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

friEND
girlfriEND
boyfriEND

You know what doesn't END?

A well-run campaign with a great offer targeting 5,000 net new prospects per month.

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

As expected, outbound marketers are freaking out about Google's AI Inbox update, with some calling it the death of cold email. I’m here to tell you not to panic.

Here’s why this won’t kill cold email as long as you’re half-decent at it, and willing to put the work in:

(1) First of all, this isn’t currently being deployed on Workspace emails (only personal). That means you literally don’t need to worry for the time being.

(2) For when that roll out does happen, Google will not have it easy. Enterprises don't want AI to read or index their data.

This has been why enterprise AI adoption has been so slow, and Google isn't exempt.

(3) Even if SOMEHOW, this got deployed to every Workspace inbox, people will find workarounds and loopholes within 7 days (just like we did for every other infrastructure change).

The ONLY people who can potentially suffer here are people who are weak at cold email and want a low-effort, high-results motion.

And they shouldn't be sending cold emails anyway.

If I told you to pick all AI-written emails out of your inbox, I bet you could do so with 90% accuracy. It brings up an interesting point:

AI in outbound is great, but so many people are going way too overboard.

People will use Claygent + another prompt to come up with crazy, “human-looking” lines that sound great on paper but rarely get executed well against an entire lead list.

You might get some right on the nose, but the majority of them will certainly sound a little “off”, thereby killing your campaign altogether.

The variance, even with quality checks, is a little too high (as of Jan 2026…because this will certainly change).

The “right” way to handle this right now is using it to find super simple variables (i.e. company case study name) and entering those variables into human-written sentences.

If you have any other use cases that actually* work, drop them below.

There is no bigger waste of time in outbound than the debate over warm-up pools and which ones to use.

Take it from someone who bought into the hype before (I literally tried to build a company solely focused on this, promising the same stuff a ton of vendors do today): Just use Smartlead’s warm-up pool and move on.

In fact, private warm-up pools can be even riskier than public ones, considering that Seeds can burn out (ask me how I know 🙄).

At the time of writing this, we have ~130,000 inboxes in the Smartlead pool and will continue to add as we need them.

In short: There are a million other things you should spend time worrying about regarding outbound. Your warm-up pool isn’t one of them.

PS - This was a part of Smartlead’s roundtable from last week. It was an awesome time, and I highly recommend watching the replay on YouTube if you couldn’t make it. Thanks to Vaibhav Namburi for having us!

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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

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yuri

90% of the time someone asks me about cold email infrastructure, I tell them to take a step back and consider what actually matters.

Yes, at scale and at the highest level of outbound, the infrastructure you use has a material impact on performance.

But (and I don’t mean to come off as arrogant in saying this), most of the time people ask this, they have issues with the fundamentals of their outbound operation that render the infrastructure question irrelevant.

Things like:

1. Company names not being formatted properly (ex: still having “LLC” or “Inc.” in the name).

2. Having emojis / special symbols in contacts’ first names.

3. Not properly cleaning and formatting prospects’ job titles.

4. Having a lead list that isn’t well-targeted.

5. Not having basic copy variance set up.

These are things that come much before advanced infrastructure, yet people seem to overlook.

My advice: Get all of the above and the rest of the cold email fundamentals down first before even starting to worry about advanced infrastructure.

You’ll save time, money, and headaches.

Something to keep in mind when you see lead generation agency owners flexing crazy Smartlead / Instantly screenshots on the timeline:

Anyone with half a brain knows how to get a campaign to a 10% reply rate and 60% positive reply rate.

It doesn’t come from being some type of cold email wizard.

It’s simply putting an extremely low-friction CTA in with some type of money-back guarantee.

And to be clear, nothing is wrong with that. We still do it for certain clients, where it makes sense for the offer.

But, flexing this to try to show prospects that these are typical results is just silly.

Sure, there may be some people that aren't super familiar with outbound that are impressed by this.

But, there's also a cohort of people who are very familiar with it and know exactly what led to that performance, thereby degrading your credibility instead of adding to it.

You’re better off showing “worse” results for a much harder campaign!

You, not a $32B company: I might burn my TAM!

Ramp, a $32B company: We must email every decision-maker on earth 10 times per year.

As silly as it sounds, it’s true: If you play your cards right, it’s impossible to burn your TAM with outbound.

Playing your cards right, in this regard, means coming up with fresh and unique angles to re-market to the same prospects.

Ramp has mastered this.

They have different reps reach out at different times with overall solid emails.

Though it feels like they’re always in my inbox, I’ve never once felt pestered, spammed, or annoyed.

They’re doing this tastefully, with personalization and relevance.

