When most people hear “cold email,” they groan. When Alex De Laet, founder of Outbound Unicorns, hears it, he sees opportunity.
At Outbound Unicorns, Alex and his team handle “everything from A to Zoom,” using hyper-targeted campaigns to help U.S.-based startups and B2B companies grow “from a cute little pony to a legendary unicorn.”
Through years of experience, Alex has mastered grabbing anyone’s attention—at least via email.
He sees cold email campaigns as a cost-effective way to boost visibility and connect directly with customers and decision-makers. Despite the stigma, Alex highlights how the right strategies deliver significant value.
“You find trigger points; for example, companies that just secured funding are likely scaling or expanding,” Alex explains. “With proper research, you can create highly tailored lead lists.”
While crafting personalized campaigns can be tedious, these efforts are essential for building a client base. AI tools offer shortcuts, but Alex warns the process still requires strategic human input.
It’s a matter of finding the “right message-market fit.” But once you’ve found it, “you can basically let it run on autopilot.”
“You can only get wisdom and experience from going through the ups and downs,” Alex says. “You’ve got to follow a couple of times before you find your winning campaign.”
First Impressions
How do you not come across as annoying with cold emails? By getting to the point very quickly. Remember, the goal isn’t to sell to the client upfront, it’s just to get them to open the email.
Try to start each message with a question that touches a pain point they’re likely facing. Make it instantly relatable. If your pitch clicks, they’ll keep reading.
I find this structure works really well: relevant intro, a value prop, three data bullet points, and a call to action–that’s it. Introducing yourself may seem polite, but recipients only care about how you can solve their problem. Address that immediately—then back it up with social proof or other elements to boost engagement.
Other aspects to consider are not only the email subject line, but the preview line as well. These kinds of details can become crucial to a campaign’s overall impact.
Enhance Email Deliverability
To craft a message that resonates with your audience, good data is definitely number one. But deliverability is becoming increasingly important.
Until recently, you could use platforms like HubSpot or Apollo to send email cadences to 500-600 leads. Now, such practices damage the health of your email account, resulting in your messages ending up in spam folders.
It’s crucial to diversify your approach. This includes creating secondary emails and implementing warm-up tools—which simulate human behavior, such as sending automated messages between accounts.
But be sure to maintain a healthy balance of tools across all marketing channels. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
How to Stand Out
I think the main thing is to offer as much value up front as possible. What information can you provide without giving away your secrets?
For example, with SEO: instead of pitching “Hey, we can help you with SEO,” try framing it as “We created an overview of the top keywords we used to rank another [industry/company] to number one on Google in 60 days.”
Package it as a solution that’s ready to deliver value immediately—no upfront input required from their side. Once a prospect replies, you can create this freebie for them.
Once you deliver measurable results, this is when you can start upselling your core service. These people are now in your funnel.
Main takeaway from this approach: Cold email is a top-of-funnel marketing technique. It’s meant to be used to get as many ‘cold’ prospects as possible into your funnel. The actual selling is done on the phone.
About the Author: Tess Danielson is a journalist and writer focusing on the intersection of technology and society.
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