My move from blasting emails to building a small list of real leads

A year ago I was sending 5000 cold emails a month through Mailchimp. Open rates tanked to like 8% after three months. Now I target maybe 50 businesses a week with personalized messages about their actual problems. I got 12 replies in the first week from a dried-out furniture store in Phoenix. Anyone else ditch the spray-and-pray method for something that actually works?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan5611mo ago

Numbers game still works if you know your market. Scaling down to 50 a week might work for you, but that's just a small sample size. Real results come from volume combined with decent targeting.

kim_ramirez31mo ago

Haven't you ever tried scaling way down and just felt like you were spinning your wheels though? I've been there too, man. For me, it was B2B cold email and I dropped from like 200 a week to maybe 30 because I was burnt out. Results basically flatlined, and I ended up kicking myself for not sticking with the higher volume even if the targeting was just okay. So yeah, I get the frustration with the numbers game feeling like a grind, but Logan's right that dropping too low can make it hard to tell what's actually working. Keep pushing, it's rough out there.

kim_ramirez31mo ago

Holding volume that high just masks bad targeting though. If you're sending 200 emails and half of them are going to people who don't even open them, you're just burning money and time. Getting 5 solid replies from 30 carefully picked prospects is way more valuable than 10 lukewarm leads from a shotgun blast. Each conversation actually moves forward instead of drowning you in tire kickers.