r/b2bemailing

the infrastructure stuff (most people skip this and wonder why they're in spam)

seriously the boring technical setup is like 80% of deliverability. nobody wants to hear that because its not sexy but its true.

domains — buy aged domains when you can. brandpa, odys, even just expired domains from namecheap auctions. fresh domains are fine but you need to baby them longer. and spread across multiple registrars, dont have all your eggs in godaddy.

inboxes — i stopped setting up google workspace myself. too many things to get wrong with DNS, DKIM records, MX setup. i just buy them from puzzleinbox now, come pre-configured and warmed, you literally just plug them into your sender. saves me like half a day per campaign which adds up fast when you're running multiple clients

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — non negotiable. check them on mxtoolbox before you send a single email. i cant count how many times ive seen people blame their copy when their DMARC isnt even set up lol

sending limits that actually work

• 20-30 emails per inbox per day to start, scale up slowly over 2-3 weeks
• no more than 3-4 inboxes per domain
• randomize your send times, dont blast everything at 9am
• i use smartlead for sequencing, works well with multiple inboxes

leads and list quality

this one kills people. a dirty list will tank a healthy domain in like 2 weeks.

apollo for scraping, clay for enrichment (their waterfall verification is genuinely good), then run everything through millionverifier or zerobounce before it touches a sequence. yes it costs money. yes its worth it. getting a 15% bounce rate is not a deliverability problem its a you problem

also scrub catch-all emails or at least put them in a separate lower-volume sequence. they're risky.

actual email writing stuff

ok now the copy part

• plain text or very close to it. images, logos, fancy HTML = spam trigger. your first touch should look like an email from a friend
• subject lines that dont sound like subject lines. "quick question" still works. so does just their first name. the more it looks like a marketing email the worse it performs
• first line has to prove you looked at them. not "i saw you work in SaaS" — actually specific. "saw you just opened a second location in Austin" or "noticed you're hiring 3 SDRs"
• short. like really short. 4-6 sentences max on the first touch. people arent reading your essay
• one CTA, not three. "would it make sense to chat?" not "let me know if you want a call, demo, more info, or i can send a case study"

the stuff i wish i knew earlier

reply to some emails from your new inboxes before you start sending campaigns. like actually use them for a few days. forward yourself stuff, reply to newsletters, it helps with reputation

google postmaster tools is free and tells you your domain reputation. check it. if you see red flags stop and figure out whats wrong before you keep sending

lemwarm or instantly's warmup is fine but dont just set it and forget it. actually check if your warmup emails are landing in primary not spam

unsubscribes are not the enemy. an unsubscribe is infinitely better than a spam report. make it easy for people to opt out

tools i actually use day to day

• puzzleinbox — inboxes/domains
• smartlead — sending and sequences
• apollo + clay — leads and enrichment
• millionverifier — list cleaning
• mxtoolbox — DNS checks
• google postmaster — reputation monitoring
• chatgpt/claude — first draft of sequences then i heavily edit

thats pretty much it. nothing revolutionary, its all just consistency and not cutting corners on the boring parts.

if you're landing in spam 9 times out of 10 its either your domain reputation, a dirty list, or your emails look too much like marketing emails. fix those three things first before you mess with anything else

happy to answer questions, ive probably made every mistake in here at some point

Many tools, platforms, and suggestions are available.

However, my instincts tell me I’ll realize after months of spending money which ones have all the necessary features.

I want to ask rather than wasting time.

Note: I am from software engineering background, parked my degree and now starting new journey as entrepreneur. Realized, I tried building my own tool but realized I should not invent the wheel.

If you would be starting fresh which platform or tool you would recommend or you found working for you? for cold outreach.

Much appreciated your advice.

Hey guys, I'm in sales B2B AI sub niche. I need suggestion/pointers for cold email or what works for you.

This is my current template (we use pattern breakers to get prospects attention but open to other ideas):

===

Subject: WARNING!!! THIS IS A COLD EMAIL 🚨

Hey {{first_name}}, as you may have figured out by now... this is a cold email.  All we ask is 32 seconds of your time to see if we could help {{company_name}} 

Struggling where to use AI in your (X business niche)? We fix that by (pitch)

If its worth a coffee and a chat, reply to this email and we'll sort it out.

Thank you, John Doe

====

That's approximately what I send, sometime switch up the wording and subject line. But would love to know what works for you for best open rates, reply rates etc.

Hi there,

I have a Web design agency and we sell websites to local businesses in the US, I recently thought of starting cold email campaigns but I’m currently struggling with building the target list.

So my initial thought was that blasting 1000 emails to generic info@ or contact@ would not be a good idea unless that particular business is a 1-3 people operation or I might be wrong.

But what about bigger companies? How do you find the decision makers email address and then make sure that this is the destination that your email should land at.

I also read a lot of posts for people are complaining about the inaccuracy of databases of platforms like Apollo, Apify etc

Another thing is that I’ve tried cold calling and my opener line was that if I were talking to the owner, if not I was asking them to transfer to the owner or directing manager and a lot of receptionists declined

So I would highly appreciate if you can share your thoughts and experiences

Best,

Hi everyone,

I have been working on a GTM tool for the last year. I want to provide everyone up to 100,000 contacts of founders, owners, ceo's etc.

You just have to upvote, comment and i will dm you.

This post was made informing the admin, as i am not naming my own product here on the post.

EDIT: Please dm me so I can send it to you directly

Hi everyone,

Its Jame from the PuzzleInbox analytics team. I want to do a short post on how you can send your first 100,000 cold emails.

