Xavier Coiffard

Cold Email Playbook for Founders 100% free: → 11 templates, one per situation → the 4-email follow-up sequence → 30 subject lines → the 12-point deliverability checklist → what to answer when they reply Grab it here: leadleadbangbang.gumroad.com/l/cold-email...

💥 Cold email tips: Recent example of precise ICP + a real message: ・20K€ in deals signed in under 3 months for a single client. ・Across 100+ clients, the average is +550% ROI. ・No AI slop. Just the right pain, sent to the right people. Want an AI agent that really prospects for you? Lmk 🙂

💥 Cold email tips: 5%+ reply rates are normal when you: 1. Hit the inbox (95%+ placement) 2. Email decision-makers 3. Score leads with AI 4. Use real framing Most people skip steps 1-3 and wonder why copy doesn't work.

If your proof as a startup is how much you raised, that's a weird definition of proof. Capital tells me what you were given. Usage tells me what the product does. Someone sent me that @smartlead_ai billboard going the usage way. I use the tool with my agency, so yes, biased Still felt different.

Got a cold email this morning, 100% written by AI. Someone selling an AI prospecting agent. - 138 words, 40 too many - Personalized first line: 3 lines, zero meaning - Pain shows up after 30 words - No case study - Vague CTA I kept it. It says a lot about AI outreach.

💥 Cold email tips: "Companies like yours" is lazy. Be specific: - Their market - Their timing - Their challenge Relevance = get replies. Generic = deleted.

💥 Cold email tips: One CTA only. No options. Don't make them choose between: - 15-min call - Demo - White paper Confusion kills conversion. Make it easy to say yes.

💥 Cold email tips: A simple 3-line structure: 1. Question about their pain 2. Why it matters right now + relevant case study 3. One question Under 50 words for the US. Up to 100 for Europe. If it needs more, the offer is unclear.

💥 Cold email tips: The subject line doesn't need to sell anything. It just needs to survive the inbox. 3-5 words. Lowercase. Zero sales vibe. The pitch comes after the open.

GTM Engineer Jobs: 27 roles at 1Password, Checkr & Vercel gtmjobs.beehiiv.com/p/gtm-engine...

💥 Cold email tips: Your email should look like it was typed in 30 seconds. Plain text. No logo, no image, no link. One offer, one soft CTA. Polished emails get filtered. Messy ones get read.

💥 Cold email tips: Sending 4 emails in 4 days isn't a sequence, it's spam. What works: Day 0: full pitch Day 3: new angle Day 8: quick check-in Day 17: breakup Give people room to breathe.

Unpopular cold email take: Apollo data isn't perfect. But for $79/mo, I'm fine with it. The trick is what happens next: - Verify with @no2bounce - Cross-check with @findymail - Score every lead Cheap data + strict verification beats expensive data with no checks.

💥 Cold email tips: About 40% of replies show up after email 2 or 3. If you stop after the first send, you're leaving almost half your pipeline in the inbox. Follow-up beats any subject line tweak.

💥 Cold email tips: Most agencies send a PDF or a webinar invite. Try offering to build something for them first, then send it over for free. Reply rates land above 10 % for us. Giving before asking still works 🙂

💥 Cold email tips: Replies dropped? Before rewriting anything, check: - Inbox placement - Domain blacklist - - List accuracy - Who you're actually targeting 9/10 the copy was fine. The setup wasn't.

💥 Cold email tips: Subject lines I'd avoid: - Anything with a buzzword - Their first name - Exclamation marks - "quick question" Subject lines I'd use: - Short (3 words - Lowercase - Tied to their company It should look like a coworker wrote it.

💥 Cold email tips: Calendar links in the first email kill replies and deliverability. Try easy to answer and yes/no question like:  - Want me to send a one-pager? - Does this make sense for you? Small ask, easy yes.

💥 Cold email tips: Let AI scrape each prospect's website before you write. Grab: - Team members - Recent blog posts - Case studies Then reference one in your first line. Reply rate jumps because it reads like real research 🔥

💥 Cold email tips: Long emails hurt you twice. People don't read them. Spam filters like them even less. US/UK/Canada: ~50 words. Europe and others: 80-100. Shorter email, better inbox placement, more replies.

💥 Cold email tips: Send time ranking: Tue/Wed/Thu mornings win. But honestly? It's the last thing to optimize. List quality and relevance matter 10x more.

💥 Cold email tips: Email 3 is simple: "Still worth connecting?" 5 days after Email 2. Short. Direct. Gives them an easy out or in.

