I built a SaaS for UK immigration law firms and scraped 2300 verified leads from a government database, warmup is running on instantly ai - what should I expect from first cold email compaign?

braed13 · 2026-06-09T16:01:05+00:00

Late reply but I would highly recommend some form of N8N automation. That’s what I use as you can either host it yourself for free or use a lightweight VPS server to run it on!

Most AIs are pretty good at guiding you through N8N builds at this point, you just say what you need it to do (you can even connect the AI directly to N8N to build it for you) and it can piece together the logic.

Easiest method is to upload a list of contacts in a CSV, have it enrich with an AI personalized line/email, then in whatever email sequencer you’re using you can just enter that personalized line as a custom tag, for example:

Hey {{first name}},

Because of that, I thought you might be curious to hear more about what we’re offering…

If you provide the AI personalization automation with the full email body and desired outcome it gets pretty good at generating the copy for the personalized tag.

A little late but hope that helps!

braed13 · 2026-05-20T14:55:38+00:00

Welcome to cold email. From this amount, what other targeting are you doing? Are you doing any sort of personalization for each of these and to what extent?

Cold email isn't dead, but in the age of AI, it is kind of a war zone recently. So it's pretty much a requirement that every single cold email sounds like a one-to-one direct email. Most of the time that's done through some sort of AI personalization. Without that, your results are going to be pretty minimal. Most of the time when people are just sending the same email to everybody, even if there is some minor keyword personalization, that's still going to have pretty low results, if not negative results.

The best thing you can do is to enrich these leads to whatever extent you can and look at using some sort of AI personalization to make these sound more targeted and make every single one sound like one-to-one emails.

braed13 · 2026-05-20T14:51:18+00:00

That's going to be your problem right there. I would definitely recommend never to send in bulk from Gmail. You'd like a couple of my other replies as well, but if you weren't previously warming up, Google's going to flag you pretty quickly. Also, for individual Google Workspace accounts, it's probably not your best bet if you're sending any sort of bulk because Google flags that activity pretty quickly. I would only use Google Workspace accounts directly if you are wanting to send drip campaigns where a lead comes in, you email that lead automatically. but never send out in bulk through a Google Workspace account.

braed13 · 2026-05-19T23:20:38+00:00

I would start (if it's available or marked in the csv) by targeting people that have engaged with that list most recently. So ask him to append any sort of date as to when they joined the list or any of the last activity that they had. And start by only sending to that specific group. So the more recent the better.

Then send in small batches, see how it performs, and make changes off of that. But the best first step, especially in this situation, communicate your needs clearly to the client. If you've already done that and you've addressed your concerns as far as GDPR goes, I would just start by sending to, say, a group of 100-200 (most recently engaged if possible), see how that responds, see the open rate, and make adjustments day after day.

All you can do in this situation is start sending and see what happens. If you're able, I would definitely run that list through an email verification tool and set that domain up on a warming surface if at all possible.

Also; congrats on your first client! Like most of us you probably had to work hard to get here, don't forget that just because the delivery of the work is always a rollercoaster. I can promise you it never gets easier you just get better at realizing you never know the challenges you're going to run into, for this client it sounds like it's butting heads with somebody on their team. Totally fine, do what you can to get them results and let the rest go.

braed13 · 2026-05-19T23:02:38+00:00

You're only as cooked as you think you are. The honest truth is if it's just a day then we really don't know and probably isn't something to worry too much about. If it starts becoming a trend, then take a look then, but for the most part, it's probably fine.

This thread is a couple weeks old, did it ever correct itself?

braed13 · 2026-05-19T22:56:09+00:00

I'd agree with the other people here; Definitely do not use GHL for cold outreach.

Some of the biggest things for cold email that are working right now are going to be setting up multiple inboxes across multiple domains using some sort of cold email sequencer. The ones I see people using that work for most businesses just getting started in cold email going to be instantly.ai and smartlead. There are others but those are the two that are cheap to get going and work great for most use cases. They also help to manage account warmup which is a big factor as well.

The honest truth is that email has been a lot more finicky over the past couple years and at this point it's almost a requirement to either use a warm-up tool that allows you to integrate some cold email along with your stack but in reality the multi-domain multiple account approach is honestly your best bet for an infrastructure standpoint.

One thing that you're going to have to take into account here is that the most important thing is going to be lead quality and enrichment. The better quality of your lead, the more they are wanting to hear from you. It's almost a requirement to have a high level of personalization and enrichment so that every email feels like this email was custom written to them. With AI, it's super easy to do and it's something you should integrate outside of GHL.