Cold Email is not easy. It takes time to build you infra and even takes more time and learning to manage it properly. Sending 100,000 cold emails makes sense if you are actually delivering to the inbox. For that:

As of 3rd of July, Google Workspace has the best deliverability for cold emails in the market. Each Inbox would cost you somewhere like $2.5-$3 depending on the volume you buy them.

We recommend sending 12 cold 12 warm emails per inbox, if you want to keep your inboxes safe and delivering, so that is 360 cold emails if you calculate the month as 30 days.

You would need around 270 inboxes that would cost anywhere from 650-800 dollars. You would need a sending tool to send and manage campaigns. Those tools would cost $50-$100. Also you would need a lead finder that can provide you verified contacts. Price really depends here on where you use as a provider.

In terms of what you can expect to get out of 100,000 cold emails:

Heavily dependent on your offer. We see 100-900 leads generated from our clients and through our research. That would give you a cost per lead of $2 on average. Disclaimer, this really depends on your offer. It could be $0.5 and it could be $15 too.

Looking forward to questions and connecting with cold emailers.

I'm planning to start cold emailing. I already have the infrastructure, the sending tools, domains, etc. Now it's time to actually start sending.

The biggest question i have is, where the hell do people get their lead emails?

Everyone says Apollo, sassydb, etc., but they're expensive as hell, apollo, for example, only gives you around 4k emails for $99, eanwhile, every youtube video claims they're sending 100k+ emails per month.

So... is everyone lying, or what's actually going on? Is there some secret that people in email marketing don't talk about?

P.S. I'll personally kiss whoever explains how people actually do this properly 😂

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

Hey everyone,

I’ve built an AI WhatsApp tool that helps Dubai real estate brokers qualify leads automatically.

It scores leads as hot/warm/cold, handles follow-ups in English, Hindi and Arabic and sends alerts for hot leads.

Basically saves agents a lot of time on manual back and forth.

Right now I’m doing outreach on LinkedIn, Instagram and WhatsApp to get my first few clients.

I’m also thinking about starting cold email outreach.

For those who are already doing email outreach, what’s your total monthly setup cost right now (tools + domains + warm-up etc.)?

Also, for someone trying to land their first client in this space, what worked best for you in the beginning?

Any tips on getting that first paying client without burning too much time or money?

Would appreciate any honest advice.

I am getting overwhelmed by various kinds of email templates. People are saying this is working, you should use etc. So, my question is what should i add in email so that i can make a successful campaign?

guys i am starting cold email soon.

i need recommendations on how to write scripts, the tools i should use and how to prevent spam etc.

also i need feedback on tools i heard such as Instantly, Puzzleinbox and Apollo. i am sure there is a lot of people in this community using them.

The data from Google says that people using Apollo are getting high bounce rates and low reply rate. So, if it is backdated, which one should i use?

I also got emails from Apollo. So, suggest tools that also give email accounts.

Hi guys,

What setup/infra would you suggest for sending around 100/200 emails per day? I'm looking something that I can automate and have an easy way to converse with potential clients.

Thanks a bunch,

Tom

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%

Are there good sources to purchases email lists that are fairly accurate and if so who do you recommend?

Hey everyone,

Hope everyone is doing well. I want to do a post on our experience managing 115,000 inboxes and sending 10 million plus emails a month.

We have been doing a lot of testing when it comes to deliverability. Offer and infra is currently what matters. When you have a good offer with a strong infra you start booking a lot of meetings and generating a interested leads.

We use claude to generate cold email copies and offers. What we've learned after burning through a lot of variations:

• Offer first, copy second. No amount of clever writing saves a weak offer. We now spend 80% of the time on the offer itself the promise, the specificity, the risk reversal and let Claude iterate on the wording once the offer is locked in.
• One variable at a time. We A-B one thing per test subject line, opener CTA offer angle. Testing five things at once teaches you nothing.
• Reply rate is the only metric we trust. Everything upstream of a reply is useless now. If replies are flat it's the offer or the targeting almost never the copy.

Happy to answer questions on any of this.

Hey, just about 20 days a go i started email campaign. Today i saw my open rate and it is 7 out of 100 or 150.
I thought i am not being personal about their service and told every thing to chatgpt.
Chatgpt told me to check whether it is going in spam .
I text some of my friend.
BOOM. It was landing in spam folder.
How can i correct this.
Some one plz guide me through this.

I am looking at some pre warmed options for google and outlook. I have used them before but havent for a while. What is everyone seing in terms of deliverability? and in terms of providers what do you guys recommend zapmail or puzzleinbox?

Thanks

I heard someone was saying that because everyone has that lead list and they all are pitching the same thing to them. I use Apollo and feeling bad after hearing this.

If that’s true, which one should i use?

I have a scrubbed list of roughly 30,000 verified email addresses, primarily business owners of companies generating between $2 million and $20 million in annual revenue.

I'm trying to determine the best outreach strategy.

Should I individually research each prospect and personalize every email with something specific I find online, or is that impractical at this scale?

What are the current best practices for outbound campaigns with a list of this size?

At the moment, I have 25 warmed-up inboxes in Instantly and plan to send 30–50 emails per inbox per day. My goal isn't to burn through my lead list. I'd rather optimize for long-term performance by balancing personalization, deliverability, testing, and reply rates before scaling.

How would you approach this? Specifically:

• How much personalization would you recommend at this volume?
• What type of copy would you use?
• Would you segment the list or send one core campaign?
• How would you structure your testing before scaling?

My goal isn't to book a meeting directly from the cold email. My goal is to generate enough interest around a specific problem that prospects choose to visit my landing page and book a call.

The audience is business owners with $2M–$20M in annual revenue whose businesses are still heavily dependent on them personally.