💥 Cold email tips: Follow-up sequence: Email 1: Full pitch Email 2 (+3 days): New angle or asset Email 3 (+5 days): "Still worth connecting?" (OPTIONAL) Email 4 (+7 days): Breakup Most replies come on 2 or 3.

💥 Cold email tips: Before you blame your copy: Check deliverability. Check list quality. Check decision-maker ratio. Most "copy problems" are infrastructure problems.

💥 Cold email tips: 2-3 sentences max. You get 5 seconds: - What you do (no jargon) - Why it matters to them specifically - One proof point - Soft CTA - If you can't explain why this person should care, don't send.

💥 Cold email tips: Don't open with "My name is X and I work at Y." Nobody cares yet. Open with them: "Saw [Company] just expanded into EU market." Goal = "How did they know that?" Curiosity pulls them through.

💥 Cold email tips: Subject line has one job: don't get deleted. What works: - Lowercase, personal feel - Under 4 words - Specific to them What kills it: - Marketing speak - Their name in subject - Punctuation spam

💥 Cold email tips: Subject line + preview text: 3-5 words. Nothing that screams "sales." Earn the open first.

💥 Cold email tips: Lead qualification isn't optional anymore. Run leads through AI before they hit your campaign. It filters out junk and doubles reply quality.

💥 Cold email tips: Every email has three jobs: 1. Earn the open 2. Earn the read 3. Earn the reply Miss one, and the chain breaks.

💥 Cold email tips: Running 50 mailboxes? Google-only is fine. Running 500? Split the risk: • Google • Microsoft • Private SMTP Providers always flip. Never let one provider own your entire pipeline.

💥 Cold email tips: Kill the PDF. Kill the webinar invite. Instead: "Would it be okay if I spent an hour building this for you and sent it over?" Average reply rate: 3-5%. Reverse lead magnets work.

💥 Cold email tips: Stop emailing managers, coordinators, and specialists. Target CEOs, founders, CMOs, CFOs, owners. People who can say yes without a six-week approval chain. Reply rates double when you filter to decision-makers only.

💥 Cold email tips: Cold email lives on three pillars: • Deliverability • List quality • Copy Ignore even one = struggle to break 1% replies. Nail all three = 3%+ becomes normal. Audit all three before changing a single word.

💥 Cold email tips: Diagnose emails and domains before replacing. Test neutral copy vs campaign copy from the same inbox. Campaign fails only = rewrite. Both fail = replace infrastructure.

💥 Cold email tips: Authenticate every domain. SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Send yourself a test email and check the headers. No auth = straight to spam.

2+ years running the same cold email campaign for a large events company in France. Same audience. Same offer. New list every month. New copy. Still turning into dozens of meetings every time.

💥 Cold email tips: Limit domain volume: - Google: 15 emails × 3 inboxes = 45/day - Azure: 3 emails × 50 inboxes = 150/day More than that burns your domain fast.

💥 Cold email tips: Keep 2 infrastructure sets: - One sending - One warming When the first burns, swap instantly. No downtime.

💥 Cold email tips: Short, plain-text emails only. No images. No formatting. No links. No long signatures. Simple offer + soft CTA like "Interested?" That's it.

Someone sent me this from a London tube station I have never related to a wall more: "Close the gap between your targets and your pipeline" 😅

💥 Cold email tips: Disable open tracking. The data is unreliable. The pixel hurts deliverability. Track replies and bounces instead.

💥 Cold email tips: Measure at 1,000+ emails minimum. Wait 48 hours. Below 1% reply + above 3% bounce = warning. Compare against your baseline.

💥 Cold email tips: Isolate domains into separate tenants. Low inbox count per tenant. One failure doesn't cascade.

💥 Cold email tips: Pull data from prospect websites: - Team names - blog topics - case study AI does this easily and your reply rate with explode

💥 Cold email tips: Before uploading to Smartlead, sort leads 5→1. Highest fit gets emails first. Better early engagement = better inbox placement later.

💥 Cold email tips: Stop asking for 30-minute calls from strangers. Better CTAs: - "Happy to send a one-pager if helpful" - "Does this resonate at all?" Low commitment = higher replies. One ask. No options.

💥 Cold email tips: Delete "My name is X and I work at Y." Nobody cares yet. Open with them instead: "Saw [Company] just expanded into EU." Goal: make them think "How did they know that?" Curiosity pulls them through.