How to Automate Personalized AI Video Outreach for New Salesforce Leads Using HeyGen and ElevenLabs

Imagine a top-performing sales representative, Alex. Their company just launched a brilliant marketing campaign, and the results are staggering. New leads are flooding their Salesforce dashboard, each one a potential multi-million dollar account. Alex knows that in the world of high-stakes B2B sales, a generic, templated email is a fast track to the trash folder. Personalization is the key to opening doors; it signals that you’ve done your homework and respect the prospect’s time. But here lies the challenge: how can Alex possibly craft a unique, personal outreach for hundreds of high-value leads without working 20-hour days? Manually recording a custom video for each lead is simply not scalable. Alex is caught in the classic sales scalability paradox—forced to choose between the quantity of outreach and the quality of engagement.

This paradox is a significant bottleneck in modern sales and marketing operations. While data overwhelmingly supports personalized engagement—with studies showing personalized emails can generate 6x higher transaction rates—the operational cost of executing it at scale is prohibitive. Video, in particular, is a powerful medium. Including video in initial outreach can boost click-through rates by over 200%, creating an immediate human connection that text alone cannot replicate. Yet, the very nature of video production makes it seem impossible to automate without sacrificing the authenticity that makes it effective. This is where most teams give up, reverting to mass email blasts and accepting subpar engagement as a cost of doing business.

But what if you could systemically solve this paradox? What if you could build an automated engine that connects your single source of lead truth, Salesforce, with cutting-edge generative AI to manufacture personalized videos on demand? This is no longer science fiction. By integrating powerful AI tools like HeyGen for video avatar generation and ElevenLabs for hyper-realistic voice synthesis, you can construct a workflow that triggers automatically, retrieves lead data, and generates a unique, personalized video for every high-value prospect. This article provides a complete technical walkthrough to build this exact system. We will guide you step-by-step through configuring the triggers, scripting the dynamic content, generating the AI media, and assembling the final personalized video, transforming your outreach process from a manual chore into a scalable, automated powerhouse.

The Architectural Blueprint: Connecting Salesforce, HeyGen, and ElevenLabs

Before diving into the technical steps, it’s crucial to understand the high-level architecture of our automated system. The workflow is a chain reaction of services, each handing off data to the next. It begins with a trigger in your CRM, flows through an automation platform that acts as the central nervous system, and leverages generative AI APIs to create the final media asset.

The basic flow looks like this: Salesforce Trigger → Automation Platform (e.g., Zapier, Make) → Dynamic Script Creation → ElevenLabs API Call (Audio Generation) → HeyGen API Call (Video Generation) → Delivery Action.

Choosing Your Automation Hub

The heart of this integration is the automation platform that listens for the Salesforce event and orchestrates the subsequent API calls. You have two main options:

• No-Code/Low-Code Platforms (Zapier, Make, Workato): These tools are ideal for rapid implementation. They provide user-friendly interfaces to connect different apps, handle authentication, and build multi-step workflows without writing extensive code. For this guide, we will focus on this approach as it’s the most accessible for marketing and sales ops professionals.

• Custom Code (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions): For enterprise-grade scalability, greater control over logic, and more complex error handling, a custom-coded solution is superior. You could write a serverless function that receives a webhook from Salesforce and directly calls the ElevenLabs and HeyGen APIs. The principles in this guide remain the same, but the implementation requires programming knowledge (e.g., Python, Node.js).

Essential Prerequisites and API Keys

To build this workflow, you’ll need to gather a few essential components. Ensure you have active accounts and the necessary permissions for the following services:

1. Salesforce Account: A Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited Edition account is required for API access.
2. HeyGen Account: You will need API access, which is available on their paid plans. To maximize personalization, create a custom Instant Avatar of your sales rep beforehand. You can click here to sign up and get started.
3. ElevenLabs Account: An account with API access is needed. For the most authentic voice, use the Professional Voice Cloning feature to create a digital twin of the speaker’s voice. To get started with high-quality AI voices, you can try for free now.
4. Automation Platform Account: A paid plan on a platform like Zapier or Make is typically required to build multi-step workflows with API calls.

Once your accounts are ready, locate and securely store your API keys for both HeyGen and ElevenLabs, as well as your Salesforce login credentials for the automation platform.

Step-by-Step Implementation: Building the Automated Workflow

Now we get to the hands-on portion. We’ll walk through creating a Zapier workflow, but the logic is easily translatable to Make or other platforms. The goal is to trigger on a new, high-value lead in Salesforce and generate a personalized video.

Step 1: Setting Up the Salesforce Trigger

The entire process begins when a new lead meets your specific criteria. Over-automating can feel spammy, so precise filtering is critical.

1. In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Salesforce as the trigger app.
2. Choose the event “New Record.”
3. Connect your Salesforce account.
4. In the “Set up trigger” section, select “Lead” as the Salesforce Object.
5. This is the most important part: Instead of triggering on every new lead, create a dedicated View in Salesforce first. For example, create a view named “High-Priority New Leads” with filter logic like Lead Status = Open - Not Contacted AND Lead Score > 75. In Zapier, you can then select this specific view. This ensures your workflow only runs for qualified prospects, conserving API credits and focusing your efforts.

Step 2: Crafting the Dynamic Script

With the lead data pulled from Salesforce, the next step is to generate a personalized script. This is where you use the data you retrieved to make the message feel unique.

