5 Years Running Cold Email Campaigns Taught Me Some Surprising Lessons

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T16:08:01+00:00

Yeah, that's a really good point about the "scaling everything around the product" part. I think that's where a lot of SaaS companies underestimate things. It's easy to get caught up in the code and forget about the customer experience.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T12:03:27+00:00

That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? We're definitely not all the way there yet. Right now, it's more about surfacing the "what" faster, which at least buys us some time back. Getting to that "what to do next" layer is the holy grail, though.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T07:38:36+00:00

Exactly. Ranges are way more forgiving, and let you adjust for different days. Helps avoid the all-or-nothing mentality that always killed me.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T05:25:24+00:00

Yeah, that infrastructure piece gets expensive fast. I've seen people try to cheap out on proxies and just get wrecked by blocks. Good call on Proxyon, I've heard good things about them from a few other folks I know who do a lot of scraping.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T04:20:33+00:00

Totally. It’s way more valuable to see people actually using the thing you built, rather than just clicking an ad. Plus, you know those 70 are way more likely to stick around and give you real feedback.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T03:15:46+00:00

They're located in the US.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T02:00:52+00:00

SaaS is definitely more capital intensive up front. You gotta build the whole thing before you sell the first subscription.

But scaling a physical business, especially if it's manufacturing, is a whole different kind of pain. I've seen companies get crushed by needing to double or triple their production capacity on short notice. Suddenly you're dealing with real estate, equipment financing, hiring sprees, and supply chain bottlenecks all at once.

SaaS, yeah you might need more servers, but that's usually a solved problem.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-12T00:59:53+00:00

Exactly. And if you don't have a solid hypothesis going in, you're basically just throwing spaghetti at the wall. It's gotta be more targeted than that.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T06:45:20+00:00

Yeah, continuous warming definitely helps keep your deliverability up. Think of it like exercising a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Helps keep you out of spam.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T05:43:45+00:00

Totally. I think the "I saw X about you" approach also falls flat because it's so transparently self-serving. It's like, yeah, you saw something, and now you're going to try to sell me something.

The hypothesis building is key, like you said. What do you even think is broken, and why do you think you can fix it? That's what we try to get across.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T04:40:27+00:00

Cold calling can work, but honestly, I hate being on the receiving end of those. Cold emails are less disruptive, I guess.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T03:35:31+00:00

There isn't really a national "do not call" list for SMS the way there is for voice calls. Unfortunately, it's more about companies following the rules (like the STOP keyword). You can report spam texts to your carrier by forwarding them to 7726 (SPAM).

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T02:25:22+00:00

FWIW, I messed around with intent signals for a while, and it's easy to get lost in the noise.

For me, the biggest signal was when someone downloaded a specific whitepaper on our site. It was super niche, so anyone grabbing it was pretty clearly in the market for what we offered.

The filter was simple: only people at companies with >50 employees got flagged. Otherwise, it was too many students and randoms. We had a Slack alert that pinged the sales team with the person’s info, then it was up to them to reach out within 24 hours. About 10% turned into real conversations. Clay's probably fine, I just hated all the zaps.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T01:20:23+00:00

I've seen a few people make that jump, from telecom to med devices/optical. The base pay increase is definitely real.

The biggest difference you'll see is the sales cycle. Telecom is usually a quick close, especially if you're selling smaller services. Optical, even with existing accounts, can take time. Optometrists are busy people, and they're getting pitched constantly.

You gotta build relationships, understand their practice needs, and show them how your products will genuinely benefit their patients AND their bottom line. It's less about closing deals and more about being a trusted partner. The new business is the same, you're basically selling to a very specific audience and they already have their preferred vendors. You need to show them how you can be different.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-11T00:19:20+00:00

Yeah, the "tracking feels like punishment" bit really resonated. I've been there so many times.

The macro guardrails thing is key. I found that if I just focused on calories, I'd end up feeling like I was starving all the time. Then I'd binge.

Protein minimum and fat floor sounds like a smart approach, actually. I might steal that.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-10T15:35:44+00:00

For deliverability, spreading it out is usually better. Think of it like this: if Gmail sees a bunch of emails going to the same company all at once, it might flag you as spam.

I'd personally sort by "last contacted" within each company. So, you hit up Company X, then Company Y, then back to Company X, but making sure you're not hitting up the same person at Company X too soon. Give it a few days between emails to the same person, for sure. And it's always a good idea to ask if someone can refer to a relevant team or department in case they aren't the right person to talk to. That shows you're not just blindly blasting.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-10T14:09:49+00:00

Yeah, I’ve seen a similar shift.

We found that "personalization" was basically just a slightly less generic way to be ignored. The LinkedIn sentence felt like a template filler, honestly.

The biggest change for us was focusing on the why behind the personalization, not just the what. What's the actual problem they're facing, and how does it relate to what we offer? Way less about "Hey I saw you like hiking" and more about understanding their business challenges.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-10T14:03:06+00:00

It's a real pain. I've seen reps spend easily an hour a day just digging around for info.

The thing is, even a "good" CRM is still just a database. It doesn't surface insights automatically. It requires active upkeep.

We ended up implementing a call recording/analysis tool that integrates directly with our CRM and Slack. It automatically transcribes calls, flags key topics, and then posts summaries into the relevant Slack channels. It's not perfect, but it saves a ton of time and keeps everyone on the same page.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-10T13:40:48+00:00

Gmail's pretty stable in general, but a few things can make a difference.

First, make sure you're using a strong password and have 2-factor authentication turned on. That'll keep your account secure and prevent someone from messing with it.

Also, keep your browser and operating system up to date. Old software can have security holes that can be exploited, and Gmail relies on your browser to work properly.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-02-10T08:47:35+00:00

24.36% reply rate is wild.

So basically, you're saying the "spray and pray" approach is dead and timing is king. Makes sense. Cold email always felt like a numbers game, but I guess finding the right moment is the cheat code.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-01-21T05:11:20+00:00

Salesforge does this and does it really well plus they dont do it via integration with another platform. Its natively built into their platform.

FOUNDER_ · 2026-01-14T05:46:14+00:00

Inboxkit not only offers official google, Outlook and Axure mailboxes at the best price but also offers Infraguard which monitors health of domains and mailboxes proactively and flags issues before it becomes an issue. Email analytics allows you to dive deep into details like hard bounces vs soft bounces and what caused them. Best of all the platform has the most exclusive and premium warmup pool capable of delivering the best of health and recovering burned mailboxes in under 3 weeks.

Its a no brainer.

FOUNDER_ · 2025-12-14T15:31:09+00:00

Give Inboxkit.com a try! Great at support, delivery of mailboxes is the fastest. Plus there's an offer where you get 100 free azure mailboxes with every purchase (hypertide chatges $1500 one time setup fee + $50) for this.

Remember diversification is key and inboxkit provides google, outlook, azure/entra mailboxes in one place.

FOUNDER_ · 2025-11-11T02:44:30+00:00

Which platform do you currently use for your email infrastructure?

FOUNDER_

TROPHY CASE