And if Ramp isn’t worried about burning their TAM, there’s a great chance you shouldn’t be either.

My advice to you: Figure out ways to reach out to the same prospects that weren’t interested or didn’t respond prior in unique ways, and you’ll never worry about TAM burn again.

I would love to tell you that the solution to all your lead gen problems is the intricate Clay workflow I spent 43 hours building, but that’s not true. For 90% of teams struggling to generate leads, the problem is much simpler:

A bad offer.

Your offer, above all else, has the biggest impact on whether or not you book calls from cold email.

To that point, I can’t tell you the amount of conversations we’ve had with clients that amounted to us trying to convince them to improve their offer and make it more suitable for outbound.

Because so many of them simply don’t say anything special or that peaks the prospect’s interest.

Here’s a real example we dealt with:

The client sold CRM implementation services.

They wanted to run with messaging along the lines of: “We help HubSpot users market better and get the full use of their CRM.”

…so can every other company in their inbox.

The right way to think about this (and how we did so for this client) was to instead sell an outcome.

So, we transitioned the offer to strictly companies that used HubSpot, and saying:

“{name] - most HubSpot users don’t have a nurture re-engagement flow. I’d love to help re-book 10-15 appointments onto your calendar by building you one.

Interested in speaking?”

This email has a much higher likelihood of being responded to than the prior one, because you directly promise an outcome instead of using vague corporate messaging.

Let me know if you have any questions on doing this successfully.

Alex Hormozi says he books 4x more appointments when he calls his leads immediately after showing interest.

If you’re sending outbound and want to systemize this so that you can do it at scale, follow this process:

Tech / vendors you’ll need:

- Masterinbox.com
- LeadMagic
- Salesfinity
- No Accent Callers

—

1. Build correct tagging within Master Inbox to identify positive replies.

2. Set up an automation to automatically enrich positive replies to pull those leads’ phone numbers via LeadMagic.

3. Build the simple automation to update the contact within Master Inbox and set two tag: “interested” and “phone number found”.

4. Set up the automation to push to a call list in Salesfinity for your rep (via No Accent Callers) to call immediately.

I can’t put the same “4x improvement” tag on this, but we have seen a much better appointment set rate after implementing a flow to call our leads faster.

Comment if you want me to make a video on building these automations / setting up the system.

If someone tells you they can get you consistent leadflow from outbound in 30 days or less, don’t listen.

We send over 2 million cold emails per month for almost 300 clients… trust me, it takes 60-90 days to properly get consistent lead flow coming from outbound if you’re starting from zero.

BUT

There are some things you can do to speed up the process that we are implementing across the client base.

Namely, there are 7 types of campaigns you can keep always on and running in the background, additional to your actual campaign copy. 

Though these won't put a hundred calls per month on your calendar, they are certainly worth running and do not take much input or upkeep at all.

I break down each of them in detail in the carousel below, so be sure to save it:

Always-On Campaigns

Elon Musk bought X and implemented signal-based outreach to sell ads. And honestly, it’s not the worst play in the world:

- The email looks human
- It grabbed media from my post
- They did some filtering to see I talk about business
- They mention “testing” paid ads (lower-risk)
- They emphasize the “free hands-on support”

I’m sure there are ways they’re identifying business owners and automating a lot of the tedious work to set this up, but the end product still really isn’t bad.

This is your signal that no matter how big your company, using the right signals for outreach likely isn’t a bad idea.

Google your name right now. What comes up?

Does your website show up?

If so, does it have a VSL?

Is it full of case studies and customer interviews?

What about your LinkedIn and X profiles?

Are they optimized and active?

Are you showing off your expertise?

This might sound overboard, but this is exactly what goes through a prospect’s head when you email them.

The first thing 90% of them do is Google your name.

If you can’t show that you’re a real person with a real business that solves real problems for real clients, you’re dead in the water.

Really, cold outbound is nothing more than a trust game.

You need to make it so that someone who doesn’t know you one bit automatically trusts you. And you do so by optimizing everything I talked about above.

If you don’t have those things in check, much of your outbound is just a waste of time.

Alex Hormozi famously says that if you want more leads, you should dedicate the first half of your day to getting in front of more people.

Whether that’s content, paid ads, or however else, you need to be getting in front of people.

Outbound, generally, will be both the cheapest and easiest to generate results from immediately.

And let me tell you after doing this first-hand: Alex Hormozi is right about this.

In college, I started an Instagram growth agency.

I did everything I thought I needed to do:

- Make a logo
- Put up website
- Form LLC
- Post blogs

And when all of that was done, I looked up and still had zero people paying me.