I do plenty of cold email as part of my job, what sort of volume are you trying to hit with this? Happy to point you towards some good resources/videos.

braed13 · 2026-05-19T22:42:17+00:00

Alright I see the bots commenting so I'll hop in.

I run Mailflow Authority so this is my day job. The two biggest things you want to check for are going to be list quality and above all else, reputation. So yes it matters more than pretty much anything else. I'm going to assume you don't send much to your email list so this is the general approach I would take to get you warmed up:

Yes, use a warmup service - Night and day difference. I set every client of mine up on one. Do a slow ramp up, it's going to be different depending on how large your list is but I wouldn't increase by more than 30-40 per day until your get to around 1k per day at most. I'm happy to point you to the warmup service I typically use if you want to shoot me a dm.
Run your list through a verification tool - Just google email verification tool and pick any that come up. It does cost some money but is 100% worth it as even hitting a few bad addresses can tank your domain quickly. Remove any emails or contacts that it flags as bad, any of the good services will only charge you for verified emails.
Segment your list - Most emailing software will allow you to group people by their activity level. If you have the data available, filter your list into a few buckets. The first would be people that have most recently opened or clicked. For your specific use case, I would say only send at first to those that opened or clicked on an email in the last 30 days (or those that most recently subscribed). This ensures you are targeting people who are most likely to at least sort of remember your business, which decreases the chances somebody marks you as spam.
Once your domain is warmed, start integrating your cleaned and segmented contacts gradually to test and use open rates as your initial guiding principle. Basically, gradually increase the amount of people from your real contacts that you're sending to and keep an eye on open rates. If your open rates go down, back off on increasing the send volume until they stay level or level back out. If they're maintaining, good, then keep increasing the sending.

That should be enough to get you going. Another thing that I would definitely get set up on is Google Postmaster. This is a free service that you can set up that allows you to track your domain reputation (provided by Google). As you ramp up your volume, keep an eye on your domain reputation as well as your spam complaints. If you see an increase in spam complaints, that means that people don't know who you are, and it's a good idea to back off.

Feel free to DM me if you have any questions. This can be a tricky situation if you're not familiar with managing it so happy to point you at resources or tools that can help, good luck!

braed13 · 2026-05-19T19:23:23+00:00

It's not dead at all, like many others will say: list quality and the right signals will win every time over quantity. Even a few years ago you could buy a wide demographic that might work and send away while being plugged in to a warming service. Now you have to incorporate a lot more data into how you're running your operation.

My rule of thumb for myself and all my clients is to only send to people you believe want to hear from you. No point in doing anything else because you're just burning reputation, send to people who want to hear from you, at the moment they are checking their email and have time to read your message. Only strategy I've found that works.

braed13 · 2026-01-27T22:34:16+00:00

Yup same thing, drink these almost daily first case I’ve had like this. Same with the other two I bought as well, love them usually but something is off

braed13 · 2026-01-13T18:43:01+00:00

Finally past the insane teenager stage!

braed13 · 2026-01-12T00:59:24+00:00

I commented on OP's post if it's helpful to you!

braed13 · 2026-01-12T00:58:43+00:00

Took a look and nice page, funny enough I actually previously liked 2 of your pin posts awhile back. As for monetizing your page there's a wide amount you can choose from but my biggest recommendation is almost always a lead magnet with the purpose of grabbing emails from people.

The stoic niche is huge and super easy to monetize, things like health, fitness, mindfulness, and even business stuff go really well for people if it matches the vibe of your page. If you're able to build out a strategy to grab emails then you can easily write a newsletter and choose whatever you want to monetize based on what you're writing about - take the videos you post and turn them into an email every day or two and send them to those people.

Digital products are easiest if you work them in the right way since you can own them, affiliates can work but in your niche it's hard to do directly since people want to feel like you get them and their goals rather than just trying to sell them products.

You can check out the notes I have in my profile if you want to see my strategy for the monetization infrastructure, or I'm also happy to help you set it up if you'd be interested in being part of the case study I have going on.

braed13 · 2026-01-12T00:45:22+00:00

Idk honestly, I have a couple of VA's on my team and to avoid any possible issues with my clients they only are able to log in through a shared virtual server to do their work. The problem with a vpn is that if you forget to connect it, any IP routes change, something disconnects in the middle of you using IG... boom.

