filter the results to marketing."
Domain Search returns named marketing contacts with addresses and a verification status on each one.
Draft the first touch
You have a prioritized company, a named contact and a verified email.
The last step is the message, and the agent already knows enough to write it.
Try: "Write a 3-sentence cold opener for contact #1, using their role and what the company does."
It produces an editable text block with a three-sentence opener addressed to Matthias at Adyen, written for a VP of Revenue Marketing at a payments infrastructure company, and offers to make it more technical, more executive or more personalized.
You went from one customer you like to a first email in one chat.
A three-sentence opener, written for the contact's role and company, ready to edit and send.
Try it on the free plan
You do not need a CRM, a paid seat or a setup call to run this.
It works on the free ChatGPT plan with the Hunter app, and all of it happened in one conversation, from the first lookalike search to the finished first email.
If you would rather do this in a different assistant, the same idea works elsewhere:
- Run it in Claude
- Run it in Perplexity, and
- Get the full picture in Hunter with AI assistants.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid ChatGPT plan to use Hunter this way?
No. Every step here runs on the free ChatGPT plan, and Hunter is available as an app inside ChatGPT.
Do I need a CRM or any setup first?
No. You start from a single company domain in the chat window, and there is nothing to install or import.
Are the email addresses verified?
Yes. Even inside ChatGPT, Domain Search returns a Hunter verification status on each contact, so you can see which addresses are marked Valid before you send.
Send cold emails with Hunter