Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

I recently visited a company’s site and got hit with a live cold call from one of their reps a few minutes later. I absolutely loved it.

Every bit of data we have shows that the faster you call your leads after they show any type of intent, the more likely they are to book into an appointment. 

So much so that we call leads that respond to our cold emails as fast as humanly possible to try to capitalize on this. 

But, frankly, I had never seen it done off of a website visitor play. In retrospect, it's quite obvious, though. 

1. Identify website visitor
2. Enrich and get email + phone
3. Assign to rep
4. Have rep call

There's clear alpha in this right now, and I'd love to see more companies take it on. 

The future of GTM belongs to those who pick up the phone fastest.

For the longest time while cold emailing local businesses, I removed “info”, “support”, and “help” @ [company name] emails. Wow, what a mistake that was.

I thought that those were generic emails and nobody checks them. So, I’d of course favor actual people’s (generally the owner) emails. Except over time, I realized how small this made our list.

It became clear that not all SMB business owners actually set up personal email accounts, and sometimes do operate out of the generic names (some friends in the space made this clear to me!).

And, it just…worked (see below for confirmation).

This changes a lot for us. It’s almost like we unlocked new TAM by confidently reaching out to addresses we never would have before, being that we now know they actually may be fruitful.

All that to say: if you’re cold emailing local businesses, don’t shy away from the generic addresses. They might just be exactly what will work.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

Mark Cuban says the best business opportunity right now is selling AI implementation to businesses. Here’s how I’d do it with cold email:

People that do it wrong will mass-send generic copy about “implementing AI” to a massive list. It will go nowhere, and they’ll claim this “doesn’t work”.

People that do it right will:

1. Find 1 problem that’s solvable with AI for 1 type of business (ex: a specific AI workflow for HVAC businesses' back office).

2. Solve it in a way you can productize/replicate (using AI).

3. Scrape a list of ONLY those types of businesses (smaller, but more targeted).

4. Email a subset of the list offering to do execute this for free in exchange for case studies/testimonals.

5. Run the playbook 3 times for free to land case studies (video customer interviews + written case studies on-site).

6. Email the rest of the list saying:

"{{name}} - want {{problem solved}}?

Asking because we did it for other {{company types}} like {{company 1}}, {{company 1}}, and {{company 3}}.

Worth a chat?"

This has really always been the playbook for getting services businesses off the ground. AI has just increased demand for certain services, and made it faster to deliver for the vendors.

If I were fresh out of college trying to start something, this would likely be it.

It feels like every week, we see people in outbound preach about a new data vendor, infrastructure provider, or even sending platform. 

Even within tools themselves, I feel like I can't scroll the timeline without seeing Smartlead, Clay, or others announce a big new feature.

It's both awesome and exhausting, sometimes.

At the same time, it's indicative of how much this space moves and how fast it does. Every outbound marketer needs to be on their toes constantly to ensure they're not missing something. 

And though I don't want to come across like I'm fear-mongering, it's true. I've seen this in the last year with competitively generated agency owners, unfortunately fizzling out because they were stuck in their ways and didn't adapt. 

You absolutely need to keep your finger on the pulse of all tools and strategies in this space or you will fall behind. 

I like to frame it mentally as being a student of the game. It is ever-evolving, meaning it is quite literally impossible to master it. 

That’s my Tuesday reminder.

I've sent over 3,000,000 cold emails since January 1st. Here are my 25 rules for deliverability every outbound marketer needs to know in 2026:

Infra:

1. Always use Google or Microsoft accounts, never SMTP. SMTP providers consistently fail after a few months when spam filters update.

2. Domain endings don't matter much. Use .com when possible, but .org, .info, .co, and .biz work fine because they're cheaper.

3. Warm up domains for minimum 2 weeks, ideally a month for better performance and longevity.

4. Use an A/B rotation strategy. Buy two sets of infrastructure per client - use set A in month one, set B in month two, then rotate.

5. Keep emergency non-branded domains ready as backups when main infrastructure goes down.

6. Use proper naming conventions: Client_Campaign_Industry_LaunchDate_Group to identify performance issues.

7. All providers will eventually mess up DNS settings at scale. Always send yourself a test email and check headers before launching campaigns.

Campaign setup

8. Don't track opens. Open data is unreliable and hurts deliverability.

9. Plain text only. No fancy formatting.

10. Send Monday-Friday, 9-5, but randomize the exact time daily within a 30-minute window using Smartlead's API. Saturdays work well for SMBs and mid-market targets.Keep campaigns running on holidays because business owners check email every day.

Lead list management

11. Format company names properly, but ideally don't use them at all. Campaigns perform worse when they include company name or title.

12. When using titles, normalize them with AI (e.g., "CEO" not "Chief Executive Officer").

13. Remove all email security from your list. Use Google's DNS endpoint to identify anyone with Proofpoint, Barracuda, Mimecast.If removing security emails makes your list too small, put them at the end instead.

14. Don't isolate ISPs. Mix Google, Outlook, and SMTP recipients or your domain gets flagged.

15. Always validate with any tool right before launch, regardless of what data providers claim.

16. Separate catch-all campaigns from regular campaigns because catch-alls have higher bounce rates.

Copywriting

17. Spintax everything, but review all variants yourself. AI creates variants that sound unnatural.

18. Keep it simple. No images, PDFs, or links in the first email.

19. Two tests for copy: Can a 10-year-old understand what you're selling? Would you actually say this to someone in person?

20. Make copy conversational, not complicated with technical terms and corporate language.

21. Strong offers > personalization. Focus on making the offer better instead of building complex personalization workflows.

Continued in the comments.

Name drop campaigns make 100% automated emails look like warm referrals. But most people execute them wrong and kill credibility. Here's how to do it right:

The concept: You reference a colleague at the prospect's company in your cold email. This makes it look like you sat there, did your research, and wrote the email normally. When done right, these convert 2-3x better than standard cold outreach because you've lowered their automated email guard.

The mechanics:

- Pull colleague names by identifying their senior leadership (Find People → Department → Seniority) within the company.