That’s when I started dedicating my entire day to messaging prospects and seeing if they’d get on a call.

The business hit $10,000/mo of revenue in the months that followed.

The point:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of sales ops and revenue tech out there, but most of the time, all you need to do is get yourself in front of more prospects.

Shreya Batra

We manage deliverability for 130,000+ inboxes with Hypertide.io. At that volume, you can't afford to baby underperforming domains. Our 4-step process for handling deliverability issues:

Step 1: Flag problems early

We monitor inbox performance daily. If a domain is underperforming by 40%+ vs that client's average, it gets flagged automatically.

Step 2: Kill it without losing capacity

We delete the domain using Hypertide Layover. The domain gets removed from billing immediately, but sending still works for 18 days. This gives us breathing room without sudden volume drops.

Step 3: Replace while the old one's still running

During those 18 days, new infrastructure gets spun up and warmed properly. This works so that there’s loss in total sending capacity.

Step 4: Protect the replies

Once the old domain shuts off completely, Hypertide Relay kicks in. All replies from the deleted domain automatically forward to the new infrastructure. Importantly, there are no leads missed and no broken threads.

Quite importantly, we don't try to save domains that are already burnt.

A lot of agencies waste weeks trying to nurse underperforming infrastructure back to health. Using this system, we just assume domains will fail and build systems that swap them out seamlessly.

As a result, capacity never drops and your deliverability stays clean. Let me know if you have any questions on this.

Local lead generation is so underrated that we started asking all clients (not just ones with local businesses) if they’re open to it on the onboarding form, so that we can run this campaign.

No matter what anyone tells you, cold email is most definitely getting harder. Each day, we have to think harder about the best way to get in front of prospects in a way that stands out.

This local lead generation play is exactly it.

We:

1. Call out that we’re in the area.

2. Casually mention what we do and share how we did so.

3. Use a soft, casual CTA to gauge interest.

Yes, this is of course harder to scale in that there are finite local businesses you can sell to. But, in most cases and for most offers, this is worth trying.

If I were a local general contractor, for example, I know I’d be inclined to work with an SEO agency in my area as opposed to one on the other side of the country. There’s a local preference there that you can tap into.

If you have anecdotes on local lead generation working well for you, leave them below.

After spending $2M to send 30,000,000+ cold emails for 500+ clients, this is my number one learning about outbound:

Offer. Is. King.

You hear everyone say it, but nobody really internalizes it.

You can have:

- 3-4 blocky paragraphs
- 2-3 links
- Images
- OK-but-not-great targeting
- Basic infrastructure

…and still outperform the “best” outbound teams who spend thousands of dollars trying to optimize all of the above, as long as your offer is strong.

Strong offer = more replies.

More replies = less spam risk.

Less spam risk = more replies.

The cycle repeats.

Before you try to optimize for anything else, make sure your offer is strong to begin with.

I mean this diplomatically, but if you can’t get cold email responses from your ICP, it is not because inboxes are crowded. It’s likely one or more of the following factors:

1. Bad offer
2. Weak email
3. No social proof
4. All of the above

The simplest way to get responses is following this workflow, which attacks all of the above issues:

1. Come up with a no-brainer offer that the prospect would feel stupid saying no to (i.e. performance, money-back guarantee, etc.)

2. Use Apollo to find the email of the right job title to sell to at the company (might be CEO, might not be).

3. Do a baseline level of research (or use Clay) to write a line personal enough to the decision-maker.

4. Put it all together with a template like this:

{{name}} - saw {{personalized line}}.

Just curious, if I could {{generate result}}, would you be interested in speaking?

Only asking because we helped {{company}} do exactly that, and figured {{their company}} might want something similar.

Worth a chat?

If you do this right, you will get responses. Period.

I uploaded this video on November 18, 2024 saying the only 3 channels you need to get 50 calls/month and blow past $1M in revenue are:

- Cold email
- Cold calling
- LinkedIn

It was true back then, but is far more true just 13 months later.

The truth is, as much as nobody likes to admit it, cold email is getting harder. We’re no longer in the 2021 glory days, where seemingly anyone with a few inboxes could book calls from the channel.

Yes, it’s still viable (and still our bread and butter), but you’d be foolish not to diversify into cold calling and LinkedIn DMs (the right way) as you solidify cold email.

After working with 500+ clients and having 283 active right now, there are 3 things I wish I did on Day 1 of my agency.

(they would've made me much wealthier today)

1. Become an expert on my financials early.

This is so easy to overlook but ridiculously important.

At any point when asked, you should know your numbers to a T.

