I should say first that I built the agent used in both runs. So I am not neutral about the tool. The numbers come from our own database.
Run 1 was our own product, an AI sales tool. The agent sent 1,027 cold emails from June to the end of August. 7 people replied. There were no meetings.
Run 2 was a different product. It is a speaking practice app for students, and we sold it to schools in Japan. The agent sent 238 emails and contact forms, one per school. 13 people replied. That is 5.5%. 6 of them were interested. We got 2 meetings. No contract yet.
The agent was the same in both runs. The research step was the same too. Each email starts with one specific thing from the school's or the company's website. I pressed the button in both runs.
So what was different?
-
In run 2, the reader could use the product. A school can start using an app. In run 1, the reader needed a specific developer setup, and the list never checked for that.
-
The ask was different. In run 2, the email asked for one line back. It also told the reader what to write if the answer was no, like "wrong department" or "maybe later". In run 1, the email asked people to try a product, and there was no link.
-
The sender was different. Run 2 went out from our company domain, and the domain has a website. Run 1 went out from a separate domain with no website.
-
The market may be different. Schools in Japan answer emails, even when the answer is no. I cannot separate this from points 1 to 3 with this small amount of data.
One more thing I saw in run 2. Schools that had a named department for this problem replied. Schools that only gave a general inbox did not reply. Two of the three unsubscribes came from shared mailboxes.
I am posting this because points 1, 2 and 3 were all wrong in run 1 at the same time. Better writing could not fix any of them. If you have data that shows how much is the market and how much is the list, I would like to see it.
Source: r/Coldemailing · by /u/No_Job_9995