- Reference the colleague in your first line ("not sure if you're the right person or if I should be speaking with [[ColleagueName]]")

- Optional: Add a PS that ties back to the colleague reference

- End with a soft CTA

The entire email should almost read like someone at their company gave you a warm intro.

Common execution mistakes:

- Generic opening lines that don't reference the colleague
- Formatting that exposes it as automated (inconsistent spacing, broken variables, obvious merge fields)
- Not cleaning your data before sending (colleague left the company, wrong person entirely)

The prospect should almost think a coworker mentioned them. When they open the email and see their colleague's name, their guard drops. That's when your message actually gets read instead of deleted.

We’re seeing incredible results with this right now…let me know if you want to hear more on it.

undefined undefined

Hey, thanks for replying. 

Here's the guide:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ogdq83o7sRMARFopD_t_-nqHF0XIOPsD/view?usp=share_link

Leadbird

P.S. If you’re an established agency or SaaS with a GREAT offer and want leads — Leadbird can help

… and we’ll do it on a Pay-Per-Lead basis.

Book today: https://www.leadbird.io/book-a-call

Spintax Guide

Tool

Article

Message

yuri

For the first time ever, YC included agencies in their request for startups. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.

Historically, Agencies were rarely considered in venture conversations because of the required human capital. Revenue scaled only with headcount. This made software-like margins impossible to replicate.

YC’s argument is that this is no longer the case, thanks to AI. In a roundabout way, they're saying you can get the same output with less humans, and that all of the salaries you aren't going to pay go right back to your bottom line. 

That's the semi-obvious stuff. The less obvious angle here is that YC realized how fundamentally great the business model is compared to what they typically invest in. 

The venture game is one of moonshots. You pour a bunch of money into an asset that will burn cash for 5-10 years and hope it either turns cash flow positive at scale, gets acquired, or IPO’s.

By no fault of YC, this leads to a lot of failed companies and a lot of burned investor money. 

To me, YC asking for agencies is almost a safer hedge to a lot of the moonshot venture plays they try. Sure, rarely do agencies get acquired for what SaaS companies do or even IPO…but they're much more predictable and easier to spin up and operate than a lot of other companies. 

I say this is someone who's automated and systemized a lot of our fulfillment. We're able to run an extremely lean team for a relatively large client base because of these systems. And I do think this will become the norm moving forward.

Cold email sending schedules should not be the hot topic that they are. Really, the rules for sending are simple (backed by 25M+ cold emails):

1. Send Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. We use Smartlead’s API to randomize start and end time daily (+/- 30 mins of start and end time to increase variability).

2. Saturdays can, in fact, be a good day to hit SMBs or mid-market companies. 

3. Same goes for holidays.

It’s that simple. Stop reading in to data about which days and times perform better. You’ll drive yourself crazy.

There’s a massive business opportunity for someone that wants to use this cold email right now. Let’s walk through why:

I don't need to educate you on the AI opportunity right now for businesses that aren't using it at all. Businesses, especially local ones that operate way outside of our bubble, have arguably more upside than anyone in terms of properly using AI to boost efficiency.

There are huge consulting shops being spun up right now that solely implement this for customers.

And I think there's a huge play to do so locally with this cold email alone. Why?

1. The subject line is relevant enough to a business owner in a given suburb / area.

2. We layer on the local social proof in the first line with an outcome promise as well. 

3. We really play up the local angle by effectively saying “we are going to be in the area upcoming, so let us know if you are interested”. 

4. We of course end with a soft CTA. 

Cold email doesn't need to be that difficult. You just need to have a strong and unique offer presented well. This is a great example of that.

People are taking spintax too far and it's ruining their cold emails. They're trying to spin individual words to increase variance, but this often leads to certain sentences just not making sense or sounding weird when read out loud.

This is not the way. You clearly show your prospect that a human did not write the email.

The right way to run spintax:

1. Identify the right variables to do it with in the first place.

Certain ones are over the top and risk-prone for messing up the email. Especially with certain Clay workflows, people are going overboard.

Easy, less risk-prone ones:

- Case studies (switch out company name and result)
- CTA sentence (spin 4-5 different ways of saying "Can I send you more info?")

2. Instead of spinning specific words, do it with specific phrases all together that still mean the same thing.

This reduces the chance of the email sending platform creating a sentence that just looks weird or doesn't make sense.

This is “boring” stuff but it's important.

My agency has worked with 500+ clients. In the last 5 years, I've learned a TON about how to deal with unhappy customers. My top 3 learnings about doing it:

1. Product <> Fulfillment <> Sales must all be aligned.

All messaging has to be completely aligned at all times and updated frequently across the board if needed.

Customers can and will get confused by what you are saying, pitching, or delivering.

Example:

Our product team built a new way to launch campaigns, and our fulfillment team started leveraging it. But, our sales team is still pitching the prior way (the outcome was the same, but the workflow is different).

This ultimately led to confused customers and was an issue we had to mitigate.

Don't let that happen!

2. Your contract is, literally, the law.

This goes for any B2B company. Everything you put in there on how your service gets delivered is very important. So is the reverse (everything you don't do.)

This will help prevent scope creep and give you clear boundaries on what you do and do not do for clients.

3. Calling mechanisms are crucial.

Similarly, this goes for both lead generation agencies and other B2B companies. Do not let anyone on your team get comfortable with doing the back-and-forth email battle.

The much more efficient, personable, and higher-leverage play is simply calling the client and figuring out the problem.

Broadly, most people are reasonable and somewhat logical, so explaining your stance (as long as it's justified) should work just fine.

Ensure you have a cell phone data/calling mechanism for all clients.

I know this wasn't anything flashy, but I promise you this is what is important at scale.

Almost every day, I get a cold email referencing my engagement on a social post I didn't think twice about. Cold emailers are using this signal the wrong way, and it's ruining their reply rate. Here's how to fix it:

People engaging with content in your space are actively researching the problem you solve right now. These lists convert at 3-4x higher rates than standard cold outreach because of recency and intent.

The wrong way:

"Saw you engaging with [Creator's] content about cold email..."