- What was last month's revenue?
- What was last month's gross margin?
- What was last month's net margin?
- What was last month's profit?

The more you can get in the routine of checking and understanding this, the better.

2. Make demos booked your north star.

You should wake up every day trying to improve that metric.

Every single day. Forget "marketing" and "growth" and "building the brand".

Every day, wake up and figure out how to put more meetings on your calendar, and you will grow.

3. Keep fulfillment as simple as possible while still being able to get the results you promise.

The more complex, the harder it gets to maintain.

Once you have these in place, and you can communicate your offer + results in a non-gimmicky way, you're on the right path.

If you have any questions on this, let me know.

We got to 0-10 clients with outbound, but what took us from 10-30 clients was something completely different: Referrals.

How we did it:

1. Put a question on onboarding form: "Is there anyone in your network that you think could benefit from this service?"

2. Client would often think of someone and put their name/email.

3. We would manually reach out saying "[name] is a customer of ours and said you might be a fit for out services - worth a chat?"

This worked because it was easy for our client to think of someone, and the person they thought of would likely think "well if they're using this service, there's likely something to it".

NOTE: This is far easier when you have a strong offer + social proof to lean on!

Mohan ‎Muthoo 💬 🇬🇧 🌍

Founder @ Spring Drive | Driving Growth for B2B SaaS/AI | Multi-Award Nominated | 4th Ever Official UK Clay Expert | 👉 springdrive.co

Hey there 👋 I'm the Founder at Spring Drive - we drive growth with GTM Engineering, AI & Outbound for B2B SaaS and AI companies.

This means:

- Running Scaled Outbound Campaigns (Email + LinkedIn) with GTM Engineered data
- PLG Self-Serve Motions to drive signs that turn to paying users
- Cold calling with GTM Engineered Signals and Intelligence

🛠️We've worked with B2B across industries, Y-Combinator backed startups, globally recognized SaaS brands featured in Forbes and the Apple Store, B2B ecommerce companies, and everything in between.

We have a ton of case studies and accolades, having been nominated twice for our work (Finalist in the Standout Use of AI category at the UK Digital Excellence Awards, and for the GTM10 Awards), plus been recognized as Official Expert Partners by numerous top companies in GTM and Outbound.

Head to 👉 springdrive.co ORDM me, I will reply 💬

Founder

Mohan ‎Muthoo 🇬🇧

We didn't turn off campaigns over the holidays.

It's a good thing because we still booked sales meetings.


For this client, we sent 6 sales meetings over that period (one booked on Boxing day).

But this Monday (5th), everyone came back and we started rocking again full swing.

5 meetings booked in 1 day for the same client.


Q1 started already, hope everyone's booking :)


If you'd like to apply for a pilot to work with Spring Drive, head to the website springdrive(.)co and book a call.

Mohan Muthoo

Founder @ Spring Drive | Outbound & GTM Engineering for B2B SaaS/AI | 4th Ever Official UK Clay Expert | 👉 springdrive.co

Irrelevant personalization works.

There's a few nonsense points on LinkedIn about personalization.


You've probably seen a lot of 'relevance' is what matters.

But this space moves quickly.

Relevance is actually tablestakes at this point.


The fact your personalization is relevant does not make it interesting.

yer dull m8.

This is why people who say 'irrelevant personalization' is bad actually don't understand what's happening.


Sales is about psychology.

The reason why irrelevant personalization is 'bad' is because of the way its been traditionally used.


Which is as a disguised opener to reveal a pitch.

It's inherently deceptive.


I can use a door to let someone in or shut someone out.

The door isn't the problem.


But irrelevant personalization, such as some cool things in their location, where they went to school, or maybe something from a photo on their socials...

Can actually be how you build repour where everyone else fails.

You just have to do it correctly, which means 2 things:


1. Structure - don't use it as a way to open a gate to a business offer. That's deceptive.

It should a BY THE WAY.


2. You need to get good at using tools like Clay and prompt engineering to make how you frame those statements genuinely authentic.


'Saw you went to Plymouth University that's so impressive!'

Wtf.

But, saying:

'Omg, I was at Plymouth uni in 2009, did you ever go to Portland's Pizzeria?? I was there every thursday lol'


Irrelevant personalization is HIGHLY effective, if you understand what it is, why it matters, and how to deploy it.


Don't believe all the structural guru stuff on LinkedIn.

Actually some of its good, but a lot of it is dated.

If you are thinking of getting Clay you can sign up using my link and get an Extra 3k credits.

completely forgot I had this lol.


here u go:

Open article: Clay | Go to market with unique data—and the ability to act on it by clay.com

Clay | Go to market with unique data—and the ability to act on it

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