✉️ Cold Email That Converts: How We Booked 73 B2B Meetings in 30 Days

 

🧩 Why Cold Email Still Works in B2B (When Done Right)

While everyone’s busy posting on LinkedIn and nurturing inbound leads, cold email remains one of the highest ROI B2B channels — if you do it strategically.

In February, we booked 73 qualified meetings from cold outreach alone.

Here’s how we did it — copy, strategy, and tools included.

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📌 Step 1: Hyper-Targeted List Building

We didn’t spray-and-pray. We built a list of 387 highly targeted prospects.

Our targeting criteria:

• B2B SaaS companies

• 10–50 employees

• Recently funded (Seed to Series B)

• Job titles: Head of Growth, VP Marketing, CMO

• Based in US, UK, or Canada

Tools we used:

• Apollo.io – for scraping verified emails and intent signals

• Clay.com – to enrich company info (tech stack, funding, team size)

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator – for laser targeting job titles

🎯 We aimed for quality > quantity. That’s why our reply rate was over 18%.

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✍️ Step 2: Our Cold Email Copy (That Got 28% Reply Rate)

Here’s the exact email format that worked — short, personal, and specific:

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Subject: quick question about {company}’s {marketing/sales/growth}

Body:

Hey {FirstName} – came across {CompanyName} and love what you’re doing with {something specific, e.g., recent blog post, product update, or hiring spree}.

We help B2B teams like yours solve {pain point} — without {common objection}.
Built specifically for {role}, not just another generic {tool category}.

Happy to share a quick 2-minute demo — worth a chat?

– {YourName}

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✅ Pro Tip: We kept it under 60 words. No buzzwords. No attachments. No pitch decks.

Response Boosters We Used:

• Mentioned recent hiring or funding news

• Personalized first line for every email

• Used lowercase subject lines (more casual = more opens)

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📅 Step 3: Follow-Up (Where 50% of Replies Came From)

We didn’t stop at one email. Here's our 4-touch sequence:

1. Day 1 – Initial cold email

2. Day 3 – “Bumping this” + short reminder

3. Day 6 – New angle or pain point

4. Day 9 – Friendly closeout: “Should I close your file?”

Example follow-up:

Subject: just following up

Hi {FirstName}, just circling back in case this slipped through.

We’re helping {similar company} cut their sales onboarding time in half.

Still open to chat?

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⚙️ Step 4: Automation Stack That Made It Scalable

We used:

• Instantly.ai – to send personalized emails at scale

• Mailwarm – to warm up inboxes for deliverability

• HubSpot CRM – to track meetings and pipeline

• Trello – for team workflow and replies

We sent 30–40 emails/day per inbox across 3 inboxes — all warmed and monitored.

🔥 Result: 73 meetings booked, ~2.4% meeting rate from total sends.

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🎯 What Made It Work (Our Secret Sauce)

• Clear, niche targeting: Not just “marketers” — we went after “recently funded B2B SaaS growth leads.”

• Short + value-driven copy: No fluff, no features — just outcomes.

• Personalization at scale: Used AI + VA to personalize first lines with context (recent posts, interviews, hiring).

• Persistence without being annoying: 3–4 follow-ups with value in each.

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📉 What Didn’t Work

• Generic templates — big mistake early on.

• Mass email blasts — lower open rates + flagged for spam.

• No warming strategy — before using Mailwarm, we hit the spam folder often.

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📊 The Results

Metric	Value
Emails Sent	1,107
Open Rate	64.3%
Reply Rate	28.1%
Meetings Booked	73
Meetings-to-Deal Ratio	1 in 6 closed

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🧠 Final Thoughts: Cold Email Isn’t Dead — Bad Cold Email Is

If you’re in B2B and not using cold email to get on calls with qualified buyers, you’re missing one of the cheapest, most scalable acquisition channels available.

And with tools like AI personalization, scraping, and warm-up tools — it’s never been easier to do it right.