This feels like surveillance, not relevance. 

The right way:

"Noticed you've been engaging with content about outbound lately..."

Reference the intent and topic, not the creator. The intent matters, but usually the specific creator doesn't.

How to run this properly:

1. Identify 5-10 creators with your ICP audience (look for competitive overlap and high engagement).

2. Build a DNC list before scraping (generate competitor domains and exclude them so you don't email creators directly)

3. Scrape engagement weekly with Apify (pull last 7 days of engagers to keep lists fresh)

4. Deduplicate against a master database (dedupe by LinkedIn URL first, then at ingestion and pre-campaign)

5. Enrich and route channels (email first, if open profile → send InMail, then connection requests)

6. Use intent-based copy, not creator name drops

Common mistakes that kill these campaigns:

- Scraping once instead of weekly (make the campaign evergreen)
- Not excluding competitor domains (you email the creator and other competitors)
- Name dropping creators in copy (feels invasive)
- Not deduplicating (hitting same people repeatedly)

Quantity of prospects usually isn’t high (especially after filtering down), but the quality is solid if hit right. Strongly recommend!

The problem with cold email is that once people figure out what’s working, they overuse it and run it in to the ground…until it no longer works. Let’s fix that.

The perfect example of this is the time-tested campaign copy:

“If we could help generate 1[result] with our [unique mechanism], would you be interested in speaking?”

It worked for a while because it wasn’t intrusive, was relatively low-risk, and promised an outcome (those principles remain, by the way). But, it got overplayed.

The fix to this is not simply different copy, but offering something different altogether.

By this, I mean:

1. Identifying a small set of deliverables everyone in your ICP ideally needs, or could benefit from.

2. Anchoring your cold email around offering that for free.

3. Doing a great job at it, and then opening up the conversation to more services.

There’s a great example of this in the graphic below. Yes, you’ll do some free work. But you have the right to qualify leads up front and only do it if it makes sense.

Like it or not, this will help a lot of outbound teams “win” cold email coming up.

Last week, I posted about being cold called by a rep after I visited their site. I said I loved it, and people were…not happy, to say the least.

I saw tons of comments saying that this was “creepy” and bordering on an “invasion of privacy”.

I’m not here to debate the efficacy of the play. If your company books demos from it, do it. If you don’t, then don’t.

But this privacy point is hilarious to me.

People wrote comments about a company using their online behavior to give them targeted messages at a specific time.

…and then opened Instagram and saw 3 retargeting ads from sites they visited in the last week, and didn’t bat an eye.

My point is that companies do this all day long. We wouldn’t have some of the social media products we do if advertisers couldn’t pay for this ability.

It’s not novel. It’s just being adopted in B2B.

Adding prospects to a Google Doc or sending random calendar invites to stand out in the inbox isn’t new.

Docs, Loom, Canva - people have used these for years because their domain reputation helps deliverability. And yes, you’ll likely land in primary.

But at scale, it’s not the unlock people think it is for two reasons:

1. Enterprises run heavy phishing training. If they don’t recognize the sender, they’re told not to click. That kills the play fast.

2. It carries the same negative sentiment as cold email. Some people will think it’s clever. Others will hate it.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

I used Notion Agents to build a lead gen competitor intelligence agent in maybe 60 minutes. How it works:

1. Discolike grabs the largest B2B lead gen agencies (our competitors).

2. An agent runs via Firecrawl MCP that finds updates on them (new case study, site update, etc.)

3. Sends me a monthly update of all new competitor activity.

No, this isn’t going to change my life and suddenly add $100K of revenue to my agency. But, it’s a dead-simple way to keep me in the loop on our competitors without doing a bunch of research or paying a VA to do it.

Not to mention, there are obvious applications to use this data in a lead gen setting. Ex: Monitor prospects’ competitors’ activity > reference their activity in an email to a prospect.

I don’t think Notion Agents is getting enough love right now, so I thought I’d share.

"We don't chase customers if they don't get back to us after the first reply, mark them as closed lost." That’s a real quote I heard from someone trying to get leads from outbound.

Short take: Some people just don't want it.

Long take: Outbound marketers everywhere are complaining that reply rates are down, deliverability is getting harder, and meetings are scarce, to say the least.

Prospects are fatigued from being hit with the same cold email template variants and are only replying to the emails that are strong, relevant, and have good offers.

So to effectively “waste” a good lead because you had to follow-up with them more than once is simply irresponsible.

In fact, I think the winning outbound teams of the next few years will:

1. Get back to positive replies borderline instantly.
2. Be extremely regimented about maintaining their CRM.
3. Prioritize strong, tasteful, relevant follow-ups until Closed Won or Closed Lost.

People who are disciplined about chasing positive replies will run circles around those that don’t follow up more than once because they “don’t chase leads”.

I can’t believe this is even a take.

The easiest and fastest way to write more relevant, personalized email copy with 0 extra work is to let your list write the copy for you. Let me explain:

I recorded a podcast episode with 🦾Eric Nowoslawski a while back, where he explained this perfectly. He explains that marketers often go too broad with their targeting, making relevance much harder to achieve.

He goes on to share that you can simply tighten up your list with certain filters that make it easier to write copy that’s relevant to everyone on that list.

Perfect example: Let’s say you’re a bookkeeping service.

You can reach out to CEOs of companies in the USA with <20 people, and say something like:

“We help small businesses in the USA close their books within 5 days at the end of each month.”

…OR you can reach out to:

- CEOs of companies in the USA with <20 people
- Who founded their company less than 2 years ago
- Are a first-time founder
- Don’t have a finance and accounting person on their team

And say something like:

“I saw that you guys were recently founded, and congrats, it's your first time running a business like this. 

How are you thinking about your finance operation? Asking because we help…”

Do you see how simply filtering down the list makes it easier to write more relevant copy with no extra work? You of course give up some volume in doing so, but the tradeoff is often there.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single company should make a practice of doing this. It's a low-effort, high-reward way to get meetings on the board from outbound.

I'm talking about simply reactivating old leads that never closed or fizzled out from a time in the past. These are people that showed a level of interest in what you were offering, and they were more familiar with you than a true cold lead. 

