Hot take: cold emailing used to actually work

Back in 2018 I'd send 50 emails a day from my own inbox and get 8-10 replies. No automation, no tools, just a quick research blurb and a direct ask. Now I'm lucky if I get 2 replies out of 200 using a proper CRM. What changed? Everyone got spam filters and templates, so real outreach got buried. Anyone else seeing open rates tank or is it just my industry?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_bailey3517d ago

Had a buddy who ran a small B2B agency and swore by cold emails back in 2016. He showed me his old inbox with 30% reply rates from just copy pasting a few lines per person. Last month he tried again with the same approach and got crickets across 500 sends. Spam filters and inbox overload killed it for regular people.

paul_thompson6717d ago

30 percent? That's insane for cold outreach these days.