I've been sending cold emails. I've been helping B2B brands implement a modern outbound lead generation and pack the pipeline (you can check my Li)

In a nutshell, I experienced outbound lead gen from all sides (tool providers, user, consultants, etc).

So here are my thoughts on this: Is outbound dead?

All the obvious trends show that the answer is "Yes".

Spoiler: but we found a way to do what only 0.001% of people do and get even better results. I'll share it at the bottom (and on my FREE Masterclass).

Cold email Deliverability & SPAM trends

1. Microsoft

It's been always challenging to send cold emails, if your potential leads use Microsoft ESP. Now, multiply it by 10.

It feels like if you just created your domain & mailbox, your chances of consistently landing in people's inboxes (on Microsoft) are extremely low.

Wanna check it?

Use a Free InboxInsights tool (email deliverability audit). And check your deliverability to Microsoft mailboxes 🚨

2. Google

Google is also implementing Gemini in Gmail functionality to detect spammers. On top of it, Google actually killed open tracking for cold emailing.

In the past all cold emailing tool added small invisible 1x1 image and when people opened their emails it was triggered it showed the open rate for your cold emails.

Even though it was not the most accurate method, it was ok to track your deliverability trends.

If your Open Rate is going down -> you need to check out your deliverability ASAP.

Now, you can’t do that.

Spoiler: you still can track your SPAM rate on a daily basis with Pulse by Folderly

LinkedIn's limitation

The number of connection requests you can send is around 10-30 /d.

That means 200-600 connection requests are sent every month. Considering 50% (average) acceptance rate that's +100-300 new connections per month.

What's your reply rate?

5-10%? That's from 5 to 30 conversations per month.

What's the % in a positive reply - 10-20%.

That means by doing what the majority are doing you might generate 1-5 leads per month.

Even if it sounds fine to you, there is a problem - it's not scalable at all ❌

😳 Also, if you make a mistake, LinkedIn will ban your account and that's it. You will lose everything (your ex-colleagues, past posts and future connections).

📉 Cold emailing patterns that kill Outbound

Let's take a step back and take a look at outbound lead gen throughout time:

→ 20 years ago: no personalisation, no clear way where to get a good quality email database to send cold emails

→ 10 years ago: LinkedIn is the #1 B2B social media platform and at the same time the main source of public B2B data. People started creating Email Finding Chrome Extensions to scrape emails

-- at this point more a more people starting using cold emailing --

→ 5 years ago: a lot of products both for email search and cold emailing

-- even more people started using cold emailing --

But 3-4 years ago Instantly & Smartlead changed the game. If before Cold email providers were charging per mailbox (seat) so a lot of people couldn't scale the amount of cold emails because it was not ROI effective.

But Instantly & Smartlead started charging by the amount of contacts you want to reach out to per month.

Yes, now you could add unlimited mailboxes and reach out to 25k people per month for just $99 / m

It changed everything...

The Pandora box was opened. At this moment, people started sending more and more emails:

• you create 10 domains & 5 mailboxes on each.

• Now you have 50 mailboxes to send cold emails from.

You might think that it's a paradise - limitless cold emailing.

If it's only you who use it - then yes! But everyone started doing that.

SO it led to:

1. ESPs reacting and reducing the limits

2. Fighting against SPAMmers even more

3. Too many emails in peoples' inboxes and almost 0 results due to a huge competition

But is outbound really dead?

If today's outbound look like:

Quantity > Quality

The new outbound will look more like this:

Quantity + Quality

The modern Outbound will go in 2 directions:

1. All-bound instead of pure Outbound

2. Relevant-focus outreach

The most important thing when it comes to Outbound Lead Generation is to find the most relevant people & companies.

And when I say "relevant" - I mean that 1-2% of people who need your solution right now & match with your ICP so much!

So that means if you have a list of 10,000 potential contacts to reach out to, there will be 100 ideal (golden) contacts.

If you work specifically with this 1%, it will bring you at least 50% of all Sales Qualified Leads from your outbound.

So our goal is to:

a) identify this 1%

For this, I'm using Data Enrichment & Orchestration techniques with Clay, Apify and other.

If you want I can send you my Data Enrichment Framework with the list of tools I use.

b) maximise every conversation we have with them

that means, AI-video personalisation, Auto-voice-messages on LinkedIn, Multi-channel outreach, growing your social presence and so much more.

I also decided to make a FREE masterclass where I'll share everything in details (all my frameworks, templates & strategies).

I don't want to upgrade my Zoom, so the number of seats is extremely limited.

Check out the Masterclass here.

Hope it was useful.

Let me know your thoughts in comments + if you want me to share any links to templates, frameworks - ping me on LinkedIn.

Thanks!