trying to automate lead generation but everything automated feels spammy?i will not promote

We've been doing b2b saas for 3 years and struggling wiht this same thing. every time i try to automate our lead generation automation it either comes off super robotic or we get terrible bounce rates that hurt our domain rep. tried a bunch of diffrent approaches. Apollo has decent filters but the emails feel templated no matter what we do. Seamless.AI gives us phone numbers but half of them are disconnected. Clay is powerful but takes forever to set up complex workflows and still feels impersonal. the issue isnt really the tools. It's that automated lead gen feels inherently spammy when your blasting the same message to 500 people. even with personalization tokens its obvious. what's worked better for us is keeping the automation minimal. we use tools to build targeted lists (been testing Prospeo lately for verified contacts) but then write individual emails. takes more time but response rates went from like 2% to somewhere around 8-10%. anyone found a middle ground that works? or should i just accept that good cold email outreach simply cant be fully automated?