Not to mention, especially if you're kicking off an outbound motion, these emails are more prone to replies. This will build trust signals early with Google and Microsoft, and overall improve deliverability. 

This is important enough that at onboarding, we ask clients for lists of older leads they want to reactivate. By reaching out to them, we're usually able to get 1-3 wins on the board in the first 7 days of a campaign going live. 

The messaging is fairly simple as well:

"Hey {{name}}, we spoke in the past about {{what you do}}.

Wanted to touch base again because we {{did something new / have new method, etc.}}.

Would it make sense for us to chat later this week?"

If you need any help with this, comment and I can answer as best as possible. I strongly recommend you get it up and running if you haven't already.

I’m convinced every B2B service provider should reach out to churned clients at the 30-day post-churn mark to win them back. As unconventional as it sounds, it’s been working well for us. My thesis:

Clients churn because they think the grass is greener on the other side (another vendor that’s cheaper, running the process in-house, etc.). In our experience (including vendors we’ve churned from) this often isn’t the case. 

Especially with regards to lead generation agencies: if an agency can get you some* leads (even if it’s less than you anticipated), that little bit is better than zero leadflow.

All that to say:

We’ve learned that clients aren’t always happier post-churn. Because they’re familiar with you and your process, you’re ripe to reach out again (unless you ended on bad terms, of course).

There are simple, non-intrusive ways to do so for every B2B service business. For a lead generation agency like us, for example, the messaging might say:

“Hey - noticed you never asked for your domains back. We could spin up infra today and relaunch a campaign if you’re still open to it.”

I’m not saying this has a 100% success rate. I am saying it’s worth doing.

Certified Clay Expert & Agency owner | I'll help you build a scalable outbound engine that gets meetings booked on autopilot in the next 180 days | Visit Youtube: @growth-today to see how

Growth shouldn’t feel random.

Most of the B2B companies hit the same walls:
Inbound leads that don’t convert

Outbound that burns reps out without results

Partnerships that look good on paper but never drive pipeline

A CRM full of noise instead of reliable data


I’ve seen it across founders, sales leaders, and marketing teams. The problem isn’t effort, it’s the lack of a repeatable, scalable GTM system.
That’s what we build at Growth Today.

Instead of disconnected tools or random campaigns, we design and implement repeatable GTM engines across sales, marketing, and partnerships that…

✅ Enrich and qualify data
✅ Activate inbound leads into real opportunities
✅ Automate outbound prospecting
✅ Keep CRMs clean and reliable
✅ Orchestrate multi-channel campaigns
✅ Make BDR teams more effective or fully replace them
✅ Align marketing + partnerships with sales for compounding growth

Recent wins:

 → Built a clean, automated CRM that doubled conversion rates
 → Launched a content-driven demand gen engine that 3x’d inbound lead quality
 → Systematized partner outreach → pipeline from alliances grew 40% in 6 months

Growth doesn’t come from more outreach or more tools.
It comes from building the right system once and scaling it.
If you’re a B2B founder or revenue leader serious about building predictable pipeline, let’s connect.

Book your call: https://calendly.com/growth-today/intro-meeting

Brigitta Ruha

Efficiency is part of building any company. I get it.

But the problem starts when GTM spend goes down… and revenue expectations go up.

Being disciplined about CAC makes sense. But reducing spend removes the crucial part of building, scaling GTM - all the reach, experimentation, and ultimately - staying visible on the market ✌️

all of which eventually influence the CAC, the efficiency….

Predictable pipeline usually sits on top of a lot of unglamorous work:

- Ongoing testing
- Consistent market presence
- Regular feedback from the team, customers, and prospects

When those inputs shrink because we cut down on costs on revneue team, the impact doesn’t always show up immediately. It shows up a quarter later (fewer deals, thinner pipelines, longer sales cycles, etc)

Revenue rarely grows when the effort behind it shrinks. Reducing costs can absolutely work

but only if the system itself is improved, not just scaled back

P.S. How do you balance cost discipline with maintaining momentum?

Co-Founder@Growth Today | We Build Repeatable GTM Engines Across Sales, Marketing & Partnerships 🚀

best decision in 2025: stopped trying to sound like everyone else.

"Cold emails are all the same."... I lost count of the times I heard someone say this.

not because outbound is broken. 😄

but because everyone is writing from the same invisible rulebook:

- sound professional
- follow the template
- don't say too much
- don't say too little either

I did that too.

signal-based hooks. the 3W frameworks. "best practice" sequences.

results:

- decent reply rates
- sometimes w low energy conversations
- leads that never really felt aligned to how we work/what we're selling

the shift happened when I stopped optimizing for perfect and started writing in my actual voice:

👉 my story, how I'm different + radical transparency

suddenly, copywriting felt SOO much easier.

I got way more responses (I actually had to pause the sequence during our GT offsite in ✨ Bali ✨ because the team couldn't keep up with replies)

because I played a little bit differently. in my own way. ✨

turns out, a lot of “outbound hate” is just fear.

(because telling other people how to do it is always easier than doing it 😉)

Fear of standing out.
Fear of sounding different.
Fear of being rejected as yourself.

Cold email copy doesn’t need more tricks.

It needs more honesty. and YOU.

What helped me:

1️⃣ I write to my favorite prospect: I picture one person who could be my ideal client, writing email copy in the same words and tone of voice as I'd talk to them.

2️⃣ I say what I actually believe about what we can and can't do: we're not good for everybody. We also cannot help everybody, & I try to be super transparent about what is realistic or not.

if it resonates and expectations are set right, engaging people who share the same mindset is totally worth it.

(plus I don't need to deal with unrealistic "10X my sales overnight" situations, which anyone who ever achieved anything in sales or marketing would know is BS)

3️⃣ I use AI to amplify my thinking: what to say, how to reach out, when to follow up (although, thanks to HubSpot, lemlist, and our fancy Make automations, I couldn't realistically forget anyway…)

so I'll never be "cold email guru number 3847".

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ my team at Growth Today also tries to be as authentic with our customers' copies as we can be.

