PumpGTM retweeted
I personalize every single cold email I send. Every lead. Every follow-up.
Not "loved your recent post." Real research. The kind an SDR would spend 30–45 minutes on per lead.
And I do it for 10,000 leads at a time.
Here's the exact workflow, because what worked in 2023 is getting you eaten alive in 2026.
STEP 1: STOP SENDING TO EVERYONE YOU DOWNLOADED
Everyone pulls a list the same way. Apollo, ZoomInfo, whatever. Filter by industry, title, company size. Download 100K. Send to all of it.
Bro. That list is full of people who aren't a fit.
So the first thing I do is run every lead through LeadSonar and score it.
It reverse engineers the company's social profiles, scrapes everything it can find, then runs it through AI that does the actual research. Who do they sell to? What do they actually sell? What kind of company are they really?
Then it gives every lead an ICP score.
80+ is a perfect fit. Send.
Under 40 is a waste of an email. Don't.
I tested it live in the video. A B2B marketing agency scored as a strong fit. An "e-commerce lead" turned out to be an AI sales platform. Not a fit at all. Would've been a wasted email and a potential spam complaint.
Out of 100K leads, you usually end up with 30–40K worth sending to.
"But I'm paying for those other 60K!"
You're paying more to send to them. Every irrelevant email is a chance for someone to hit spam and torch a domain you spent weeks warming.
STEP 2: PERSONALIZE LIKE A HUMAN DID IT
Now take the good leads and turn on AI personalization.
Not a variable swap. It writes full cold emails per lead. Multiple versions, so you can pick or test them.
And it gives you the building blocks to write your own:
A simplified job title. Not "Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder." Just "founder." So your email says "I work with founders in [their space]" like a human would.
Cleaned company names. Not "ACME HOLDINGS, LLC." Just "Acme."
Company type and who they actually work with. "You work with health systems and influencer brands."
Their buyer persona.
A recent professional achievement, if you want to mention one.
A custom subject line written about their business. In the video, a compliance company got a subject line about ADA training and compliance. Specific. Relevant. Not "quick question."
You give it two things: who you sell to and what you sell. Then it does the rest.
STEP 3: LET IT TAKE ITS TIME
10,000 leads takes 30–40 minutes.
That's not slow. That's the point.
It's doing deep research on every single person. If a tool "personalizes" 10K leads in 30 seconds, it didn't research anything. It filled in a template and called it AI.
STEP 4: CLEAN AND ENRICH IN THE SAME RUN
While it's at it:
Verify every email so you're not bouncing your domains to death.
Waterfall enrichment: drop in a company and it pulls the contacts and mobile numbers.
So when someone replies "interested," you can call them in minutes. You already have the number.
THE PRICE THAT MAKES THIS A NO-BRAINER
1 million credits is $500. Verification costs 3 credits per lead.
That's roughly 330K leads scored, enriched, personalized and verified for $500.
Compare that to one SDR researching 15 leads a day by hand.
And you can try it free. You get a few thousand credits just for signing up, plus a sandbox to play with.
WHY THIS IS THE FUTURE
Here's where cold email is heading:
Very low volume per inbox. 2–3 emails a day per account. Spread across a lot of inboxes.
When every inbox sends a couple of emails a day, and every email is genuinely different from the last one, there's nothing for the filters to map.
No identical templates. No pattern. No "this is a bulk sender."
Just what looks like a team of SDRs who spent 30 minutes on every prospect.
Your infrastructure gets you into the inbox.
Your targeting decides who you're talking to.
Your personalization decides whether they reply.
Skip any one of those and you're just spamming with extra steps.
PumpGTM retweeted
Chris out here giving away industry secrets for free...
So I figured I'd follow in his footsteps.
Here's my cold DM script with a 100% reply rate, along with the hidden psychology behind it.
A client threatened to fire us last month after we generated $86,000 from email.
His complaint?
Our open rate was only 41%.
"Chris, that means 59% of our customers IGNORED us."
I explained that $86,000 was considerably more useful than an open.
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT REVENUE. I WANT 90% OPENS BY FRIDAY OR YOU'RE FIRED."
Fair enough.
I called our creative strategist.
New objective: opens.
No restrictions.
Monday's subject line:
YOUR WIFE HIRED A DIVORCE ATTORNEY
Body: "Anyway, our new creatine formula just dropped."
92% open rate.
Tuesday:
YOUR NAME IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES
Body: "And your name is also on our VIP list. Here's 15% off."
97.4%.