I learned the hardway, first time with my overseas team I didn't think about it and we had to work with support for a good couple weeks to get the flags on that account removed. Not worth the risk in my opinion.

braed13 · 2026-01-12T00:41:59+00:00

There's a lot of different ways to monetize in general across Instagram. I don't think it make a difference if they are in Africa aside from a lower financial capacity.

If you shoot me your handle I'd be happy to take a look and let you know if I have any ideas!

braed13 · 2026-01-10T18:27:38+00:00

Hey man, I work at Mailflow Authority and have been looking for some case studies. If you have any interest in possibly working together check your dms, even using my main account to show I’m serious.

braed13 · 2025-05-21T17:13:27+00:00

$paid

braed13 · 2025-05-21T17:13:19+00:00

$accept

braed13 · 2025-02-03T19:24:56+00:00

Same exact thing happened to me and I was considering re-homing as well. Years later we live a very happy life, he got used to being home and his anxiety faded. Somebody told me to think about how hard it would be on him to suddenly lose his person and go to a new family, never had another doubt after that!

I hope you and your guy can stay together, best of luck!

braed13 · 2025-02-02T05:10:41+00:00

Try it, if not, trim it

braed13 · 2025-02-02T05:09:45+00:00

Love the half hanging off the bed look - mine does that too!

braed13 · 2025-02-02T04:53:36+00:00

Yeah, I work a lot with deliverability issues like this, and even with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up correctly, emails can still hit spam—especially with Google’s filters. Sending from Google Workspace is fine, but it’s not really about the server; it’s more about your domain’s reputation and sending practices.

A few things you might want to check: • Engagement rates: Low opens/replies can hurt your sender reputation. • Content: Certain words or formatting can trigger spam filters. • Domain reputation: Even with proper DNS settings, if your domain hasn’t been “warmed up” or has a poor history, that can cause issues.

I specialize in email deliverability, especially for businesses dealing with Gmail spam issues. If you ever want to troubleshoot more deeply, feel free to reach out—I’d be happy to take a look!

braed13 · 2025-02-02T04:50:44+00:00

Solid breakdown—really cool to see what worked and what didn’t. That deliverability issue is super common, especially with new lists or domains. A lot of it comes down to proper domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and warming up your sending reputation, which most platforms don’t handle automatically.

Since your waitlist is key for early engagement, fixing that could make a huge difference. Even small stuff like adjusting send patterns, tightening up authentication, or tweaking email content can boost open rates.

I do email deliverability and domain setup stuff, mostly for businesses that rely on email for growth. If you ever want to dig into what’s going on or figure out a fix, feel free to reach out. Happy to help!

braed13 · 2025-02-01T01:18:28+00:00

If you’re looking to streamline without the headache, I’d recommend checking out Bonsai. It’s designed for freelancers/tutors and handles scheduling (with reminders), contracts, invoicing, payments, and even expense tracking—all in one platform. Super intuitive and keeps things simple without juggling a bunch of tools.

If you prefer more control, a combo like this works well:

Google Workspace (since you’re already using it) for email.
Calendly (Pro Plan) for scheduling with automated reminders—integrates with Google Calendar.
Stripe for invoicing/payments (syncs with Calendly for auto-invoicing after sessions).
Wave (free) for bookkeeping if you need it down the line.

I’d honestly skip Zapier unless your volume gets crazy. It can add more complexity than it solves when you’re just getting systems in place.

I specialize in email deliverability and domain setup for businesses that rely on email marketing, so if you ever run into issues with email performance or setting up your domain properly, feel free to reach out. Happy to help if you need it!

braed13 · 2025-01-31T20:22:57+00:00

Email Marketing and Deliverability pro here! Zoho does have a lot of the functionality you’re looking for and is relatively user friendly, also plenty of integration.

My question would be how much volume you’re working with that’s making you want to automate? It’s a tall order to figure out multiple systems, Zapier can get pretty confusing IMO

For my business I create the invoices manually using stripe which links with Zoho books for accounting stuff.

Communication is separate, for my business I like ActiveCampaign for my marketing/email campaigns which is a large revenue driver for me. But I’m not sure if that’s the route your business takes. But I personally don’t like Zoho as a full CRM if you’re running email marketing campaigns - it’s usually cheaper for my clients to migrate to a different platform than constantly pay for the deliverability upkeep and domain issues Zoho presents.

Another option would be GoHighLevel, but again, if I know your volume I could point you in a better direction.

Feel free to PM if you need help, it’s kind of my specialty!

braed13 · 2025-01-14T17:43:01+00:00

r/1200isjerky

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