Specific vs Broad Cold Email Targeting

“Hi Darika, I'd love to pick your brain over coffee." Got 23 of these messages last week. Here's what's wild. Not one person: • Mentioned what specific brain-picking they needed • Explained why my brain specifically • Offered anything in return • Did basic research about what I actually do Just generic requests for my time. Look, I get it. Everyone's trying to network. Build relationships. Learn from others. But here's the thing about cold outreach. It's not about YOU getting access. It's about THEM seeing value in giving it. The DMs that actually get responses from me: "Saw your post about founder personal branding. We implemented your 3-pillar framework and increased our inbound by 40%. Wanted to share our case study and get your thoughts on scaling it further." Specific. Valuable. Mutual benefit. vs. "Can we connect? I'd love to learn from you." Generic, One-sided and Lazy. Your network isn't built by collecting coffee meetings. It's built by being someone worth meeting. Before you hit send on that next cold DM, ask yourself: Why would this person care about talking to me? If you don't have a good answer, don't send it yet.

I've reviewed 300+ cold emails for clients this quarter. There's a ton of variability in the prospect roles my clients are targeting (CIOs, CROs, Heads of Maintenance, Repair & Operations, CMOs, Chief Sustainability Officers, Directors of Engineering, Directions of Operations, etc.). Yet, there were 2 cold emails I saw over and over. #1 - The Kitchen Sink "Dear prospect, my name is Jen and here's a small novel about who we are, what we do, and why we're great. Are you free next Tuesday for me to tell you more about us?" Word count is 200+. Reading time is 90+ secs. Bullets. Lots of long sentences, big words, & commas. Large chunky blocks of text. I used to send these, too. I thought the job of a cold email was to impress them with what WE do. I didn't know exactly what would impress them, so I threw everything in there. I left no juice for my follow up emails, so I resorted to "bumps" and "thoughts". What I didn't know is that when a reader opens these emails - it screams effort. Effort is our enemy. Ever heard the saying "if you want to be interesting, be interested?". Cold emails don't have to sell "us" yet. Job #1 is to show the prospect we have a unique POV into why them, why now. #2 - The Love Bomb "Dear prospect, I'm so impressed with this overly generic thing I found about you after doing 3 seconds of research that has nothing to do with what I'm emailing you about. Anyway, I'd love to have the chance to schedule time with you so I can understand your priorities and then use that information to sell you something." It's understandable why WE'D love to have prospects tell us their priorities. But, consider it from the prospect's side. Does sharing publicly available information about their company priorities sound like a good use of their time? And, forced compliments or forced, generic personalization doesn't have the desired effect. It screams "I know I'm supposed to personalize, so I'm checking the box". If you have something personal AND relevant to the message - great! If you have something personal, but irrelevant to the message? Throw it in a PS. Leaders - if you haven't done so, ask your AEs, AMs, and SDRs to submit a cold email for one of their target accounts. It will help you understand what beliefs & assumptions your reps are operating under.

Most cold emailers are leaving money on the table. They're stuck following a playbook that doesn't work anymore. Here's what I discovered after analyzing our best-performing campaigns: Your prospects don't care about your "proven system" or "proprietary method." They care about ONE thing: Can you solve their specific problem? Take a client in the real estate space. Everyone was pitching them "social media management" and "content creation." We came in with: "We can help you convert your empty listings into showings within 72 hours using our property showcase system." Specific problem. Specific solution. Specific timeframe. That's how you cut through the noise.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: Cold email is saturated. The same agencies send the same emails to the same prospects hoping for a better response. I spend 10+ hours/week trying to figure out how to differentiate. Here's what's working right now (save this graphic): 1) Relevance ✅ Spray and pray with no strategy is dead. Your emails need to be relevant to the person opening them. - Write to specific job titles - Call out hyper-specific pain points - Use signals to time outreach This is how you win. 2) Different campaign structure ✅ The one-sentence case study is great. But in saturated markets, you need to stand out. One structure that's been working well: 2-step campaigns structured as follows: Email 1: Ask if they're facing the same problem other [job titles] are Email 2 (if no response): "Only asking because we helped [Client A] drive [B result] in C [time frame], and think we can do the same for you". Use this. 3) No cheesy personalization ✅ I'm not saying personalization is bad. But the "saw you're from Dallas, had a friend who went to school there" lines are response killers. If you're not going to ACTUALLY personalize, just make it hyper-relevant instead.