Cold email campaign fell flat last month - what I changed

I run a small SaaS for construction companies and sent out 200 cold emails in early October. Open rate was 11% and not one single reply. I was sitting at my desk in Austin staring at the spreadsheet feeling dumb. Turns out I was using generic subject lines and not segmenting by industry niche. Has anyone here seen a big jump after narrowing their list way down?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanprice3d ago

Wait no replies at ALL from 200 emails? That's brutal man. I mean I've had bad campaigns but zero replies is like putting a message in a bottle and dropping it in the ocean. Narrowing down the list made a huge difference for me when I was selling to property managers I went from like 300 random contacts to 50 that were specifically looking for maintenance tracking software and my reply rate jumped to about 8%.

the_fiona2d ago

Dude try adding a small case study or screenshot in your follow up emails. Showing that you actually helped another construction firm makes you look way less spammy. @ryanprice mentioned narrowing the list but pairing that with a real world example hit my reply rate way harder than just cutting contacts.