We're big fans of using ChatGPT to translate product bullshit into something tangible, short and sweet, while keeping the best practices from the space that we believe in. ✨

but sometimes, you just gotta play the game a bit differently…

would love to hear how you describe your cold email copy/different methods you use right now. ;)

Co-Founder @Growth Today | We Build Repeatable GTM Engines Across Sales, Marketing & Partnerships 🚀

We've ALL made every GTM mistake in the book

I’m sure you noticed it is never about the tech itself 

it's getting people actually to use them 

And we learned this the hard way… 

→ change management matters more than the system itself 
→ not everything needs to be automated 
→ bad data is way more expensive than you think 
→ outbound without relevance is just noise 
→ partnerships need as much system as the sales team (this team is often swept under the rug)

.. a few tips that can go a long way 👐

DM me if your team needs some expert guidance, hands-on execution

5 THINGS WE WISH WE KNEW

Woah, this is happening right now.

Clay is officially here in London 🎡 !

I remember 2023 when I first spoke to Varun Anand.

I felt !! FINALLY !! a tool built for growth.

for Growth teams.

for high-growth companies

Who are all SOO keen to use the data, but what if more business ppl could use it instead of just relying on techy guys from sales engineering backgrounds?

Suuuupperr excited to be here at Clay’s EU/London office and Europe.

& grab some ☕ with Jani Vrancsik Tyler Swanson, Ziqi Deng, Juan Ravagli, and Michael Vitak

We’ve been experimenting with AI in our GTM systems recently 👀

There are 3 different scenarios when you want to build autonomous systems:

chat w ChatGPT or Claude (e.g.: threads)
autonomous workflow (i.e Hubspot or agentic workflow)
ai agent that executes something very specific end-to-end

Let’s say you want to schedule a quarterly check-in with a client.

The first version looks something like this:

1. Assistive setup

So you open the CRM. Check your calendar. Ask ChatGPT to draft the email. Edit a line or two. Send it. AI helped you write it.

2. Automation-based

Now the system does most of it. After 90 days, the workflow runs. It checks the calendar. Writes the draft. Sends the email. Simple. Less work for the team. But it still follows a script. If something unusual happens, it doesn’t adapt. Your ops team needs to debug and fix it.

3. Autonomous Agents

Instead of telling the system, “Send the email.” You just provide the overall goal: “Alert if a customer stopped leveraging the product.”

It watches how the client is using the product using the data from your Snowflake/AWS database. Notices when something looks off. Sends a follow-up to prevent churn. Flags the account for potential churn if the Account is customer Success managed. Provides a summary for the CSM to prepare the conversation. Now the system isn’t just completing a task. It’s working toward an outcome.

& that’s a very different thing!

im gonna share our agentic agents as well, we build internally across sales and marketing ✌️
Where are you experimenting right now? 👇

Your lead sourcing workflow is probably more complicated than it needs to be….

You've got two bad options:

Apollo and Zoominfo are easy to use, but the data is old. People change jobs. The emails bounce.

LinkedIn has current data, but you can't export it without using scrapers that might get your account banned.

So your team is probably doing this:

1: scrape a database/import something 
2: export
3: upload to an enrichment tool 
4: verify, export again, push to CRM.

Four tools.

Three exports.

Hours gone.

There's a better way.

BetterContact’s waterfall lead finders that solve for coverage AND quality at the same time.

Here's how we use it in a 🥜

1️⃣ we originate lists inside the platform

2️⃣ then we push the clean data to Clay or HubSpot/Salesforce to activate & use the data

& just like their email/mobile phone enrichment waterfall, BetterContact also sources the data from multiple sources:

- B2B Databases (whitelabelled for now, incl. most popular ones)
- Web Crawling using AI Graph Expansions

To solve for quality/accuracy, their AI Agents to crawl the web in order to verify that the person actually works at that company/has that job title/lives in that country.

& if you're wondering:

- no, you don’t pay for unused credits → you only get charged when it finds a verified contact

- whether this replaces your entire stack → it doesn't replace everything, but it does change where list building starts. We've moved our own sourcing upstream into the waterfall, then push clean data downstream to Clay or HubSpot for activation

- you can find 5-10% more valid prospects to reach out to on average.

We've been using them because it just makes more sense than the old scrape-verify-export-repeat cycle.

if you think somebody would benefit this, repost it 🔄

if your Ops team is looking for other tools that can complement/replace, share this post w them

I was thinking about this over coffee this morning ☕

Most GTM teams don’t struggle with ideas anymore.

The playbooks exist.

Targeting logic is solid.

Sequencing frameworks are mapped out nicely.

The weak point is the execution and/or strategy layer.

Most stacks today are deeply connected: CRM, enrichment, ads, content systems, sales tools.

Everything talks to everything. But connected doesn’t mean autonomous.

Someone still has to write an email
Someone still has to decide when a workflow should run.
Someone still has to follow up and follow through.

That’s where things get fragile.

I’ve been testing FlashLabs SuperAgent recently because I wanted to see what happens when that decision layer is automated.

What works here isn’t that it writes emails. (Plenty of tools do that.)

It monitors public and social signals, understands curiosity vs. buying intent, and then triggers predefined GTM playbooks 👀

Which means:

– detecting early evaluation signals
– launching the right outreach sequence
– generating landing pages or ad variants
– updating CRM fields
– preparing follow-ups using meeting intelligence

End-to-end. Without someone babysitting the workflow. (or the team)

& it won’t be 100% pixel perfect

But it does get the job 80% of the time

which is AWESOME

Because if you do 80% best version out of yourself/system

You can buy back SOO much time

With consistency, which will give you a * huge * compounding result over time

This is like the early versions of an autonomous GTM layer.

Still experimenting with it. ✌️

But if you’re a GTM leader thinking about how execution scales

…not just how strategy looks on slides, FlashLabs SuperAgent is worth checking

Link pinned in the comment 👇

random question ☕️

When was the last time you actually trusted EVERY (or any?) field in your CRM? 😅

Not in theory.

But like… truly trusted it.

