Field guide · Lead generation
Cold email, done properly
Most cold email fails before the first message is written: the list is too big, the domain is wrong, the email is too long, and nobody watches the numbers. Each of those is a solved problem. This is the method we run for ourselves and for our clients, in seven short chapters.
Build the list
Small, verified, every contact showing a live buying signal.
Build the plumbing
Fresh domains, real mailboxes, 21 days of warm-up.
Write by hand
Four sentences, plain text, no links, soft ask.
Watch and reply
Two numbers weekly; answer replies within the hour.
Start with the list, not the copy
A brilliant email to the wrong company earns silence. A plain email to a company that feels the problem today earns a reply. Aim for a few hundred contacts, not ten thousand, and make every one pass three tests.
Right company
The size, industry and geography where your offer has already worked.
Right person
The named individual who owns the problem. Never a generic info@ address.
Live buying signal
Public evidence the problem is active now: hiring for the role you support, fresh funding, a tool change, a new location.
Why small wins
High reply rate, near-zero bounces, domains stay clean.
Bounces climb, spam folders learn your name, domains burn.
Bounces above 3 percent tell mailbox providers you are careless. Verify every address with a tool such as MillionVerifier, NeverBounce or ZeroBounce before you send.
Done for you
The Prospect Intelligence Engine
Our research system sends you a daily list of leads with buying signals, each one deeply researched to find the right person to approach, with verified contact details. From ₹10,000 a month.
Build plumbing that protects your business
Never send cold email from your company domain. Your main domain carries your website, your customer email and your invoices. Cold outreach sometimes lands in spam and is sometimes reported; let that risk fall on a domain you can afford to retire.
yourcompany.in
Never sends cold email
Website, customer email, invoices, password resets. Its reputation is the business.
yourcompany.co · tryyourcompany.com
Do all the sending
Fresh lookalike domains that redirect to your site. SPF, DKIM and DMARC on each. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailboxes only; two or three per domain.
Life of a sending domain
Week 0
Buy the domain, point the redirect, publish SPF, DKIM, DMARC.
Weeks 1–3
Warm-up only. The mailbox builds a normal history before any outreach.
Months 1–5
Live sending inside the caps, watched weekly.
Months 4–6
Successor domain enters warm-up; this one retires with reputation intact.
Sending reputation wears down even when you do everything right. Treat domains as consumables, like printer ink, not as assets.
Four sentences, written by hand
The email is the simplest part, which is why people overcomplicate it. Every message is researched and written for one person. A first-name merge token does not count as custom; the first line must be something only this recipient could receive.
Subject: hiring for sales
Hi Priya,
Saw you are hiring two salespeople for the Pune office.
Usually that means enquiries are coming in faster than anyone can call them back.
We built a follow-up system for a Bengaluru consulting firm that took them from 2 to 11 qualified conversations a month.
Worth a look before the new hires start?
Anoop
Founder, Client Magnet
Custom first line
Something you could only say to this person. Proof a human did the work.
The problem
One sentence, in their words. No product tour.
Evidence
One number from a real engagement beats three adjectives.
Soft ask
A question they can answer in one line. Never a 30-minute call.
Always
- Plain text, exactly as a personal note would be
- A subject of two to four plain words: "quick question", "hiring for sales"
- A soft ask they can answer in one line: "Worth a look?"
- A signature of name, role and company, written as text
Never
- Links, images, HTML or attachments. Every one raises your spam score
- Open-tracking pixels. You need to know who replied, not who opened
- A 30-minute-call ask in the first email. Hard asks make silence cheaper than replying
- Calendar links and banner signatures
Watch two numbers, and answer fast
Cold email is a feedback system. Deliverability tells you whether you may keep sending; the reply rate tells you whether it is worth sending. Check both weekly, and pause the moment a line is crossed.
The reply is the product
Answer within minutes if you can, never later than the same working day. A prospect who wrote at 11 am and gets an answer on Thursday concludes, correctly, that the enquiry did not matter much to you.
Follow up twice, then stop
Three to five days apart, each time adding something new. Anyone who asks to be removed is removed the same day, permanently. Our own rules are public on the anti-spam policy page.
The toolkit
You need surprisingly little. The whole stack, two domains, four mailboxes and a sending tool, costs roughly ₹4,000 to ₹8,000 a month. The real cost is research time per contact, and that is the cost you should refuse to cut.
Finding contacts and signals
Apollo · LinkedIn Sales Navigator · our Prospect Intelligence Engine
Verifying addresses
MillionVerifier · NeverBounce · ZeroBounce
Sending, rotation and warm-up
Smartlead · Instantly
Mailboxes
Google Workspace · Microsoft 365, nothing else
Deliverability monitoring
Google Postmaster Tools (free) · GlockApps · MailReach
DNS record checks
MXToolbox for SPF, DKIM and DMARC
What a month really produces
Do the work properly and about 100 to 150 custom emails a week turn into a handful of real conversations. This is the honest arithmetic of a small, well-run operation.
- 600custom emails sent
- 20–50replies (3–8%)
- 7–16positive replies
- 2–5meetings
- 1–2new clients
Month one produces almost nothing
Warm-up takes three weeks before real sending starts. Judge the channel at 90 days, not 30.
It starts conversations, not sales
Cold email gets a reply from the right person. Your positioning and proof close the deal. A weak offer fails politely at scale.
It decays
Lists exhaust, domains tire, copy wears out. Cold email is gardening, not construction; it produces as long as someone tends it.
Where cold email is worth doing at all
The arithmetic only pays when each client is worth enough. One client a month at ₹5,00,000 per annum or more covers the whole operation many times over. Below roughly ₹2,00,000 per annum, the research time costs more than the client returns; content, SEO or ads will serve you better.
Value per client, per annum
Suits
- B2B services with high lifetime value: consulting, agencies, recruitment, IT services, retainers
- Offers a stranger can grasp in one sentence
- Narrow, identifiable buyers; small lists are the whole method
Does not suit
- Consumer products and impulse purchases
- Low-priced offers, below roughly ₹2,00,000 per annum per client
- Businesses already turning referrals away. Fix delivery first; outreach adds demand, not capacity
The short version
The whole method in five lines
- Small list, every contact showing a live buying signal.
- Fresh lookalike domains on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365; 21 days of warm-up; 30 a day per mailbox; rotate every 4 to 6 months.
- Four hand-written sentences, plain text, no links, soft ask.
- Watch spam and reply rates; answer replies within the hour.
- Only run it if a client is worth ₹5,00,000 per annum or more.
None of it is difficult. All of it is work, which is precisely why it still functions: most senders will not do it, so the inbox rewards the few who do. If you would rather have the whole system built and run for you, that is our cold email outreach service.
Want this run for you?
We build and run the whole system: the signal-first list, the domains, the warm-up, the writing and the replies. Tell us what you sell and who buys it.
- Reply within one business day
- No obligation, no sales pressure
Your details are safe — we never share them. We reply within one business day.