DH #1 — List Building

Number one bottleneck of any cold email operation that I have seen so far: prospect data

If you are reading this and still build your prospect lists with Apollo using the shittiest filters and zero verification: cold emailing won't work for you... unless you fix it.

Here is how:

Sources

Get your prospect data from a reputable site that allows for filters that ACTUALLY work. ListKit for example.

You can also use:

• Crunchbase (Agencies)

• GetLatka (SaaS data)

• Leadswift (GREAT for local businesses)

Managing Your Data

Good, you have the data. The main thing now is that you do these 4 things:

• Save the list in Clay (this doesn't cost you any money, and makes it easy to keep track of every list you have)

• Verify your list

• Segment them into niches. That could be B2B SaaS, business consultants, recruitment companies, or whatever you are looking for.

• Upload each niche into a separate campaign. I'll explain in the next DH why this step is important.

DH #2 — Scriptwriting

Let me tell you one secret before we go into scriptwriting: building the prospect list is the hardest part of this process whilst being the most important piece of the puzzle. And realistically, you only have to build it once, because you can recycle it every other month.

Now to scriptwriting.

Main thing you have to focus on is to not fuck it up. It's extremely easy to fuck it up. Let me show you what not to do:

• Don't write irrelevant slurs that don't make sense.

• Don't use AI icebreakers

• Don't talk about yourself and only yourself

• Don't send the same identical email to everyone

• Don't get cute with subject lines.

• Don't write a wall of text that not even your loving mother would read.

• Don't ask ambiguous questions.

• Don't ask people for a Zoom call in the first ever email.

• Don't use your service description as your "offer".

• Don't be annoying, needy, creepy or bullshit people.

Yeah that's about it. Such an email could look like this:

Hey X, saw huge potential in your Klaviyo checkout flow for .

I got this new flow that you could implement within a few minutes.

Want me to send it over?

The important thing about this is really to make it specific to your audience. Which is why I mentioned that you have to create one campaign PER segment. Only then can you write extremely specific scripts just like in the example above.

Great. Next.

DH #3 — Lead Magnets

You noticed that offer in the example above, right? It's a goldmine. You have to learn to create relevant lead magnets for your target markets.

A rock-solid lead magnet is all of these three things:

• Quick

• Valuable

• Free

For email marketers this can be a Klaviyo email flow. For e-com agencies that could be a Loom video in which you give actionable feedback on your prospect's checkout process.

The important thing is: between two lead magnets where one is extremely valuable but takes time to digest/implement and another one that is not as valuable but extremely quick to digest or implement, the latter will win. 100% of the time.

BUT AGAIN: this doesn't mean you can push out something quick and dirty. It still has to be valuable.

If you do these three things, so:

• Getting a list of people that you have the perfect offer for

• Writing a script showcasing that perfect offer for them

• Giving them no reason to say no to your email because you are offering something quick, valuable and free,

There is ZERO chance that cold email won't work for you, provided you did the basics. Actually, let me list them out really quickly.

DH #4 — Technical Basics

• DKIM, SPF and DMARC records

• 2-week warmup period

• Activating auto-adjust after day 14 of warmup (Smartlead feature)

• Making a placement test every weekend

• Buying new domains every week (amount = 5-10% of total domain count, bi-weekly should also work if budget is tight)

• Only use short .com emails (ca. maximum 15 characters)

• Sending only 10-15 cold emails per inbox per day.

• Use Spintax in every script and have one A/B split test per 250 prospects in your campaign per stage of your sequence

That should cover most of them.

Yes.

I left off at how the probability that you'll fail after doing all of this is ZERO.

If you are trying to set this up for yourself and you are not entirely sure how to get there OR you just want to get some more sauce to improve upon what you are already doing—in both cases—the following is just for you:

I have recently opened a Skool community in which I'll teach the 47 styles of cold emailing as well as content marketing systems that we are running for both our clients and ourselves to facilitate a steady leadflow without having to spend a bank on paid ads (we'll get to that topic soon).

And FOR NOW the Skool community is FREE. It is free until I got all the course materials ready. So if you want to lock-in your access at a literal $0/mo, you should join now via this link:

https://www.skool.com/ceres/about

See you inside,

Can