When you go to the CRM, you start to notice these small things piling upppp 👀

- Titles slightly outdated.
- Mobile numbers missing.
- Company names that don't even exist anymore (rebranded, acquired)

& that’s enough friction to slow things down. 

So instead of planning another BIG CRM sprint, we connected prospeo.io to auto-enrich all companies and contacts directly inside the CRM.

Now, when a new contact comes in:

- Default fields get filled out
- Email address is verified through multiple providers
- Details are refreshed when the person gets promoted, moves to a new employer

(Automatically.)

we still review things occasionally

we still care about governance (LeanData is great for auto-de-duping companies/contact btw!)

but we’re not exporting CSVs back and forth anymore. 🙃

It’s just… CLEANER + EASIER + MORE MANAGEABLE by default.

& saves a lot of time w/o second-guessing the data all the time.

CC’ing Matthew Putnam you can reach out to him in DM directly if you need more 👀

I ran my first outbound campaign 6 years ago. Drove 75 demos/mo for 2 E-Commerce SaaS as their growth leader, and then my cold email agency from 0 to $2M+ ARR. Here are 7 things I wish I knew before starting:

(1) Truly nail down your lead list

Sending your outreach messages to the right person matters more than anything else:

→ Precisely figure out what problem you're solving.
→ Find companies struggling with this problem.
→ Identify relevant individuals in these orgs.

(2) Give as much value as you can

You’re stepping into someone’s inbox uninvited.
& the fastest way to earn attention is to be USEFUL.

Give give give > ask

A simple approach:

→ Identify their problem
→ Share one practical solution for free
→ Do this as many times as you can on all channels where you are.

(Think through: why are you reading this LinkedIn post, right? EXACTLY!)

(3) Pick only one prospect and write for him/her

Many people try to write for 500k+ people.
Start with one instead.

Pick one prospect you’d genuinely want to work with.
& write as if they’re the only person receiving that email.

Then do the opposite:

→ Find 20 similar personas
→ Find similarities in their challenges, org size/org challenges
→ Then automate all these at a bigger scale

(4) Take care of the deliverability

Good deliverability doesn't guarantee your campaigns will succeed. But...

Bad deliverability guarantees your campaigns will fail.

Make sure to...

→ Send a few emails per mailbox (< 20 per day)
→ Set up MX, DMARK, SPF, DKIM records.
→ Disable open tracking.
→ Warm up mailboxes (bare minimum 14 days)
→ Weekly run inbox placement tests
→ Daily run domain blacklists checks

(5) Take the extra mile!! 

Any GTM channel is somewhat hard to crack. The same goes for cold email.

Make sure to go above and beyond when reaching out to your prospects:

→ Look at triggers, signals, current events, org. charts.

→ Reference insights from the job descriptions.

→ Don't stop at 1-2 email variations. At Growth Today, we frontload 8 variations

(6) Complement cold email with other GTM channels

Cold email is my favorite channel because it's cheaper to get started, and you can find what works a lot faster than with any other channel.

But it works even better with other channels.

→ Run ads to the same people you're cold emailing. warm them up! ♨️

→ Make great, authentic, and genuinely useful content and use email and LinkedIn to distribute it

→ Use cold emails to distribute valuable lead magnets.

(7) Don’t just use technology, leverage it to SYSTEMIZE

→ Have a look at growthtoday.co/sales-tools (or my fav one: our blog posts that include copy-pastable email templates)

→ Do a few tests manually to see what is the most interesting angle on the market to pitch your prospects.

→ Before hiring more people, ask: “Could I achieve the same with technology?”

→ Before doing more, ask: “Could I build a repeatable, scalable SOP or system instead of me doing this again and again?”

7 TIPS TO GENERATE MEETINGS WITH COLD EMAIL

“I think we’re losing more deals to bad data than bad messaging.”

If that is true,

I can feel you!

The usual process of getting good and accurate data somewhat requires this:

- One tool to find them.
- Another to verify.
- Another tool to find more because the previous ones didn’t find enough
- Export. Upload. Repeat.

It works, but unnecessary very tedious.

& never really knew which source actually found the valid email.

This is what I like most about BetterContact:

Instead of: “Let’s try provider A first…”

1- its email waterfall runs automatically
2-  through 20+ providers 
3- at scale, through the API (through Clay, or your CRM, AWS/DB) so you don’t need to import/exports

If one doesn’t return a valid email → it moves to the next. If it fails verification → it keeps going. Until it finds something actually usable. & you’re only charged IF the email address is actually found and valid.

If you’d like to save time on using 5+ different tools with 3 CSVs whenever you need an email, def try out BetterContact. ✌️

It’ll save you SO MUCH time.

p.s. how are you running enrichment right now?

4 things I did because I trusted my gut (not the people around me)

1-Started building programmatic prospecting in 2020 (way before Clay was cool)

No one understood why I'd struggle with no-code tools and Python when you could "just hire BDRs

After doing it full-time at a company and through consulting, when Clay popped up on my feed, I felt like I could create something different to help more people succeed with outbound.

Way easier than before, BUT leveraging all the experience I gained over the years.

2- Posted frequently on LinkedIn when everyone said it takes forever to see results

By the end of year 1, I was consistently building a pipeline from inbound, which eventually led to building Growth Today (and still keeps us going when the market gets tough).

Now I have CSM, GTM engineers, a team who assist me with content, and with sales, and freelancers helping me build what we believe in every day.

3- Let custom RevOps projects go

The team closed a few deals with enterprise customers.

On paper, it's awesome: no churn, high expansion, upfront payment…

But in the end, it didn't fit our ICP or the service we wanted to build at the time.

Letting go of some customers is hard, but necessary in the long run, depending on what route you choose to build your company.

4- Hired people who didn't have the skills yet, but had the potential

I always get DMs, and sometimes I make exceptions.

There was one person I almost fired in her 2nd week. I told her upfront: if we're both not getting value, it's hard to bring positive outcomes, and none of us will enjoy this work relationship.

I was candid, she was too. She mentioned she should leave herself if she won't hit my expectations.

She did it.