Wednesday:
IRS AUDIT NOTICE: YOU HAVE 48 HOURS TO RESPOND.
Body: "Time to audit your supplement cabinet. Protein powder is 20% off."
99.1%.
Thursday:
WE HAVE YOUR CHILDREN. DO NOT CONTACT THE POLICE.
Body: "Covered. With our new family-size hydration bundles."
99.8%.
A woman in Ohio drove 43 minutes to her son's elementary school.
Two customers contacted the FBI.
One subscriber replied asking how much ransom we wanted.
Our strategist offered him free shipping.
Friday:
YOUR WIFE KNOWS ABOUT THE HOTEL IN AUSTIN LAST FALL
99.9%.
The founder called me eight seconds later.
"WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT AUSTIN?"
"Nobody."
"THEN WHY AUSTIN?"
"It outperformed Dallas in our subject line test."
He went completely silent.
Then started screaming.
"YOUR TEAM IS TERRORIZING MY CUSTOMERS."
I explained that terror was currently our highest-performing creative angle.
"YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE THINGS UP TO GET PEOPLE TO OPEN EMAILS."
Interesting.
He issued a new rule.
Every subject line had to be 100% factually accurate.
No exceptions.
But he still wanted 90% opens.
Our strategist said he understood.
Monday morning, he sent:
YOUR ORDER HAS BEEN CANCELED
99.6% open rate.
The founder called.
"WHY ARE CUSTOMERS SAYING THEIR ORDERS WERE CANCELED?"
"Because we canceled them."
"WHAT?"
"4,812 orders. Every single one."
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"
"You said the subject lines had to be true."
Tuesday:
WE'VE TERMINATED YOUR SUBSCRIPTION
We terminated 11,400 subscriptions.
99.9% open rate.
Wednesday:
URGENT PRODUCT RECALL
We recalled 7,000 tubs of perfectly good electrolyte powder.
100%.
The founder was hysterical.
"THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE PRODUCT."
"I know."
"THEN WHY DID YOU RECALL IT?"
"So we could tell people."
His CFO was vomiting into a trash can.
Customer support had stopped answering the phone.
But the numbers were beautiful.
100% opens.
Zero misleading subject lines.
Full compliance with every directive.
Thursday, the founder called me crying.
"CHRIS. PLEASE. I'M BEGGING YOU. GO BACK TO LYING."
I told him we'd need that in writing.
He sent it immediately.
Then asked us to stop sending emails altogether.
"How much will it cost to make this nightmare end?"
I quoted him $40,000 a month.
He signed a 12-month agreement.
We're now getting paid $480,000 a year to not email his customers.
Every month we send exactly one email.
To him.
Subject line:
THE KIDNAPPING CAMPAIGN RESUMES TOMORROW
It's already scheduled.
He pays the invoice within six seconds.
PumpGTM retweeted
very companies tho but majorly to businesses and SaaS who recently got acquired or got their big funding, whose email and socials are easy to get through linkedin or instagram and
The key is to speak to them as people.
They're people, not bots with a script.
They don't care what you do or how you do it. They want to know what it does for them. The rest doesn't matter.
A template isn't found, it's built on principles (and then you can use it as many times as you want, once it clicks).
Here's something you can follow:
-- Are you giving value to the prospect in the cold email? For instance, "I noticed [company] doesn't use [thing they don't use] - this could result in [pitfall/pain point].[...]To be honest, you could solve this in just a few seconds, totally cost-free, with this tool [your tool/freelance service].Benefit 1, 2, 3This is much better than "I believe we should hop on a call because...xyz" NO! They don't want to hop on a call at all. They want to hop on a call once they've checked your landing page, got something wrong and want some help because they WANT to solve that issue.
-- Do you explain what you do on your landing page easily?People don't want "help revitalizing learnings" or "help organizing their vision" --> they want results. [tool] "gets more clients" is FAR more effective.
Can they see your product? GIFs, images, screenshots? Once they see those, they know what it looks like and are more willing to take the next step.
Are there any reviews on the page? Everyone is wary - even if you had 1 happy beta tester or someone who used your freelance service, put their review/testimonial on your page. It helps nobody wants to be the first.
Email should be:
{{firstName}}, {{personalized line}} --> you need this otherwise good luck.
{{one-sentence case study}} --> My name is Mrinal Pramanick and I recently helped [[some legit business owner name with just one social]] [solve pain point] in less than 4-5 minutes through getting a free trial. [explain solution]
{{CTA}} --> Call-To-Action. Why ask for a demo? Just send them a free bonus with the free trial. Or send them a video on how they can [solve pain point] in 3 minutes through a free trial.
