u/HyperkeOfficial

Been seeing several posts every single day on this subreddit - mostly AI written and/or people with little to no experience spewing out objectively bad advice just to shill their email verification tool or SaaS or whatever.

I know reddit was supposed to be anons helping anons but if you’re going to use something for your business, do a little bit of research before you take someone’s advice.

There are posts here that say open rates determine deliverability.
There are posts saying email warm up is bad.
People that chase a zero percent bounce rate or 100% inbox placement test accuracy.

All of those things are going to hurt your campaigns.

Take advice with a grain of salt and don’t let big numbers without proof or credibility fool you.

Peace.

A lot of people have been struggling with low cold email reply rates and wondering if what they're seeing is good or bad.

We sent 2,632,103 cold emails between May 1-14 across campaigns and industries and I'm sharing all our data so you can benchmark your campaigns against it.

PCPL: 440 Prospects Contacted Per Lead (this is our north star metric)
~749 total emails sent per lead (including follow ups)

For every positive lead we generated, we contacted 749 prospects. That's the number that tells us if the campaign is actually working, regardless of volume.

• Deliverability:
• Some industries ARE struggling with reply rates, but across campaigns, it averages out to be okay

Open rate: 0.36%

A note on open rates: open tracking was only enabled on warm follow-up subsequences for a few clients who wanted to use it to help their SDRs call people - open tracking it's inaccurate, just sharing for transparency.

If you're running lower volume campaigns, your numbers should be BETTER than this. High volume tends to water down results because some tests work well and some tests underperform.

If your campaigns are doing better, you're on the right track.

If they're not doing as well as these numbers, drop a comment with what's happening and let's figure out why.

Cold email is definitely not "dead" lol

Would love to see your stats for the month if you're also sending at scale.

Questions? let me know.

As some of you here might know, we run a reasonable sized cold email operation and book 600 - 800 sales meetings every month for our clients.

Getting the prospect to actually show up is an entirely different process from booking the call. If your show up rate is under 75%, you have a real problem, and it's the easiest revenue leak in your funnel to plug.

important note before the steps: implement these in order. each tactic gets more aggressive than the last, and bolting the whole thing on at once is how you spam your way out of meetings you would have closed. start with step 1, give it a week, check the number. still under 75%? add step 2. and so on.

1. Send 4 emails between booking and the call

the default calendly reminder does nothing. send 4 instead. one right after they book that positions the value of the call (short intro, one piece of social proof). one 3 days before with case studies of people just like them who succeeded. one 1 day before with homework and a polite way to reschedule if they need it (better to know now than tomorrow). one 1-3 hours before that's just the meeting joining info so they don't unattend because they couldn't find it.

2. Add SMS reminders

phone numbers on your booking form are a non-negotiable. and to anyone saying "we don't collect phone numbers," well, yes you do. starting today you do, if you like making money.

3 texts total. one right after they book so they know your number is real and to expect a text on the day. one 6 hours before with the Zoom info one 15 minutes before that says something like "i'm on zoom ready when you are, join here:." short and casual. don't overlap timing with your emails or you look like you're trying too hard.

3. Manual phone calls from your setter

when your setter books the call, they tell the prospect "save my number, i'll call you wednesday morning to confirm." then they actually call on the day. if they pick up, you've got a 95% chance of show up. if they don't, voicemail and a manual sms.

4. Personalized email from your main inbox the day before

automated emails sometimes go to spam. one email from your main work inbox, referencing their actual business with specific prep you've put together for them, gets to their primary tab.

5. Add a confirmation question on your booking form

low intent prospects need to filter themselves out before they ever hit your calendar. add a required field where they tick a box confirming they'll attend at that time. commitment psychology, costs you nothing.

6. Shorten the booking window to 4 days max

people who book 2 weeks out almost never show. real intent finds a slot in the next 3-4 days. only do this if you have a surplus of bookings because you will book fewer calls overall.

7. Show times in 15 minute increments

your call can still be 30 minutes. but display 4:00, 4:15, 4:30, 4:45 instead of just 4:00 and 4:30. people with packed days need wiggle room to fit you in.

8. Don't let your calendar fully book out

3 slots tomorrow and 3 the day after isn't enough. you'll force bad fit times and show ups will tank. hire more sellers before u hit capacity. a fully booked calendar sounds great until you realize it's why your no-show rate doubled.

9. Follow up on unconfirmed calendar invites

2 days before the call, if they haven't accepted the invite, send a manual email or have your setter call them. half the time they never saw the invite and you save the meeting. other half they reschedule and you free up the slot for someone else.

10. Call the prospect if they're not on zoom within a minute

i don't get why people are afraid of this. just give them a phone call from your personal iphone. most will answer. half will jump on right then. the other half will say "completely slipped my mind, can we reschedule?" a blue bubble text from a real number beats every automated reminder you can throw at them. and this call has to be made by you, not someone else on your team.

11. The one variable bigger than all 10 above: your offer

if the prospet sees what you sell as a commodity and gets pitched the same thing every day, show ups stay low no matter what you do. you can stack every touch point in this list and still get ghosted. if your offer makes them feel like they'd lose something by skipping the call, you barely need any of these steps. no sequence in the world rescues a weak offer.