A-players are important, but sometimes your gut tells you to take exceptions.

Eventually, some people float to the top, and some just can't get you to the destination.

What about you?

What are the things you did because you knew better?

what we changed to fix their outbound

One thing I love about outbound is how quickly the truth shows itself.

If the system is off, the results will drag. If the system is right, everything clicks.... even if nothing else changes.

Last week we worked with a services company whose outbound “felt flat.”

But once we dug in, the problem wasn’t just list or the copy
…it was that their system was fighting against them.

Here’s exactly what we changed:

1️⃣ We stopped selling the service at scale only a few people respond to

They have 3 services.

All great.
But one is a terrible conversation starter.

Cold prospects don’t wake up thinking:

“Wow I really hope someone offers me a 40-page report today.”

Their prospects literally respond ~2× better to the other 2 services, but outbound wasn’t aligned to that.

So we repositioned around their two strongest conversation starters

2️⃣ We fixed the invisible killer → deliverability

Their audience = mid-market + enterprise.

Enterprise = Microsoft.

Microsoft = “I will evaluate your entire family tree before letting your email through.” 😅

So yep… we’re have a different mix Google + Microsoft inboxes and all these inboxes are purchased to multiple resellers, so we can continously monitor which ones are performing the best and use the data from our inbox placement tests to make adjustments to keep hitting the inbox.

3️⃣ We replaced the “quick chat?” CTA with value

Their CTA used to be a meeting request. (in a soft way which is GOOD).

But (especially in the agency space), you’re likely selling something that is “easy” to execute, so the barrier to entry is low.

So we introduced CTAs that give something instead of ask for something:

- campaign ideas
- roundtable theme maps
- insight drops
- quick audits

Concrete example if you’re running an ad agency:

→ “I have analyzed your ads published in the last 90 days. Can I send over a quick audit to decrease the CPL?”

→ “Would you be open to exploring how we can help you decrease the CPL on your Meta ads?”

GIVE → GIVE → GIVE → before you ASK.

4️⃣ We added intent + timing signals instead of guessing

Before: outbound went out in usual prospecting campaigns
Now: outreach triggers when something meaningful happens.

Signals we added:

→ new senior hires
→ hiring for marketing roles
→ aggressive ad spends
→ thought leadership indicators
→ content activity

5️⃣ We refreshed the messaging (just enough)

Not a rewrite — a refresh.

We updated angles based on:

the market’s current priorities
2026 plans
current challenges in their space
This avoids message fatigue

The fun part?

We didn’t change:

❌ the ICP
❌ the TAM
❌ the channel
❌ the core offer
❌ the send volume

Takeaway:

When outbound stops performing, people jump to copy first.

But the real leverage is almost always in:

→ targeting
→ timing
→ positioning
→ offer
→ infrastructure

Once the system is right, the copy suddenly becomes “amazing.”
Even if it’s the same copy you thought was the problem. 😅

Whenever sales slow down, the first instinct is usually:

Automation won’t fix a broken GTM system:

- Wrong ICP.
- Weak market signals.
- No clear value.

Before we automate anything at Growth Today, we run one test. We call it the Manual 30.

(like Forbes U30 but Manual U30 ✌️)

Open a simple sheet. Add 30 accounts you genuinely want to work with. Not random prospects. Not scraped lists. Companies you’d be proud to call clients.

Then go deep.

Layer 1: Buyer signals. Promotions. New mandates. Ad infos, 10-K report, and their initiatives. What they’re consistently talking about. What’s top of mind for them?

Layer 2: Company signals. Hiring insights. Expanding into new markets. Fresh funding. Sales leadership changes.

Layer 3: Thought leadership context Search their name + “podcast.” Search their name + “interview.”

Long-form conversations reveal operational tension people never post about.

Layer 4: Their GTM stack. CRM. Routing. Scheduling flow. Form logic.

Just by looking at their tech stack, you’ll know so much about how they operate and what GTM context their potential challenges are.

Layer 5: Process gaps. Job descriptions. Reviews. Case studies. Tells you what they’re focused on and what they’d like to actively solve

Layer 6: Job posts. Look at the language they use:

If this doesn’t generate real conversations, doing this at scale (by leveraging automation) will just help you fail faster.

& ONE MORE thing most teams underestimate: Speed-to-lead.

The longer they need to wait for your response, the lower your chances of turning that lead into a real conversation — and a booked meeting.

Strike while the iron is hot 🔥

Every GTM system we’ve successfully scaled started with manual validation first.

Not because it’s cute.

Because it works.

How do you validate targeting before turning automation on?

AUTOMATION WON'T FIX A BROKEN GTM SYSTEM 

If your database charges you PER CONTACT 👀 Your ABM motion turns into credit math 🧞 like this:

Want the CEO? pay. 💸

Need RevOps + Marketing too? pay again 💸💸

Want the buying committee? Now you’re doing FINANCE 🪄, not outbound.

You want to use these tools to maximize the coverage on your target accounts & the whole buying committee

So why pay for each individual When you get ALL of THEM?

With saasyDB: 1 credit = you get the whole buying committee 👀👀👀

The whole org, so you can actually multi-thread all relevant exec, functional leaders, operators …whoever influences the deal.

Stuart from saasyDB realized we shouldn’t be multi-threading to require a CFO’s approval to have access to the prospects at the target accounts we want to talk to ✌️

if you’re targeting SaaS = use SassyDB alone or on top of your existing tech stack

p.s. Does your enrichment provider force you to optimize for CONTACTS… or ACCOUNTS? or you can get both? 👀

I just * literally * watched AI build my workout plan in real-time!!

Prompt 1: "I want isolated exercises to form all parts of my glutes." AI responds with: → Exercise selection (cable kickbacks, bridges, abductions) → Sets, reps, rest periods → Why each movement targets specific glute regions

Prompt 2: "Generate this in the app."
(so that I don’t need to add each exercise to my workout plan. sorry im lazy! 😄)

Done.
Workout is live and ready to use.
This is the best AI implementation I've seen in a fitness app.