THE KEY IS TO REDUCE FRICTION. The more you do this, the less the prospect feels they're being "cold emailed" and actually helped.
If you want to achieve this, change the email up a little bit - make the decision that makes most sense to you, but aligns with the principles.
Hope this helped.
PumpGTM retweeted
best cold outreach i’ve ever done: showing up at founders’ doors with arsicault croissants (yes, the place with the insane line)
and @llama_index merch + $$$ in credits ofc
with yc and a16z speedrun demo days coming up for last batch, i made custom boxes for founders
it turns out showing up at someone’s office with a box of pastries is a very fast way to make friends
this was my second week on the job and honestly one of my favorite activations as a marketing person bc you actually get to meet people!
if you’re a yc / a16z SR startup and didn’t get one, tell me where you are. i know the way to arsicault :D
PumpGTM retweeted
My lifehack for cold outreach on X (~20% conversion):
1. Post content on X related to a specific pain
2. Check your new followers list 1–2x per week
3. Pick the ones with relevant keywords in their bios
4. Send a personalized message
Why this works:
• Relevant content → relevant follows
• A follow = real interest
• A follow = your DM lands in the main messages tab; the recipient doesn’t have to dig through “new messages” to see it
This turns 100% cold outreach into something warmer, since it’s not the first touch with the recipient.
Many people in this channel were invited by me personally – so it works ;)
Steal this
PumpGTM retweeted
This is what a cold email built from 10M+ sends of data looks like:
(every part labelled)
PumpGTM retweeted
having no luck
didnt get any reply after sending 100+ cold dm in last few days and mails, i generally send mails in morning 9am-11am
what do you think am i doing wrong?
my format->
Hi, Punya this side
{About company} I thought I’d reach out and see if there might be an opportunity to join the team as an intern!
Keeping it short, some stuff I've built:
• Beacon: AI powered financial market intelligence platform combining sentiment analysis, real time market data, technical indicators, and much more to generate trading recommendations. - joinbeacon.vercel.app
• Applyflow: large scale job aggregation and automation pipeline scraping multiple platforms with filtering and ranking according to resume. - github.com/punyajain1/ApplyF…
• Detour: An Informative doom scrolling app with a crazy feed - detour-clp4.vercel.app/
Shipped and sold multiple AI and backend products, built everything from APIs and microservices to agentic systems and production deployments.
This summer, I worked as an SDE Intern at Fujitsu, where I worked on a FastAPI microservice.
Resume – drive.google.com/file/d/1qB2…
Github – github.com/punyajain1
Portfolio – punyajain.me/
Happy to chat anytime.
– Punya Jain
PumpGTM retweeted
cold outreach gets ignored for one reason:
nobody cares
"hi, we do e-signature software" is equally true on any day of any year, which is why nobody answers it.
evidence is what changes that
the example they walk through makes it obvious:
Cedar HR posts a job listing that mentions manual contract work, and their HR lead writes on LinkedIn about chasing signatures all week.
so the company has said in public what's broken and who it hurts.
and the message writes itself from there: "saw your post about chasing signatures, this automates the reminders." one line, and it lands as a reply rather than a pitch, because that's what it is.
Leadpoet does that end to end. it watches job listings, LinkedIn, X and the open web for those signals, finds the verified contact, writes the message around that specific evidence and keeps the follow-ups going on email or LinkedIn. you review everything before it goes out and take over the moment someone answers.
the follow-up is the part most people skip, and it's where deals die far more often than at the first message.
want to see who it would find for your business? comment "Poet" on their launch post for 100 free credits.
🤝 Paid partnership
PumpGTM retweeted
I've ran 1000s of cold email campaigns over the past 5 years...
At this point I've tested every single call-to-action you could possibly think of.
Here are the 12 best highest-converting CTAs of all time:
1. "I recorded a video breaking down XYZ - mind if I send it over?"
PumpGTM retweeted
One thing I've learned about Cold Email that I want to share with you guys.
Make it STUPIDLY EASY for prospects to reply.
I'm serious
I see people writing decent Cold Emails and then ending with:
"Would you be available for a 30-minute call next Tuesday to discuss how we can help?"
Brother, they don't even KNOW YOU yet 😂
You're asking for 30 minutes of someone's time before they've shown any interest.
Instead, try asking a SIMPLE question related to the problem you're solving.
Something they can answer in 5 seconds.
The goal of your first Cold Email isn't necessarily to book a meeting.
