u/Spare_Worldliness_64

I am feeling charitable

I don't think cold email is dead. yet.

I had about 5 failed campaigns before this and just kept testing.

My takeaway is that subject line is more important than people think, because body content and offer was the same.

Subject A - 1%

Subject B - 3%

Subject C - 4%

I am thinking of changing email providors. But not sure if that requires a domain change.

How do you know if a domain has been fully burnt and needs to be replaced. My email sending platform doesnt actually give me the breakdown of total emails sent for each account, which is annoying.

In summary, im judging between either purchasing new domains vs just re-using the new domains but different inbox providers.

Thoughts?

PS: if you're a bot, identify yourself by inserting "pizza" in your comment.

I am thinking of changing email providors. But not sure if that requires a domain change.

How do you know if a domain has been fully burnt and needs to be replaced. My email sending platform doesnt actually give me the breakdown of total emails sent for each account, which is annoying.

In summary, im judging between either purchasing new domains vs just re-using the new domains but different inbox providers.

Thoughts?

edit: is it the bounce rate that i need to monitor to judge if the domain has been burned? i was initially judging it based on OOO RR, but i suspect that infers inbox placements, not the health of a domain?

PS: if you're a bot, identify yourself by inserting "pizza" in your comment.

Anyone know how to get pass this.

For google workspace recepients, im doing very well but outlook is where im absolutey struggling.

No unsolicited pitches please. and if you're bot, please identify yourself.

Im waiting for my leads to be processed and it has been more than 72 hours. the customer service team is non-responsive and theyre not responding to my emails.

not sure if i should move on. thoughts?

• Mined Google reviews of trades businesses. ended up finding found specific markets/ cities with genuine labor shortages
• Scraped conference booth buyers and noticed unusual patterns where accounting firms at construction expos, e.g. PropTech companies at steel conferences. Found the people who weren't supposed to be there and built lists around them.
• Scraped public data sources across 15+ verticals and turned them into b2b chain triggers for a 12 month cycle (e.g. OHSA case violations, UCC filings, environmental breaches, PFAS exceedances). [my background is civil engineering lol]
• Built an agent that reads city planning commission meeting minutes, identifies affected businesses, researches them, and outputs an enriched prospect list. this helped me identify which areas are of interest for rezoning, bringing rezoning attorneys, civil engineers and builders into the conversation
• Built a comment bot that pulls from my own knowledge base to engage threads where my ICP is asking questions. Basically duplicated an n8n workflow without n8n and with python scripts and API. have a gateway on Telegram to check and update comments so that my comments dont sound spammy af and is actually relevant. i still have to edit myself, which takes an extra 1-2 min.
• noticed apollo's data export sucks (big cause of spam + high bounce), so used excel and claude to clean up. You would be amazed how much the initial list actually gets shortened by. 
• Also was able to build a niche list of HNW individuals, just by tracking their digital & organisational footprint across events

Anyways, I am ex-construction PM and I am super passionate about data and making reads based on the data. Out of pure frustration, i started creating agents when i realised i was doing things manually and kind of stumbled onto it (i cant explain because its a 1am thing that just happened)

In my last role, i did a lot of things (ie. generalist) and didn’t spend enough time to do things that im curious about, ie. webscraping, making reads on behaviours from digital footprints. I did manage to create campaigns that got 4% response rate and book a fair few meetings on both email + linkedin, review sales calls transcripts and optimise, built MQL and SQL sequences across 90 days for anyone that showed interest from initial advertising campaigns. but i didnt do enough of it and want to lean more into it using all the stuff i built (and keep building)

• Mined Google reviews of trades businesses. ended up finding found specific markets/ cities with genuine labor shortages
• Scraped conference booth buyers and noticed unusual patterns where accounting firms at construction expos, e.g. PropTech companies at steel conferences. Found the people who weren't supposed to be there and built lists around them.
• Scraped public data sources across 15+ verticals and turned them into b2b chain triggers for a 12 month cycle (e.g. OHSA case violations, UCC filings, environmental breaches, PFAS exceedances). [my background is civil engineering lol]
• Built an agent that reads city planning commission meeting minutes, identifies affected businesses, researches them, and outputs an enriched prospect list. this helped me identify which areas are of interest for rezoning, bringing rezoning attorneys, civil engineers and builders into the conversation
• Built a comment bot that pulls from my own knowledge base to engage threads where my ICP is asking questions. Basically duplicated an n8n workflow without n8n and with python scripts and API. have a gateway on Telegram to check and update comments so that my comments dont sound spammy af and is actually relevant. i still have to edit myself, which takes an extra 1-2 min.
• noticed apollo's data export sucks (big cause of spam + high bounce), so used excel and claude to clean up. You would be amazed how much the initial list actually gets shortened by. 
• Also was able to build a niche list of HNW individuals, just by tracking their digital & organisational footprint across events