I’m just SO fascinated by how easy to use AI in every part of our lives
& honestly I can’t wait to see

-AI cold callers to do the phone calls
-AI to prospects target accounts

I’m already using AI to amplify my prospecting processes, content creation, and ideation

& I can’t wait to see what else it can do
The future is SOO exciting!

Some tools with AI (agents) you can test:

FlashLabs’s super agent for list building, prospecting, and follow-ups
Roman Hipp’s crawler AI agent to give you valid data
Carmen from Scripe to write content on LinkedIn
& to make the most out of these tools

Roxana Irimia Lemlist course on how to build a personal brand
Lara Acosta’s course on how to think about content creation on social
Nathan Lippi 🥾 Lippi or 🌪️ Marcos Stu’s Clay bootcamps and courses on GTM engineering/sales prospecting

Clay’s own university
P.S. NOEX Training if you're curious ✌️

A company came to us with a problem: they couldn't fill their sponsorship slots.

They run newsletters for crypto, gaming, and startup audiences.
But their sponsor pipeline was empty.

The issue? Their ideal sponsors (crypto companies, indie game studios, funded startups) didn't exist in Apollo, ZoomInfo, or any database they could buy.

So they asked us: Can you help us find and market us to them?

Here's what we did:

1️⃣ Email Infrastructure:

We bought domains, configured inboxes, and inbox placement tests to adjust sending based on inbox/spam ratio to maintain their health to prospect programmatically at scale.
If emails don't land, nothing else matters.

2️⃣ Custom data for list building

For crypto companies, we identified crypto monitoring directory sites. Built a custom Python script to scrape all of them. Enriched the companies. Found the right contacts.

For game developers, we scraped the Google Play Store's trending games. Used Claygent to reverse-engineer which studios built them. Then pulled decision-makers from those studios.

For startups, we sourced from different directories and databases and ran look-alike modeling to expand the list.

3️⃣ Messaging

Looked at scalable & cost-effective public data points that would either add value, or prove we did our research instead of just saying "hey, nice game."

4️⃣ Execution, Testing, Maintenance

Launched 6 campaigns.

Ran our frameworks to figure out what worked for each vertical in 90 90-day timeframe. Monitored, adjusted, scaled winners, killed losers.

The results over 90 days:

→ 104 interested responses
→ 2.4-5% reply rates depending on vertical/offer
→ 30% of positive response rate
→ $270K+ in qualified pipeline ($3k ACV on average)

The best part? They now have a repeatable system to fill their sponsorship inventory without waiting for inbound.

With proprietary data that their competitors can't access. 👑

If your ICP doesn't exist in standard databases, you're not stuck.
You just have to get creative about where to find them. 💡

We can write Python scripts to scrape niche sites. Or use tools to reverse-engineer company data. Or build enrichment workflows that run on autopilot.✌️

Proof in the pudding below 🍮

You know that moment when something feels weirdly specific?

Like:

“Wait… this is exactly what I was thinking about.”

Relax.

The universe isn’t sending signs 😅

Someone just did their targeting properly. 😉 💋

Good segmentation looks like magic from the outside.

But behind it, it’s usually just:

– a clearly defined ICP
– context that is * actually * relevant
– timing that makes sense
– and a message written for one type of person, not everyone

Most outreach feels pushy because it’s generic. 😞

When it’s precise, it doesn’t feel like marketing.

It feels obvious.

The same logic applies to outbound, ads, and LinkedIn.

Nothing mystical.

No secret hacks.

Just be relevant, helpful, short + sweet

… and a system that knows when to stop guessing 👀

i wanted to share this for the weekend. positive vibes only!

& im sure you can do it

because i can do it too!!

Let’s just send more emails.

The CRM that hasn’t been cleaned since 2022:

Ok, jokes aside.

How to GUARANTEE an unpredictable pipeline:

- Send more emails every time numbers dip
- Ignore deliverability because “we’ll fix it later.”
- Hire more SDRs to drive the car before fixing the engine
- Blame messaging before mapping out your service market
- treat your CRM like a storage unit

& how to help build a PREDICTABLE pipeline:

- Validate ICP before scaling volume
- Test messages manually before automating
- Fix routing before adding fuel
- Treat your CRM as a revenue architecture,
- Reference job descriptions, funding, and K-10 reports in your cold emails
- Treat tools as an access to systemize, not just tools

We can’t fix the pipeline if we don’t fix the fundamentals:

- Better reply rates with more conversations held
- Reduced response time
- Scaled outreach without hiring more reps
- turned “meh” campaigns into repeatable systems
- finally trusted their CRM data

& yes, every “let’s just send more emails” moment usually came right before someone opened the CRM and went… y tho.

So next time when sales slow, and the instinct is:

“Let’s just send more emails.”

Remember to take a look at the car engine first,

not just the car itself 🚗

Before you spin up another outbound campaign this quarter, please:

Do not start by writing new copy.

You’ll end up polishing something that was never the real issue. I promise you.

It’s completely normal to see outbound look like this:

• Emails going out every day
• Activity numbers looking healthy
• A few replies trickling in
• But pipeline still questionable

Some weeks look promising. Others not.

If you’re about to reset outbound (or you’ve been tweaking campaigns but nothing really moved the needle), here’s a simple 7-day reset we use:

Day 1 – Fix the list
Day 2 – Fix deliverability
Day 3 – Fix the offer
Day 4 – Fix the CTA
Day 5 – Fix personalization
Day 6 – Fix sequencing
Day 7 – Fix measurement

(my design team put together this image)

Track these automatically:

Inbox rate (did your email land in the inbox?)
Reply rate + positive reply rate (was your message relevant to them?
Meetings per 1,000 sends (was your follow up timely enough to book them?)

Yes, you want more meetings. But consistency usually comes from fine-tuning the fundamentals

& outbound has a LOT of those levers so first, take a look all these levers.

if i were you: I’d update the offer first!

How can I be SO irresistibly helpful to my prospect?

→provide that value in the email : ) & that can be anything from an audit to checklist to a designer bad

hit the 🔔 on my profile if you want more actionable, no fluff, BS tips like this

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