When do you actually start cold emailing as a startup? (i will not promote)

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530]

Cold email still worth it in 2025?

Last year I ran it for an enterprise SaaS. Started on LinkedIn, then used lists from Hunter, Apollo and Seamless. Began with 100 emails a day and scaled to 1000.

Reply rate averaged 3%. About 13% of those showed real interest. Breakup emails performed best.

Now I’m considering trying again, this time for SMBs and freelancers instead of large enterprises. But the thing is that I also get 20+ cold emails a day myself and end up deleting most without even reading.

Do you start cold outreach from day one when nobody knows you or only after traction and a story to tell?

Btw if anyone has real funnel numbers like reply rates, meetings booked or conversions, I’d love to hear them.

[u/theredhype]

You aren’t going to get meaningful responses to this question unless you give us more information about your market, business model, etc.

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/theredhype]

Yeah, totally. Up until now I had been building an event management platform for big enterprises, yearly contracts. Now I am testing more lighter freemium model. Free tier with a limit for AI tokens to play around and test the app. Then $20/$40 plans.
The idea is that there are many small teams, solo organizers running meetups, launches and community events. They don't want to use heavy software but need something smarter than G forms.

[u/21752]

Focus on your actual network first.

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/21752]

I’m focusing on my network as well. I’m more curious when it makes sense for an AI startup to add cold outreach. Once the first few users have gone through the app, understand it and see the value, I want to push for the first 100

[u/Straight-Village-710 → u/21752]

You can't get direct answers in your network. Most people will play nice rather than be upfront and burn a relationship, it's better to do cold outreach from day 0, I'd say.

Unknown people willing to pay money >> interest from warm leads.

[u/AnonJian]

Trick Question: When you exhaust your research pool. Kevin Costner got a whole movie out of the alternative -- there is plenty of story to tell.

Money changing hands shows real interest. Cold outreach is what people who never read a book on sales decided was the 'non salesy' approach. Then they post here about non-revenue.

Just Do It really saves time, does it not?

If you are solving a real problem for a real customer you understand, you have a story to tell. The huge problem is that story is not about the founders or their immense self-satisfaction.

[u/talks_about_ai]

This is exactly what I am working through. Most times it feels strange basically selling to your network as it can change the dynamic but it can prove fruitful in helping you get off the ground. Have a couple colleagues who have found success starting from their network.

Have been also trying cold outreach on my end but it's been a process in itself. Especially with folks getting burned with vibe coders attempting to do ML Ops.

What space are you currently working in?

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/talks_about_ai]

I’m in event management. I’m testing my own network as well, but was curious about people’s experiences with cold outreach these days and at what stage it makes sense to start implementing it

[u/FRELNCER]

Reply rate averaged 3%. About 13% of those showed real interest. Breakup emails performed best.

Do you not have the cost per converion data?

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/FRELNCER]

I don't, but it was pretty minimal. I was running on my own 10 domains, each able to send about 500–1000 emails a day. I didn’t want to push higher volumes because of blacklist risks. The pipeline I set up was like: pulling contacts from Seamless, validating through Apollo and Hunter, and then sending the outreach

[u/Paul-seo-consultant]

What are you selling?

[u/FlowingRiver0]

I recently started cold emailing sending 50 emails per day. Haven't gotten a single reply yet -- feels completely dead to me.

[u/Substantial-Sport903]

I feel your pain. My own inbox is a graveyard for cold emails. The numbers you got are pretty standard, its a tough game. I've switched my approach completely. Instead of going in cold, I warm up leads on LinkedIn first. I find a relevant post they've commented on, add a thoughtful reply to their comment, and only then send a connection request. The acceptance rate is insanely higher. Manually its a pain, but I use horlio to find those posts and the engaged people automatically. It connects sourcing and outreach in one go, much simpler than juggling Apollo and email tools.

[u/Tipsytaku]

See....cold emails are sent to those who don't know you yet.

As long as you have a good story, cold emails can work for you.

In case you don't have a story of the company yet, but you still have a story to tell about yourself, right?

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/Tipsytaku]

I usually keep cold emails super short, just a few lines. Got a story behind what I’m building, not sure if it fits in cold outreach tho. Maybe better to drop that through a media piece and link to it

[u/MissMinxyM]

I wouldn’t personally suggest mass cold emailing at all. Maybe when you’re built you can run campaigns but in all honesty, if you focus on clients that categorise as a ‘perfect customer for you’ tailor the emails, and offer them a solution, you’ll get a much better response. I’ve been in SAAS, tech and fintech sales for the past 15 years and have opened some impenetrable doors this way.

[u/Economy_Bandicoot530 → u/MissMinxyM]

Appreciate that. Any rough numbers? Like how many ppl you hit and what the conv. rate looked like?

[u/infinityhats]

From what I’ve heard from with early stage founders is that blasting emails from day one usually leads to low conversion because there's not a clear story or proof point yet. At this point you’re just another stranger in the inbox. But once you have even a small wedge like a pilot customer, one clear ROI metric, or a case study, the same email suddenly lands very differently.

Don’t spray and pray from day one. Get one strong proof point first, then scale it with cold outreach

[u/MohammadAbir]

I’d say it depends less on timing and more on how you approach it. I run sales for a small tech company and cold email used to feel pointless. Templates got ignored, even with clean lists and breakup sequences.

This year we tried Perlon AI and reply rates jumped. The emails pull real info, like someone’s recent LinkedIn post or company update, so they don’t read like mass blasts. Deliverability’s been steady too since it handles warm up and list cleaning. We’re seeing closer to 10–12% replies now, and actual calls booked. Cold outreach still works, just not the old way.