From Confusion to Clarity: My Journey in Cold Email Marketing
When I started with cold email marketing, it felt like stepping into a battlefield I wasn’t ready for. There were so many moving parts—everywhere I looked, things were changing. Strategies that worked one month became obsolete the next. It felt overwhelming, like trying to hit a moving target in the dark.
But slowly, through trial and error (and a lot of mistakes), I started figuring things out. I built my own system to stay on top of things, a system I like to call the Triangle Framework: Copy, Targeting, and Deliverability. If you can get these three corners right, you’ll have a solid foundation. If even one of them is off, though? You’re toast.
Copy: My War with the Inbox
When I first started, personalization was everything. Every email had to be tailored like a bespoke suit. If you weren’t spending time researching your prospect, you weren’t even in the game. I’d scour LinkedIn, websites, anything I could find, just to add that perfect personal touch. And honestly? It worked. For a while.
Then, things changed. AI tools showed up everywhere, making personalization super easy—and super boring. Suddenly, everyone’s inboxes were flooded with emails talking about that one college fest they attended 10 years ago. What was once unique became cookie-cutter, and prospects tuned out.
So, we pivoted. The new trend became short and snappy—emails that got straight to the point. Two sentences, no fluff. The idea was simple: If they couldn’t understand your email in 4 seconds, you’d already lost them. It was a breath of fresh air. No more spending hours on research. And guess what? It worked. Until it didn’t.
Pretty soon, short emails started feeling lazy. Prospects wanted effort again. They wanted to feel seen. Now, I’m starting to see personalized emails making a comeback. It’s like a cycle—what’s old becomes new again. The lesson? You have to stay ahead of the curve because the inbox is a volatile space.
For me, it’s always been about delivering value. Start with the basics: What’s your offer? How does it help your prospect? Break it down into 5th-grader language and build your draft around that. Don’t sell too hard in the first email—just spark curiosity.
Oh, and subject lines? They’re your gatekeeper. If they don’t open your email, they won’t read what’s inside. Keep it simple, direct, and tied to your value. No salesy buzzwords, no "how’s your dog doing" nonsense. Just give them a reason to click.
Crafting Your Message
Boil your value proposition down to a single sentence a fifth grader would understand. That’s your starting point.
Build your email around that, keeping it as short as possible. If your prospect can’t figure out what you’re offering in 4 seconds, they’ve already moved on.
Invoke curiosity. Your first email isn’t about selling—it’s about starting a conversation.
Subject Lines and Pre-Header Texts
If they don’t open your email, they’ll never read your pitch. Your subject line needs to give them a reason to click.
Avoid anything too salesy—it screams spam. Keep it casual but relevant to the body of your email. Throwing in their name or company name often works wonders.
Targeting: Smarter, Not Harder
Early on, I thought targeting was just a numbers game. The more leads you had, the better your chances. So I spent big on tools like Apollo and Sales Navigator, scraping leads left and right. It felt productive, but then I looked at the bill.
That’s when I stumbled onto Apify. Game-changer. By combining Apollo with Apify’s scraping tools, I could pull leads without spending a fortune. The process? Set up a filter in Apollo for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). For me, that meant targeting companies with fewer than 50 employees and focusing on decision-makers like founders and C-suite executives.
Once I had my data, I exported it through Apify, cleaned it up (because trust me, it’s messy), and uploaded it into my campaign tool. It saved me so much time and money, and I realized that smart targeting beats mass scraping every time.
Also, don’t skip the cleaning part. Validate your data, remove bounces, and make sure your leads match your ICP. It’s tedious, but your domain reputation depends on it.
Here’s a trick to save money while scraping leads:
Apollo.io: Set up a filter for your target audience. Use specific keywords and keep niches separate.
Copy the Net New tab URL and use tools like Apify to scrape the data for free.
Clean your data. Remove unnecessary columns and incomplete entries.
Deliverability: The Silent Killer
Ah, deliverability. The hidden monster of cold email marketing. You can have the perfect copy and the best-targeted leads, but if your emails don’t land in the inbox? It’s game over.
When I started, I didn’t know what I was doing. I skipped the basics—domain authentication, warming up IDs—and went straight to sending. Bad idea. My emails started landing in spam, and recovering from that is a nightmare.
Now, I know better. When I buy domains, I create three IDs per domain and host them on Google Workspace. I warm them up for 24 days before sending a single email. Warming up means simulating conversations so email service providers (ESPs) think you’re a real person, not a spam bot.
Even after warming up, I keep my sending volume low—45 emails per day per ID, max. It’s tempting to push higher, but trust me, it’s not worth the risk. Getting flagged as spam can kill your entire campaign.
Deliverability is an ongoing battle. You’ll tweak, adjust, and fine-tune as you go. But if you do it right, your emails will actually get seen—and that’s half the battle.
Setting Up Your Infrastructure
Domains and IDs: Use 3 IDs per domain (4 max). Host them on trusted platforms like Google Workspace or Outlook.
Authentication: Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Avoid having more than 5 SPF records per domain.
Warming Up: This is non-negotiable. New IDs need 24 days of warm-up before being used for campaigns. Tools can automate this, simulating email exchanges to build credibility with email service providers.
The Chaos of Campaigns
Running campaigns sounds easy until you do it wrong. I’ve had campaigns overlap, IDs hit their sending limits, and entire schedules fall apart because I didn’t plan properly.
Now, I stagger my campaigns to avoid clashes. Each one runs smoothly, and my IDs never get overwhelmed. It’s a simple fix, but it made a huge difference.
The Big Lesson: Keep Learning
Cold email marketing is unpredictable. What works today might not work tomorrow. Some campaigns will crush it, and others will flop. That’s just how it goes.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: Stay curious. Stay adaptable. Keep experimenting. The moment you stop learning, you start falling behind.
So, if you’re just starting out, don’t be afraid to fail. You’ll mess up—it’s part of the process. But every mistake is a lesson, and every lesson gets you closer to figuring it out.
Happy hunting!
~Arihant
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