Abraham, 496 emails for a mural artist, 7 interested

Nick Abraham says a cold campaign for a custom mural artist produced 18 replies and 7 interested from 496 emails. She paints murals inside and outside local shops and restaurants, and the list was, in his words, a raw list of local businesses in her area. That works out to roughly one interested reply per 71 emails sent.

What was actually in the campaign

Abraham says there were no LinkedIn keyword signals and no clever targeting. The email asks the obvious question, which he paraphrases as whether the owner has considered getting a custom mural painted on their wall. The proof sits in the PS, which mentions murals she has done for other local businesses that went viral on Instagram and brought in more customers. He frames the whole thing as a case for not overthinking an unusual offer.

How that compares to a bigger local build

Christian's landscaping campaign ran on the same basic shape, a scraped list of local businesses with no personalization anywhere in the email, and it came out at a very different rate. In his earlier breakdown of that build, 1,000 emails a day returned one interested lead per 576 emails in week one, alongside 800 dials per booked meeting on the phone. That campaign also scraped Google Maps, kept the listed phone number because at a local business it rings the founder, and used info@ addresses, which Christian says ran a 5.6% reply rate and 6.12% interested.

So the difference between the two is not list quality or enrichment depth. Both are plain local business lists with no variables. What separates them is what the email is selling. Abraham's own explanation for the gap is competitive, not technical.

For people sending

One campaign at 496 sends is a small sample, and nothing in Abraham's post says how long it ran or what the infrastructure looked like beyond calling it good. The number to take seriously is the comparison, not the rate itself. When two campaigns use the same scraping method, the same lack of personalization and the same kind of local owner, and one returns an interested reply eight times more often, the variable being tested is the offer and how crowded that inbox already is for that offer. If you are selling anything these owners hear about weekly, no amount of targeting work closes that gap.

Nick Abraham

@NickAbraham12

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A campaign like this will often beat a typical sales tech campaign, because nobody else is emailing these owners about this.