your cold outreach isn't broken. your target list is.
spent 3 months fixing the wrong thing.
better subject lines. shorter emails. different cta. open rates went up a little. replies didn't move.
then i looked at who i was emailing. that's where the problem actually was.
what a bad target list looks like
- "founders" pulled from a twitter list someone posted in 2023
- people who follow the same newsletters as you (they've seen 1000 pitches)
- "decision makers" from apollo with job titles that match but context that doesn't
- anyone you found by searching "ceo" + your industry keyword on linkedin
these people are either burned out on outreach or just wrong for what you sell.
what a good target list looks like
signal: they just had a problem you solve
- someone posted about struggling with brand visibility 2 weeks ago
- a founder just raised a seed round (new pressure to show up professionally)
- a consultant just went independent (no team, needs to punch above their weight)
- a company just hired its first marketing person (brand questions incoming)
the message writes itself when the context is right.
the actual research process (no paid tools)
step 1: pick one trigger event
don't try to target 5 different situations. pick one. for me it was: consultants who just went independent in the last 60 days.
step 2: find them where they announce it
- linkedin "i'm excited to share" + your niche keywords (free search, public posts)
- twitter/x searches: "going indie" OR "just quit" + consultant/founder/agency
- substack comments sections on newsletters about freelancing
step 3: confirm they're real
check their website. if they have a website that looks like it was built in 2019 with a gmail address in the footer, they care about brand presence. good signal.
step 4: write one sentence about their specific situation
not "i noticed you work in marketing." something like "saw your post about going independent — the first 90 days of building a client list from scratch is brutal."
that's it. that's the whole first message.
numbers from doing this manually
ran this for 6 weeks targeting consultants-going-indie:
- 47 outreach messages sent (manual, no automation)
- 14 replies (29.7% reply rate)
- 4 paid brand audits ($99 each)
- 2 became repeat clients
$594 from 47 messages. not life-changing. but the rate is what matters. 8.5% conversion from message to paid is solid for cold.
the prior spray-and-pray approach: 200+ messages, 6 replies, 0 paid.
the thing everyone skips
most people spend 80% of their time writing better messages and 0% of their time building better lists.
flip it. a mediocre message to the right person at the right moment beats a perfect message to a lukewarm list every time.
if you want the templates too
built a cold outreach kit with the exact message formats i use for this — $9. but honestly the list-building is the harder and more valuable part.
the templates just make sure you don't waste the targeting work by saying something weird once you've found the right person.
running a solo consulting or productized service? curious what your current reply rates look like.
Top comments (0)