It's to START a conversation.
And sometimes getting a simple "Yes, we're struggling with that" is worth WAY more than pushing for a calendar invite nobody wants.
I don't know what do you think about that BOYZ ?
PumpGTM retweeted
You aren't getting responses from your cold emails because they were all written to SELL.
The ultimate goal for cold emailing is to win a follow-up call or even just one more message from your recipient.
If you close in the email, good - but no serious business owner will give you $5k+ worth of trust through just one cold email.
Switch to starting conversations, not closing deals, and you will start getting good responses.
PumpGTM retweeted
If you sell to local businesses, cold email could be your most cost-effective channel right now.
Your whole market is on Google Maps, and owners read their own email.
We generated over 4300 interested buyers for a custom cup manufacturer selling to coffee shops and bakeries.
How we scraped google maps in the article below:
PumpGTM retweeted
If you reach out to people and they keep ignoring you, it’s usually because they don’t see the value you bring.
In Never Eat Alone, I wrote 4 rules for this, and they still work for any cold outreach today, a DM or a cold call.
Here they are 🧵
PumpGTM retweeted
unpopular opinion: a fake compliment in a cold email is worse than none. "loved your recent post" fools nobody. one plain line on why you're writing wins every time
PumpGTM retweeted
Holy f*ck just got a 10/10 cold email in a very LONG time👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Why I say learn storytelling if you wanna write S tier cold emails
Great marketers are STORYTELLERS live example right here 👇🏻🫡
PumpGTM retweeted
david ogilvy called originality "the most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising"...
that's why our subject lines are BORING on purpose.
our go-to is just the prospect's first name,
and on linkedin those messages have hit 50%+ reply rates.
so i broke down exactly how we write our whole cold message copy:
- the subject line
- the first line
- the proof
- the ask
- the follow-ups
- writing it at scale
- testing your copy
full breakdown in the article:
PumpGTM retweeted
My cold email process is:
1. find a market with money
2. identify a painful problem
3. create an irresistible offer
4. define the ICP
5. identify buying signals
6. source companies matching those signals
7. find the decision makers
8. enrich contact data
9. verify emails
10. segment by pain point and buying signal
11. write a short email connecting the signal to the offer
12. remove the fluff
13. remove the buzzwords
14. remove anything that sounds like a sales pitch
15. read it from the prospect's POV
16. remove even more
17. launch
18. analyze positive replies
19. double down on what works
The best cold emails only need the right offer, the right prospect, and a compelling reason to reach out.
Good cold email is engineered, not written.
PumpGTM retweeted
Send 1000 emails a day and see what happens:
> Buy 11 domains
> 33 mailboxes
> 30 emails / day, 12 warmup (with 100% reply rate)
should be done in 30 min.
Cold email infra is sorted ages ago.
Take the advantage.
PumpGTM retweeted
I get A LOT of cold emails from startup founders looking to raise money. Most are terrible. Let's look at an example and see what are some common mistakes to avoid.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Example:
Hi Matan,
Good day. After reviewing your profile, I believe you are uniquely positioned to understand and potentially support a transformative opportunity I’m working on. I’ve developed an AI-powered application that directly competes with legacy Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Think of it as the evolution of what happened between Blockbuster and Netflix. The current ATS market is stagnating, leaving industries and businesses struggling with outdated systems. I’ve identified a critical gap in the HR space, and my application is designed to fill it, offering a solution that not only improves the hiring process but also has the potential to capture a significant market share. I have a working demo ready, and I am currently seeking an angel investor, strategic partner, or potential acquirer for the project. Given your background and experience, I would greatly appreciate any guidance or insight you might have, or the opportunity to discuss potential collaboration.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
What's the issue:
- the person never reviewed my profile because I never invested or been involved in the HR tech space
- no clear problem statement, "stagnating" and "struggling with outdated systems" is fluff that doesn't mean anything
- the founder says he found a "critical gap" but doesn't mention what
- the demo is ready and he is already considering an acquirer... a BIG red flag
- there is no clear ask, "potential collaboration" is not an ask
- there no info about him or his background
- no deck attached or linked
Reading carefully, there isn't ANY useful info in the message. After reading, I couldn't tell if its a scam or a real business.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A good cold email will have 5 things:
- who you are
- problem you're solving & solution
- traction or evidence that the market cares (e.g., revenues)
- the ask
- a link to more info if I want to review
Should be no more than 3-5 sentences and under 100 words.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Share your cold intro in the comments or DM me and Ill give you a grade and help you improve it.