TL;DR: if your show up rate is under 75%, do these 11 things in order:

1. 4-email sequence between booking and the call (calendly default does nothing)

2. 3 sms messages, phone numbers required on the booking form

3. setter tells prospect "save my number, i'll call you wednesday morning to confirm" and actually calls

4. personalized email from your main inbox day-of, with prep specific to them

5. confirmation tick-box on the booking form so low intent filters itself out

6. cap the booking window at 4 days out (people booking 2 weeks out almost never show)

7. display calendar slots in 15 min increments (4:00, 4:15, 4:30, 4:45)

8. don't let your calendar fully book out, hire more sellers before capacity

9. follow up on unconfirmed invites 2 days before the call

10. call them from your personal iphone if they're not on zoom within a minute

11. your offer beats all 10 above; fix positioning.

If you want the exact scripts we use in the emails, texts, voicemails and reminders, go watch the latest video on my YT channel - it shows you all the scripts.

Questions? Leave a comment.

Credentials:

- founder at Hyperke, a cold email and calling agency - sending cold email since 2019-2020.

- Awarded top 1% users on Smartlead. 2M emails/mo across clients, 1200-2000 leads every month

Ask me anything about cold email: deliverability, strategy, lists, claude code, ai, copy reviews - whatever you'd like!

Someone made a post about their lead magnet campaign not booking enough calls despite them sending a valuable lead magnet.

Here's how to fix it and do lead magnet campaigns correctly. 

There are 3 parts to a lead magnet campaign:

1. The email that gets prospects to ask for the lead magnet
2. The actual lead magnet you deliver
3. The follow-up after they've consumed it

Most ppl either write a great first email but send AI slop as the magnet, or they create a great personalized lead magnet but don't follow up enough, or they follow up but the lead magnet itself is "just a freebie" and doesn't actually make ppl book a call. 

Pillar 1: the pitch

The goal here isn't to give the lead magnet upfront. It's to get them to ask for it.

Your email should sell the lead magnet.

Think about what ur prospect actually wants solved and the first step in solving it. Offer a small piece of that as a tease.

Example: if you're a ghostwriter for LinkedIn, ur pitch is something like "Saw the type of posts you're creating, looked at what's working in ur niche, drafted a sample post for u. Want me to send it over?"

Why this works:

• Shows u understand their niche
• you've done research they don't want to do
• You've done part of the work for them already

But only a part of it. One LinkedIn won't get them famous. One YT script doesn't build a YouTube channel. 

You're giving them a taste, not the whole meal.

Pillar 2: the actual lead magnet

If you're doing 500 lead magnets a day on day 1, you're cooked. Your magnets will be AI slop with em dashes and zero industry relevance. Prospects will see it, judge ur quality of work, and ghost u forever. Now you've actually hurt urself bc a direct cold email might've gotten that call. Instead they saw bad work and wrote u off.

What u should do:

• Start with a template
• Run it through claude with personalization based on their site, industry, target audience
• Review every single one before sending
• Spend 15 min per magnet for the first 50

15 min doesn't scale to 500/day ofc. But u need to do 50 manually first to find all the edge cases. Then when u build the AI system to scale, u actually know what exceptions to handle. Skip this step and ur scaled system will produce garbage.

Also: don't give away the house. your lead magnet should be a tasting of ur service, not the full meal. If they can take it and never come back, u built it wrong.

A LinkedIn post is a good lead magnet bc one post doesn't build an audience. A YouTube script is good bc they still need editing, thumbnails, content strategy. You've shown them u understand their niche but they still need u for everything else.

If u can't make a lead magnet that's actually high quality, just don't run lead magnet campaigns. Ask for the call directly. A bad lead magnet hurts more than no lead magnet bc now they have evidence ur work is mid.

Pillar 3: the follow-up

This is where most ppl die.

your lead magnet email itself should ask for the call. Not "here's the doc, lmk what u think." It should be:

"Here's the post. Had a few more ideas i wanted to run by u after you've reviewed this. Are u around for a quick call this week?"

The lead magnet itself should also contain ur booking link. And it should be short and well formatted. Nobody is reading ur 47 page google doc.

Then follow up. Like actually follow up.

8-10 follow-ups over the next month is fine. U just gave them something valuable. You've earned the right.

First 3 follow-ups should be close together:

• Day 1: send magnet
• Day 2: soft check-in, "wanted to mention one thing i forgot"
• Day 4: another idea u thought of, ask for call again
• Day 6 or 7: different angle, ask again

After that space them out but keep going. Each follow-up hits a different angle:

• Case studies in their industry
• Different variation of the offer
• Guarantees
• Social proof
• Pre-handle objections u keep hearing
• Approach the same problem from a different angle
• A meme that's actually relevant to their pain
• Something u saw on their LinkedIn

And go multi-channel. If you're already doing the work to create custom lead magnets, it's stupid to only follow up over email. Call them in the afternoon if u sent the magnet in the morning. Dm them on LinkedIn. Follow up on twitter if they're active there. Tag them on a relevant post.

your conversion goes up when u stop being shy about follow-ups. Lots of ppl reply on follow-up 8 or 9. They didn't say no, they js didn't reply. Those are different things.

A word of caution: most ppl shouldn't run lead magnet campaigns. If the lead magnet won't be genuinely high quality, skip it and just ask for the call. You'll end up spinning your wheels wasting time when you could've just booked calls even though that campaign would've had lower reply and positive reply rates.

Happy to answer questions if anyone is running these and stuck on conversion.