u/malshaik

ok so a few months ago we decided to test something new out for our saas.

so many people talk about ugc and how great it is compared to ads and so on. there are many examples of apps that scaled with them.

I specifically took Inspo from the founder of Jenni ai David Park in his guide 

you can check out the influencers posts here as well for proof

to preface this, this is more of what not to do and what id do differently and will do differently now haha

but here was the process:

step 1: finding the influencers

so the trick according to the David Park guide was to find influencers who have viral potential but small accounts, meaning some of their videos do go viral but don't have big accounts yet.

this is cuz it is much cheaper to get them and they will end up getting similar results to the big creators.

so we found a couple, reached out to them, and made a deal with them to get on new accounts and pay per 100k in views. which seems pretty good at first but then that ended up not working out as much. will explain more bellow.

after having them made new accounts we basically had them post. the issue was that all they ended up posting was low quality stuff that directly shilled the product which isn't usually good.

they would try the same stuff over and over again and get mediocre results. they would sometimes get views but in the end it was clear they were just doing whatever needed to be done to get the payment (which is fair on their end)

what im gonna do differently next push is this:

- start with larger creators have them post on their accounts in a specific format that we give them that we know goes viral on their account. even better if it doesn't directly advertise the product.

- get these larger creators to do a bundle deal where its x amount of videos per month instead of one offs.

- then maybe have a group of smaller accounts that start out just making general content the same type of content that they would do on their main account and slowly warm up to more targeted content.

this is what I have personally heard works from founders of companies that scaled almost completely from ugc.

if anyone else has experience running ugc let me know im interested in what u guys have learned :)

ok so a few months ago we decided to test something new out for our saas.

so many people talk about ugc and how great it is compared to ads and so on. there are many examples of apps that scaled with them.

I specifically took Inspo from the founder of Jenni ai David Park in his guide 

you can check out the influencers posts here as well for proof

to preface this, this is more of what not to do and what id do differently and will do differently now haha

but here was the process:

step 1: finding the influencers

so the trick according to the David Park guide was to find influencers who have viral potential but small accounts, meaning some of their videos do go viral but don't have big accounts yet.

this is cuz it is much cheaper to get them and they will end up getting similar results to the big creators.

so we found a couple, reached out to them, and made a deal with them to get on new accounts and pay per 100k in views. which seems pretty good at first but then that ended up not working out as much. will explain more bellow.

after having them made new accounts we basically had them post. the issue was that all they ended up posting was low quality stuff that directly shilled the product which isn't usually good.

they would try the same stuff over and over again and get mediocre results. they would sometimes get views but in the end it was clear they were just doing whatever needed to be done to get the payment (which is fair on their end)

what im gonna do differently next push is this:

- start with larger creators have them post on their accounts in a specific format that we give them that we know goes viral on their account. even better if it doesn't directly advertise the product.

- get these larger creators to do a bundle deal where its x amount of videos per month instead of one offs.

- then maybe have a group of smaller accounts that start out just making general content the same type of content that they would do on their main account and slowly warm up to more targeted content.

this is what I have personally heard works from founders of companies that scaled almost completely from ugc.

if anyone else has experience running ugc let me know im interested in what u guys have learned :)

so quick context. i run outbound for a portfolio of clients. small operation - just me, one ops person, and someone who builds lists. thats it. we're currently running active campaigns for 47 different businesses across basically every industry you can think of

im not flexing the number because honestly it's chaotic as hell and there are days i genuinely wonder what im doing with my life. but the reason i'm posting this is because when you're juggling this many different campaigns simultaneously you start seeing patterns that you literally cannot see when you're only managing your own stuff

some of this contradicts what gets upvoted in this sub. some of it will probably annoy people. i dont really care. this is what i actually watch working and failing in real campaigns with real revenue behind them every single day

YOUR OFFER WILL MAKE OR BREAK YOU (AND COPY WON'T SAVE A BAD ONE)

everyone wants to discuss email copy. subject lines. deliverability. tools. those things matter sure. but across 47 simultaneous campaigns the single strongest indicator of success is your core offer

i have clients where the actual email copy is just fine. nothing fancy. borderline generic. but the offer itself is so compelling and so perfectly aligned with who theyre reaching out to that it doesnt matter. people respond because they actually want what youre pitching

then theres clients who come with beautifully written emails and an offer thats basically "we're better than your current option." so is literally everyone else. theres no reason for a cold prospect to care

the winning offers share these patterns

a specific result with a number and timeline attached. not "we boost your sales" but "we help logistics companies reduce shipping costs by 15-20% in 120 days." numbers feel real. timelines create urgency. specificity makes it believable

something that removes risk for them. "try us for a month risk-free" or "you only pay if we hit your targets." cold prospects have zero trust in you. anything that lowers the barrier to saying yes matters enormously

a framing thats unique to you. not just "we provide X service" but "we use Y methodology that does X differently." even if youre doing the same thing as competitors the language matters. people want to feel like theyre getting access to something different not the same commodity service theyre seeing everywhere

i spend way more time now helping clients nail their offer before we send a single email than on anything else. because i learned the hard way that beautiful copy cannot rescue a weak offer. it just cant

if your campaign isnt working stop tweaking your subject line and audit your offer instead. would YOU reply to what youre asking people to respond to. really think about it