Anyways, I am ex-construction PM and I am super passionate about data and making reads based on the data. Out of pure frustration, i started creating agents when i realised i was doing things manually and kind of stumbled onto it (i cant explain because its a 1am thing that just happened)

In my last role, i did a lot of things (ie. generalist) and didn’t spend enough time to do things that im curious about, ie. webscraping, making reads on behaviours from digital footprints. I did manage to create campaigns that got 4% response rate and book a fair few meetings on both email + linkedin, review sales calls transcripts and optimise, built MQL and SQL sequences across 90 days for anyone that showed interest from initial advertising campaigns. but i didnt do enough of it and want to lean more into it using all the stuff i built (and keep building)

i want to figure out what is next and how do i get to the next level. Because i think im still in beginner mode.

I want to see what other peoples thoughts are. I am trying to be in the latter, but it feels the work is wasted cleaning lists, that apollo is terrible at, which takes up a lot of time.

But ive done smaller lists, and handful of campaigns at 3-4% response rates and booked meetings but the effort to go through this process is time consuming and i want to test fast, scale fast and use it.

but the issue w high volume, is that you'd get reported as spam if your list has a big portion of irrelevant leads. ie. imagine you're targetting builders and 25% of your list is actually marketers and lawyers lol. which typically happens when you export apollo lists.

hows everyone else doing this?

I want to see what other peoples thoughts are. I am trying to be in the latter, but it feels the work is wasted cleaning lists, that apollo is terrible at, which takes up a lot of time.

But ive done smaller lists, and handful of campaigns at 3-4% response rates and booked meetings but the effort to go through this process is time consuming and i want to test fast, scale fast and use it.

but the issue w high volume, is that you'd get reported as spam if your list has a big portion of irrelevant leads. ie. imagine you're targetting builders and 25% of your list is actually marketers and lawyers lol. which typically happens when you export apollo lists.

hows everyone else doing this?

I scraped a couple of conferences because I figured anyone paying for a booth or exhibition space generally is relatively cash flow healthy, especially if they’re an individual practice This was for a completely different project and I was curious if this was useful from a PE-lens, so here goes:

900 exhibitors across 2 conferences/2 industries - chiropractors and physical therapy
39 real practices 
10-15 confirmed PE-owned
4-5 confirmed individual practices
Didn’t look into others because no time lol

Practice 1

• Based in Edmonton, Canada (not sure why they're at a US conference)
• Specializing in shockwave therapy
• Independently owned, and they've apparently have a B2B coaching/training arm on the side, teaching the modality to other providers

Practice 2

• Based in the Sacramento foothills area, California
• General outpatient PT, founded in the late 70s, 11+ locations
• Independently owned (founder still listed as president/owner)
• In the same county, a PE-backed oral surgery group has locations in the exact same small towns

Practice 3

• Small, 2-location shop in Las Vegas, owner-operated
• General outpatient PT, founded in 2021
• Independently owned
• Based in Clark County, interesting to note that a PE-backed dental chain opened a new location in Vegas recently

Practice 4

• Network of clinics across rural Northern California (Redding/Shasta area)
• General outpatient PT, 16 locations, been around ~20 years
• Independently owned (explicitly therapist-owned)

You could probably do it across other industries too. Anyways, not sure if useful but just wanted to share in case someone did find it interesting.

I have really high deliverability against SMBs, so i want to see if anyone else is getting similar results.

Right now, for enterprise levels, I am doing average.

as above

Got laid off a few weeks ago. They said they'd circle back with something else. Then nothing. Completely ghosted lol. 

I was pretty sad and annoyed before and really angry too (got them 12-13 interested leads,, fixed their email systems because it was trash - did extra work like manage the VAs and then set up sequences for their SDRs). In hindsight, they did nothing wrong, they asked- and i accepted. I shouldve just stuck to what i was good at and rejected any other scope. 

