I told the SEO agency that cold email was dead. Then they booked 14 demos in 2 weeks.
I run a small IT consulting shop in Cleveland and I always thought cold outreach was a total waste, just spam and angry replies. But my partner hired a B2B lead gen service that sent 60 personalized emails to ops managers at mid size firms, and we landed 14 calls by week two. Now I'm wondering if I just sucked at writing subject lines, has anyone else seen cold email actually perform like that?
Keeps coming down to the list and the timing, not the email itself. Sixty emails to ops managers at mid size firms is crazy specific, that's the whole trick. If you blasted the same pitch to 600 random info@ addresses you'd get zero calls and a spam complaint. I've seen it both ways in my own work, same subject line, one list got 22 percent opens and the other got 3. Also week two matters, you probably hit them right when budget talks were happening. Do the same thing next quarter and you might get 4 calls instead of 14. That doesn't mean cold email is dead, it means it only works when you show up in front of the right 60 people at the right time.