CASUAL BEATS POLISHED EVERY TIME

the highest performing emails across my portfolio are the ones that read like someone typed them out quickly. not the ones where you can tell someone spent hours perfecting every sentence

ive tested this constantly. formal professional tone vs casual almost rough around the edges. the casual ones win. consistently. not marginally. significantly

the pattern is obvious when you think about it. everyone sends polished emails now. every agency. every AI tool. every template floating around on twitter produces the same clean structured tone. so when someone gets an email that actually sounds like a real human typed it in 30 seconds it stands out because everything else in their inbox sounds automated

what ive learned about email structure across these 47 accounts

length matters way more than people admit. short always wins. always. ive never seen a long first email beat a short one. target is somewhere between 30-50 words. go over 70 and you watch reply rates drop noticeably

give them one thing to respond to. one angle. one observation. one question. not multiple value props competing for attention. when you throw too much at them they dont know what to respond to so they respond to nothing

lowercase subject lines outperform title case maybe 75% of the time. i genuinely dont fully understand why but the data is clear. my guess is lowercase feels like a genuine note while caps feels like marketing

ask questions instead of making statements. "could this work for your team?" gets more replies than "this could work for your team." obvious in hindsight but you see so many emails that dont actually ask for anything

the opening sentence determines if they keep reading. if it's generic they stop. if it's specific and relevant to them they keep going. i a/b test first lines more than anything else in the email

and honestly stop trying to make emails perfect. the goal is to make it look effortless. which is a weird paradox but thats the actual game. emails that seem like they were dashed off between calls always outperform emails where you can feel the effort

WHY MOST CAMPAIGNS FAIL (AND IT'S PREDICTABLE)

at this point i can pretty much tell within 10-14 days if a campaign will actually work or not. not because im some genius but because the failure patterns are incredibly obvious

campaigns that tank almost always share these problems

people cant resist changing things mid-flight

this is the biggest killer by far. i have clients who want to change the copy after 100 emails because they're not seeing meetings yet. 100 emails. at a 3% response rate thats 3 people. they see 3 responses and panic

cold email requires 2-3 weeks minimum before you have meaningful data. ideally closer to a month. but some people have zero patience. they tweak the subject line. rewrite the CTA. swap the list. adjust the send time. its compulsive

the clients winning are the ones who launch and then disappear for 3 weeks. they check in but they dont interfere. they let the process actually work. every single client i've had who constantly tinkers ends up with worse results than if they'd just left it alone

their target is too vague

"we work with any company that needs operations help." great so does every company on earth. who specifically. which industries. what company size. what stage are they at. what problem are they having right now that they need to solve in the next month

tighter targeting = better results. every single time. i had a client selling workforce software. when we went broad with "operations managers" we got 1.8% response rate. when we tightened to "operations managers at food distribution companies with 100-250 employees who recently opened a new location" response rate jumped to 5.2%. same product. nearly identical copy. just way more precise targeting

they have no real unique angle

"we do what everyone does but better" doesnt work. if youre basically identical to 20 competitors and cant explain why someone should pick you cold email becomes brutal

the clients crushing it are the ones with a real answer when i ask "why you over the other option." something concrete. a proprietary system. a specific guarantee. a vertical they own. something tangible

they expect miracles in week one

cold email isnt fast. warmup takes 3 weeks. your first campaign needs time to generate data. optimization takes multiple cycles. realistically youre looking at 2 months before things are really working. anyone expecting a pipeline in 7-10 days is gonna be disappointed and usually quits before the good part starts

RANDOM INSIGHTS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER

send window is way narrower than people think

tuesday through thursday. thats it. monday is weak. friday is mediocre. weekends are dead unless youre hitting founders. tue-thu consistently crushes everything else. i dont even bother with other days anymore

morning in their timezone beats everything else

7-9am their local time. before meetings bury them. before slack piles up. this is basic but the number of people who just let their tool send whenever is wild. 5 minutes to set up timezone sending. do it

response rates vary wildly by industry

2% in one industry is excellent. 4% in another is disappointing. theres no universal benchmark. it depends on who youre targeting and how saturated they are with outbound

tech founders and marketing leaders get blasted constantly. theyre fatigued. lower response rates because of that

but construction. logistics. manufacturing. healthcare. these spaces get way less cold email. often higher response rates because their inboxes arent getting hammered. some of my best campaigns ever were in industries nobody in this sub talks about because theyre not trendy

personalization at scale is different than personalization at low volume

if youre doing 50 emails a day personalize every one. research them. be specific. make it obvious you looked

