10M sends, five scripts, Apollo at 50-65% valid
Christian put five exact scripts behind 10M sends and says his best performing campaign ever has no personalisation in it. Richard Illingworth says Apollo on its own comes back 50-65% valid, which is where most of your bounces are coming from.
Landing in the inbox
Illingworth says Apollo-only lists come back 50-65% valid
Richard Illingworth says he has never seen an Apollo-only list book real meetings, and put a number on why. Apollo alone comes back 50-65% valid, so he pulls the ICP from Google Maps via Apify, fills the blanks with Findymail, then validates every record through Million Verifier before anything loads into the sequencer. He expects roughly 75% to survive the wash and re-verifies anything over 2% bounce.
if a verifier reports 90-95% clean, that's a red flag. re-run it through a second tool.
Campaigns and numbers
Two operators posted full campaign numbers this week
Two senders put complete numbers on the table instead of screenshots. Christian says a foodservice manufacturer campaign running 100,000+ emails a month produced 1,061 interested leads in 70 days, 86% qualified, with 8 deals closed inside the window. James Shields reported a single-day database reactivation send of 727 emails that returned 67 replies, 51 interested and 15 booked calls.
It works because the first line of the email names a number the owner already knows about his own business.
Copy that ran
Christian publishes five scripts he says pulled most replies across 10M sends
Christian posted the exact wording of five cold email frameworks he says pulled the most replies across 10M sends. The shortest is one line: "{{first_name}} – interested in {{free work / frontend offer}} for {{company}}?" with social proof in a P.S. His rules for all five: under 65 words, subject line one to three words all lowercase, spintax on every sentence, and social proof only from the same industry.
Our best performing campaign ever has no personalisation in it.
Workflows and tooling
Lieben details running campaigns in Claude Code, no Clay
Michel Lieben published a working build of an outbound campaign run inside Claude Code rather than Clay or Apollo. One campaign started with 6,000 trade show names, ended with a little over 1,000 validated addresses and 19 positive replies in its first week, with ten agents splitting the enrichment rows and five reviewer agents scoring copy to at least 7 out of 10 before a human reads it.
A single provider covers around 40% of a list. Ours goes through seven finders on the ColdIQ MCP and gets past 80%.
Where they disagree
Nick Abraham argues against niching down and against gifting
Nick Abraham spent the week arguing against two tactics this crowd keeps selling. On niching, he says $10k-$100k/mo lead gen agency owners are copying advice that does not hold, because the $50M+/year agencies actively serve all segments. He also told @kocalars, who sent custom doormats to 100+ startups and claimed more responses than weeks of cold emails, that the play only works VC-backed to VC-backed.
Jennifer in procurement at ACME corp doesn't want a custom doormat.
Also on the timeline
AI companies are still hiring SDRs, says Christian
Christian says 39% of the top 200 AI companies with open GTM roles are hiring SDRs or SDR leaders. He cites OpenAI's $350,000 Head of Sales Development posting in March.
Berman says outbound teams are leaving per-credit data pricing
Alex Berman says outbound engineers are defecting from per-credit data pricing toward flat rate, naming ScraperCity at $149 a month.
Frequently asked questions
Why shouldn't I use Apollo alone for cold email lists?
Apollo-only lists come back 50-65% valid according to one operator's testing, which is too low to book real meetings. Most operators supplement Apollo with data from Google Maps and other sources, then validate through multiple verification tools before sending.
What email word count and subject line length actually work?
According to one operator's testing across 10M total sends, successful cold emails stayed under 65 words with subject lines of just one to three words in all lowercase. All five of his top-performing scripts included spintax (variable text swapped on each send) and social proof from the same industry.
How much should I spend on gifting for cold outreach?
One operator tried sending custom doormats to over 100 startup founders and reported good results, but industry experts say gifting only works when both companies are venture capital-backed. For most cold outreach, gifting is not a reliable tactic.
What's a realistic reply rate from reactivating old email contacts?
One operator's single-day reactivation campaign to an existing database got a 9% reply rate, but this should not be used as a benchmark for cold prospecting since the recipients already knew the sender.
Are companies still hiring sales development reps?
Yes, according to recent data, 39% of the top 200 AI companies with open sales and marketing roles are actively hiring SDRs or SDR leaders.