Google Maps lists: 1 lead per 60 contacted
Christian closed the week with 1,100 leads from 84,000 emails to 66,000 Google Maps contacts, while Taylor Haren hired a human copywriter on a filter theory nobody else has confirmed. One is a list story, the other is a bet.
Landing in the inbox
Haren hires a copywriter on a watermark theory nobody else has confirmed
Taylor Haren says Google and Outlook AI spam filters are here and that AI-written copy is now a signal, because new models are watermarked under EU law in ways the filters can track. He says his team lost 31,000 inboxes in a single day, infrastructure cost went up 13x from replacing it weekly, and at one point $50k a month of Instantly infrastructure burned within two days of sending.
They booked 92 meetings from roughly 293,000 emails in 90 days, with zero positive replies.
Campaigns and numbers
Christian's Google Maps campaign ends at 1,100 leads in 21 days
Christian put the final numbers on the Google Maps campaign: 1,100 leads in 21 days from 84,000 emails to 66,000 people, one lead per 60 contacted. Before this month the client was getting around 300 positive replies a month and closing 8 deals, about $40,000 a month in net new revenue, and is now on pace to triple it.
A well-run campaign needs around 500 contacts for one lead.
Copy that ran
The week's cleanest copy test was an offer swap, not a subject line
Eric Nowoslawski says "Free campaign" returned one positive reply per 1,000 and "Two meetings on your calendar, free" returned one per 200, on the same service his team fulfils. That is five times the replies for naming the outcome instead of the deliverable. Nick Abraham's offer framework the same week lands in the same place: test offers and industries before you touch subject lines.
He says to take your 10 most recent wins and average the outcome you created for them.
Workflows and tooling
Christian publishes the six files Claude reads before drafting an email
Christian posted the file set his team feeds Claude before it writes a cold email: offer, icp, winners, transcripts, rules, and one job per prompt. winners.md holds 200+ past scripts with their reply rates attached, and rules.md caps emails at 25 to 55 words, 3 variants per persona, max 5 variables and never an empty one.
It only writes slop when it has to guess, so we never let it
Where they disagree
Abraham says cut sequences in half, 95% of replies land on email one
Nick Abraham argues that above 10,000 sends a month the follow-up does not pay, because 95% of replies come in email one and every extra touch costs infra and data for less return. His fix is cutting four-step sequences in half and doubling volume.
That advice got popularized by sellers doing highly-tailored outreach and custom follow-ups (which is great, but you're playing a different game).
Also on the timeline
Abraham: reseller domain markup cost him a quarter's margin
Nick Abraham says he paid his reseller $19 a domain against the roughly $8 resellers pay registrars, at about 1,000 domains a month.
Illingworth runs up to 60 inboxes off one root domain
Richard Illingworth says he tested subdomain sending across about 30,000 accounts, with 20 branches per root as the hard ceiling and the root itself never sending.
Frequently asked questions
Why would AI-written emails get caught by spam filters?
Taylor Haren claims that new AI models are watermarked under EU law in ways that Google and Outlook spam filters can now detect and flag as signals of AI-generated content. However, he acknowledges this watermark theory has not been confirmed by others and he may be proven wrong.
What copy change got the biggest lift in testing this week?
Eric Nowoslawski tested naming the outcome versus the deliverable: 'Two meetings on your calendar, free' got five times more replies than 'Free campaign' on the same service. The lift came from describing a countable result rather than just what's being offered.
Should I keep long email sequences or shorten them?
Nick Abraham argues that for senders doing over 10,000 emails a month, 95% of replies come from the first email, so cutting four-step sequences in half and doubling volume is more cost-effective. However, this applies to high-volume sending, not smaller targeted outreach.
What files should I prepare before using AI to write cold emails?
Christian shared six files his team feeds Claude: offer, ICP (ideal customer profile), winners with reply rates attached, transcripts, rules, and one job per prompt. The copyable part is having these files organized with your own past reply rate data.
How many email accounts can you run from one domain?
Richard Illingworth tested subdomain sending across 30,000 accounts and found that 20 branches per root domain is the hard ceiling, with the root domain itself never sending.