1. Add a new step in your workflow and choose the “Formatter by Zapier” action.
2. Select the “Text” event.
3. In the “Transform” dropdown, you can use various functions, but for scripting, you’ll primarily use the “Input” field to map variables. Pull fields from the Salesforce trigger step, such as First Name and Company.
4. Construct your script. Example:
   > “Hi, {{1.first_name}}! Alex here from Rag About It. I saw that you’re with {{1.company}}, and I wanted to personally reach out to introduce myself. Based on your interest in our services, I thought a quick video would be more personal than another email in your inbox…”

This simple text block becomes a powerful template for personalization.

Step 3: Generating the Audio with ElevenLabs

Next, we convert the dynamic script into spoken audio. This step uses the ElevenLabs API to generate a natural-sounding voiceover.

1. Add a new step: “Webhook by Zapier” and select “Custom Request.”
2. Method: POST
3. URL: https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/{voice_id}. Replace {voice_id} with the ID of the cloned or pre-made voice you want to use from your ElevenLabs account.
4. Headers: Add a header with the key xi-api-key and your ElevenLabs API key as the value. Also add Content-Type with a value of application/json.
5. Data (Request Body):
   json
{
"text": "{{output_from_step_2}}",
"model_id": "eleven_multilingual_v2",
"voice_settings": {
"stability": 0.5,
"similarity_boost": 0.75
}
}
   Map the output from your Formatter step into the text field. Expert Insight: The stability and similarity_boost settings are powerful levers. Higher stability creates more monotonic speech, while higher similarity makes the voice closer to the original clone. Test these to match your desired brand tone.

This API call will return an audio file, not a URL. Zapier’s webhook step will provide a link to the file it temporarily hosts, which you’ll use in the next step.

Step 4: Creating the Personalized Video with HeyGen

With the audio ready, it’s time to generate the video with your AI avatar.

1. Add another “Webhook by Zapier” step (Custom Request).
2. Method: POST
3. URL: https://api.heygen.com/v2/video/generate
4. Headers: Add X-Api-Key with your HeyGen API key and Content-Type with application/json.
5. Data (Request Body):
   json
{
"video_inputs": [
{
"character": {
"type": "avatar",
"avatar_id": "YOUR_AVATAR_ID",
"scale": 1.0
},
"voice": {
"type": "audio",
"audio_url": "{{url_from_elevenlabs_step}}"
}
}
],
"test": false,
"caption": false
}
   Replace YOUR_AVATAR_ID with the ID of your custom avatar. In the audio_url field, map the file URL provided by the previous ElevenLabs webhook step.

Step 5: Handling the Asynchronous Generation and Delivery

Video generation isn’t instant. The HeyGen API will return a video_id. You need to poll their API to check when the video is ready.

1. Delay: Add a “Delay by Zapier” step. Wait for 2-3 minutes.
2. Check Status: Add a final “Webhook by Zapier” step, this time with the GET method.
   • URL: https://api.heygen.com/v1/video_status.get?video_id={{video_id_from_step_4}}
   • Headers: Include your X-Api-Key.
3. Final Action: Once the status check shows the video is complete and returns a video URL, you can define the final action. A robust option is to update the lead record in Salesforce:
   • Add a Salesforce step: “Update Record.”
   • Select the Lead object and use the ID from the trigger step to identify the record.
   • Create a custom field in Salesforce called “Personalized Video URL” and map the video URL from the previous step into it.
   • Simultaneously, create a Task in Salesforce assigned to the lead owner with a subject like “Review and Send Personalized Video” and include the video link in the description. This keeps a human in the loop for quality control before sending.

Advanced Techniques and Best Practices for Enterprise Scale

Building the initial workflow is just the beginning. To truly make this an enterprise-grade system, consider these advanced strategies.

Beyond Basic Personalization: Leveraging Custom Fields

Don’t stop at name and company. The true power of this RAG-style system comes from retrieving deeper context. Modify your Salesforce trigger and dynamic script to pull in custom fields or related object data.

• Example: If a lead downloaded a specific whitepaper, your script could be: “Hi [First Name], I saw you downloaded our guide on [Asset Name], and I wanted to share a few more thoughts…” This demonstrates you’re paying attention to their specific journey.

A/B Testing and Performance Tracking

How do you prove a positive ROI? Treat this like any other marketing campaign. Implement A/B testing.

• Set up your workflow to only run on 50% of new high-value leads. Create a custom checkbox field in Salesforce, “AI Video Sent,” and have your workflow automatically check it.
• After a few months, run a report in Salesforce comparing the conversion rates (e.g., Lead to Opportunity) for the cohort that received a video versus the one that didn’t. This hard data is invaluable for justifying and expanding the program.

Error Handling and Failsafes

Production systems must be resilient. What happens if a lead submits their name in all lowercase or the company name is missing?

• Data Cleaning: Use Formatter steps to automatically capitalize names (Title Case transform) or provide fallback values if a field is empty (e.g., your company if the company name is blank).
• Conditional Paths: Use Zapier’s “Paths” feature to create conditional logic. If the First Name or Company field from Salesforce is empty, stop the workflow or send a notification to a Slack channel instead of attempting to generate a broken video. This prevents wasted API calls and maintains quality.

By following these steps, you’ve moved beyond simple automation. You’ve architected a sophisticated, scalable system that marries the personal touch of video with the efficiency of AI. Now, let’s revisit our sales rep, Alex. Instead of being buried under a mountain of leads, they are now the orchestrator of an intelligent outreach engine. Their morning starts not with a cold list, but with a series of tasks in Salesforce, each containing a ready-made, personalized video for a high-value lead. Alex’s time is now spent on what matters most: having meaningful conversations with engaged prospects who have already “met” them. This is the new frontier of sales engagement, powered by intelligent automation. Ready to build your own automated video outreach system and supercharge your sales process? Get started by creating your custom AI voice with ElevenLabs and your personalized video avatar with HeyGen.