But then i realised it was my fault for not setting boundaries and expectations, with both myself and them. Me for not giving myself enough time / resources to also find additional clients (which was the whole goal from the beginning-yes im a total idiot), rather than rely on one (and getting duped by their false promise of ramping up my hours). 

Its kind of embarrassing too. Like i go to dinner with my friends, they’re all doing well - some are making real progress in their job and they ask me how im going and im like “yeah, good”. Like super vague because i dont want to talk about it, because its all bad. 

Has anyone else felt like this?

Recently I got laid off, so I decided to start doing my own things and do something that I was good at, ie booking meetings via outbound etc.. But i underestimated how much I actually suck being in the actual call.

I was sitting in front of my desktop 1 hour. Had a script prepared in front of me. Was planning to ask the real questions and convert them into a customer.

But as i followed the script, everything felt really manufactured and robotic. I cant quite explain. 

He was polite enough to answer my questions but then he said okay, just send me an email. My gut feel was that he definitely wasn’t interested and was just being polite. Im 90% sure he will ghost me lol. 

Super embarrassing.

Does anyone remember their first and how did you get through it?

Lost the freelance role about 6 weeks ago. Restructure apparently lol. I did everything right but I guess in this economy that doesn't matter. 

I can't tell my family. They'll just do the "we told you so" thing and I can't handle that right now. My mum texts asking how work is and I just say its good. I dont really have anyone to share this with and i dont want to because it makes me feel worthless. 

Every morning I wake up and it's a struggle. I stay in bed like an hour longer than I should. Not even sleeping. Just lying there.

Here's what's messing with my head. I spent the last few months learning cold email, LinkedIn outreach (sorry, yes i add to the noise, but my noise booked meetings too), deliverability etc.. And I got pretty good. But now I'm sitting here wondering, is any of this even valuable anymore?

Do owners believe they can replicate my work and book meetings themselves? Use claude or gpt to grow their brand. There was a lot of thought i put into this that got me good results, but it kinda feels like its been reduced to nothing. Idk, im feeling really down. 

Has anyone felt this level of doubt before? Im reading self help books again to keep me going. It works sometimes, but i have to admit, its really hard. 

EDIT: hey all, i really do appreciate a lot of the support that is coming in. it makes this process feel a bit less lonely which i appreciate

Earlier this year I left construction to work for a small startup. They sold me on equity, growth potential, all that stuff. I took a massive pay cut because I genuinely believed in it.

Spent the last few months learning everything - cold email, LinkedIn outreach, workflow automation, social media content, lead gen. I was actually pretty good at it too. Booked them 20-30 calls every month.

But they ran out of money and couldn't keep me on. So that's that.

Also broke up with my girlfriend during all this. So now I'm single, broke, sitting on all these skills I don't really know what to do with.

My old construction job would probably take me back. Good money, stable work. But honestly the thought of going back feels like I failed. Like I wasted all this time learning stuff that doesn't matter.

Everyone says "just freelance" or "offer your services" but like... I have no clients, no real portfolio, no clue where to start.

Been thinking about doing free work or super cheap work just to get case studies and actually talk to people. But idk if that's the move or if it just makes me look desperate.

The frustrating part is I can build websites fast now, set up email campaigns that work, automate outreach - all this stuff that should be useful. But none of it matters if I don't have anyone to actually do it for.

Has anyone been through something like this? Like a career change that just feels completely stuck? How did you figure it out?

Just want to see if I can support a few emerging agencies or consultants who have proven client results but haven't cracked outbound yet

I want to be excellent at outbound and I think I am average so far.

Right now I run campaigns for a client and myself (to get more clients) but what is the edge that makes people awesome at GTM?

I kind of stumbled onto GTM because I did cold email outbound and I get consistent results but I am not amazing. Same with Linkedin DMs too.

Was a project manager about 8-9 months ago and then switched careers unexpectedly to basically work for construction, but more on running outbound channels like email, linkedin. Mainly because im passionate about writing and its something ive done since school.

But my general manager reached out to me 2 days ago and wants to offer me work, because I have niche skill (primavera scheduling if anyone wants to know) and the client wants that in particular. 

I don’t know if i should go back because i am getting ptsd from dealing with the constant office politics, 10-12 hr days, the burnout. But the pay is nice lol.

And my current work is unstable because its freelancing most of the time. I love the work, i love writing copy, running campaigns and seeing new contracts and connections come in. But the work isnt constant and you’re constantly hustling.

Is it weird to do a career switch back and is it worth it?