r/EmailProspecting

i own a VA outsourcing agency , we have a good amount of clients and we want to expand more i want to test out if cold emailing would work , would like to be connected with someone who knows how to do this properly and be willing to work based on results

thank you

New to cold email. Tried a few small campaigns early on. Nothing meaningful happened.

Then in March I sent to about 5k lawyers. One campaign, 4 follow-ups, simple copy. It worked. 56% open rate, 0.8% reply rate, and I got a few real sales conversations out of it. Felt like I had cracked it.

After that I retried the same list. I took the people who never replied in March, tweaked the copy to make the value prop clearer and to address the common objections I kept seeing (people saying it wasn't for them, or they already had something). Same leads, modified copy. It did not work.

Then I ran a modified version of the March campaign on a bigger list. Less focused this time. Reply rate was about the same, around 0.7%, but every reply was "not interested" or "take me off your list." Zero real conversations. Same structure, close copy, worse list. The quality just fell off a cliff.

After that I tried a few more campaigns. Different angles. A demo link system where people could click and see a personalized matter video. A warmer founder-led sequence. None of it got meaningful replies or conversations.

Here is the part I cannot figure out. The March campaign worked. Since then I have tried similar copy, similar structure, the same low-friction ask (can I send you a short video). I retried the same list. I clarified the value prop and addressed the objections. Sometimes on similar leads. It just does not work anymore. I cannot find the denominator.

For context on my setup. I have 45 sending accounts across 7 domains. I send about 1,300 emails a day. Each account is capped at 30 emails per day.

I think it might be infrastructure but I cannot verify it. Every time I log into one of my sending email accounts and run a placement test, the results are mixed. Some are fine, some land in spam. One testing tool I won't name gives me pretty bad results. Most of my ICP is on Outlook, but all my sending domains are on Google. Not sure if that matters.

I ran the inbox placement test built into Instantly. About 12.5% of emails seem to be going to spam. I do not know if that is the whole problem or just part of it.

I really do not know where to go from here. I am losing faith in this channel. If I cannot figure it out soon I will probably pivot to LinkedIn through something like Gojiberry instead.

A few specific things I am wondering:

Are my domains just burnt and I need to get new ones?

Should I switch to Outlook sending accounts since most of my ICP is on Outlook?

Is Instantly even the right tool for this?

Has anyone been here before? What would you check next?

We're looking for someone who can help us build a robust cold email outreach infrastructure and advise on strategy, deliverability, and best practices.

Experience working with market research agencies is a big plus. We'd love to hear from people who can demonstrate real results—reply rates, meetings booked, pipeline generated, or other relevant metrics.

If that's you (or you know someone who'd be a great fit), please comment below or send me a DM.

bounce rate is creeping past what my sender warmup can absorb, and i can't tell if the problem is the verifier i'm running or the source list itself.

mostly hitting it on european data where catch-alls feel like a coin flip, addresses coming back valid then bouncing within the week, or getting flagged risky when they're fine.

trying to figure out what you guys are running for the verifier step before a cold push because apparently, the price-per-credit ranges so wide it's hard to tell what i'd be paying extra for.

open to stacking 2 if that's the move, just don't want to pay for the same false positives twice.

btw i've seen a post in here around the same topic a while back but i can't seem to find it, a few options like ZeroBounce, FullEnrich and NeverBounce got thrown around but i'm not sure which one held up on european data.

thank you

Ive just discovered a new hobby that i call “email-hunting”, basically all i do is think and make rare and unique email addresses, and tonight i made an new email address “do.i.have.rights@proton.me”

But am i the only one who does this or is there a community for this thing? Speaking of rare emails, what are some uncommon email types? I know zoho, GMX, proton, icloud, outlook, hotmail, and gmail.

I’ve been doing cold email outreach for about six months, primarily for my recruiting business focused on clinical trials, biotech, and pharma.

I still believe cold email works. The problem is that I haven’t seen the results I expected in my niche. Deliverability has been solid, and I know emails are reaching inboxes because I get plenty of OOO replies and some responses. It just feels like biotech and pharma are in a rough market right now.

What’s interesting is that whenever I test other industries, I seem to get much better engagement, which makes me think the issue is more market-related than outreach-related.
A few years ago, when the market was stronger, I did pretty well with basic cold email and direct outreach without all the tools we use today.

Right now I’m sending around 2,500 emails per week, but the ROI isn’t where I’d like it to be. Because of that, I’m starting to look closely at costs.

I’ve been hosting most of my mailboxes through Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Recently I noticed Smartlead offers mailboxes for around $4.50/month, which is roughly half of what I’m paying now.

My biggest concern is deliverability. I don’t want to save money if it means sacrificing inbox placement.
I currently pay for a dedicated IP through Smartlead as well. Not even sure if that’s still necessary.

I’m considering moving some mailboxes from Google Workspace to Smartlead mailboxes, InboxKit, Zapmail, or Mailforge. For those of you running larger cold email operations:

Have you noticed a meaningful deliverability difference between Google Workspace and these providers?
Is a dedicated IP actually worth it?
Does Mailforge’s shared IP setup matter if I’m already paying for a dedicated IP elsewhere?
If you were trying to reduce costs without hurting deliverability, what would you do?

Would appreciate any real-world experiences. Trying to figure out where I can cut expenses without hurting performance.