500 a day? not realistic. the ROI on deep personalization at volume isnt what people claim. ive tested this hundreds of times. personalized vs generic vs light personalization. difference is maybe 0.5-1% in response rate. which matters but not as much as your offer or your list quality

enterprise deals are different. high value targets need customized emails. but for mid-market standard volume a tight list and strong offer beats deep personalization almost always

volume usually beats copy optimization

unpopular take but true. if youre sending 75 emails daily and getting 2 responses a month the problem probably isnt your email. its your volume. scale to 300-400 daily and turn 2 responses into 8-10

this assumes your infrastructure is solid and emails are actually landing. dont scale garbage. but if youre getting some responses just not enough volume is usually the unlock not another round of rewrites

people agonize over word choice for hours debating "quick conversation" vs "30 minute call" when the real issue is theyre sending tiny volume and expecting results from that. doesnt work unless youre in some niche with a 15% response rate

managing this across 47 campaigns means i've had to automate the operational work. managing when to scale lists when accounts are ready to increase volume which clients need refreshes. manually tracking that across 47 different campaigns would destroy me. we built out workflows that handle list management segmentation and volume scaling so i actually have time to work on strategy instead of drowning in admin work

ideal follow-up sequence is 4-5 emails

not 2. not 3. not 7. 4-5 consistently performs best

heres where meetings actually come from across my data

email 1: roughly 22% of total meetings

email 2: roughly 16%

email 3: roughly 28%

email 4: roughly 18%

email 5: roughly 8%

email 6+: basically nothing

email 3 is the strongest across almost every single account. by then theyve seen your name enough to register it but youve said something new enough to grab attention. email 1 is introduction. email 2 is reminder. email 3 is where they actually start paying attention

delegation and autonomy matter more than you think

clients who give me freedom to build strategy without constant approval always outperform clients who want to review every email debate every list decision sit on weekly calls to tweak details

not because my ideas are always right but because it actually allows testing cycles. constant approval processes kill iteration. the client letting me run multiple tests in a month beats the client taking two weeks to approve one subject line change

if youre working with an agency or contractor and results arent there honestly ask yourself how much youre micromanaging. sometimes the best thing you can do is actually get out of the way

THE ACTUAL COST BREAKDOWN (REAL NUMBERS)

being transparent about what this actually costs

per client per month youre looking at roughly

- sending infrastructure: $250-600

- data and enrichment tools: $150-350

- list verification: $30-70

- other tools and odds and ends: $75-125

so $500-1100 in direct costs monthly before labor. if youre doing it yourself thats your time. if youre hiring or using an agency add $2500-5500 monthly on top

cold email still crushes on ROI because one b2b deal usually covers months of spend. $12k average deal closing 2-3 times monthly means $24-36k revenue against maybe $2500 in costs. hard to find better unit economics than that

but you need realistic expectations on timeline. month 1 is infrastructure and warmup. month 2 is data collection and optimization. month 3 is usually when momentum builds. expecting revenue in week 2 is setting yourself up to quit before anything happens

HERE'S WHAT I'D DO STARTING COMPLETELY FRESH

if i was doing this from scratch today

month one: pick one target market. not three. one. narrower focus means faster learning. get 10-20 domains. set up 25-35 email accounts across solid providers. configure everything properly. warmup. spend the waiting period building lists and writing sequences. use apollo + jam for data sourcing. verify everything before sending

month two: launch 2-3 campaigns hitting different segments within that one market. send 250-350 emails daily. let them run for three weeks. watch reply rates closely but dont change anything until you actually have data. respond to every reply within 20-30 minutes. use calendar links for scheduling not free-form scheduling

month three: you have data now. shut down the campaigns failing. scale the ones working. test new angles. expand your lists. maybe add another market if the first one is actually clicking. start planning capacity for more volume

thats the roadmap. simple but slow. most people quit in month 1 because they expected instant results and got infrastructure work instead

the real killer is staying through the boring part. month 1-2 is just setup. no meetings. no revenue. just groundwork. people who push through that and actually trust the process win. everyone else taps out

scaling this operation meant i had to solve the operational side. handling dozens of campaigns manually is a nightmare. list building account management volume scaling tracking which client is ready for next steps. we automated those workflows so we could actually focus on what moves the needle instead of getting buried in admin

reach out if you want to talk through strategy. also if youre running more than like 8-10 campaigns seriously consider automating your operational workflow before you try to scale further. managing the campaigns is one thing. managing the business around them is totally different and people way underestimate the complexity