Growth Stage by FastSpring

Hello everyone and welcome to Growth Stage, Podcast by FastSpring, where we discuss how
digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value

of their business.

So I'm your host, Jesse Paliotto I love being part of the community here, and I'm really
grateful that as part of my role here at FastSpring, um, I get to bring the best of the

community to you here.

So today we're gonna be talking about cold outreach in the era of AI, what actually works
and what's killing your deliverability.

We're with

Kseniia Skobelska of Snov.io uh Most SaaS founders have sent cold emails, but between
AI-generated noise, spam filters, domain reputation pitfalls, getting a reply in 2026 is

harder than ever.

So, how can digital product companies build outreach that actually reaches the inbox,
earns a response, and scales without burning their domain in the process?

And if you don't know what that means, you will know what that means here shortly.

So, in this episode, we're going to interview Kseniia.

She's a growth market strategist at Snov.io and with over 3 million users on their
platform, Snov.io has a unique window into what separates outreach that works from

outreach that was just wastes everybody's time.

And Kseniia here is here to share what the data actually shows on things like why open
rates are misleading, what metric you should be optimizing for, what's really triggering

your emails to land in spam and how to fix that.

How to build a cold outreach system from scratch that's deliverable, human, and worth
replying to.

So if you're a founder doing just, you know, ad hoc outreach or trying to figure this out,
um, this one is for you.

So Kseniia, thanks for being here today.

Really appreciate you joining the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I'm really excited about our organization.

Yeah, me too.

I I think this is just so of the moment where, you know, everybody's inbox is just blasted
with AI outreach.

And so what do we do to do things right?

Such a that's such a needed answer.

Um, can you just for a second maybe tell a little bit about who you are and uh what
Snov.io does?

Okay.

Um I will just spill the light um on how many years I'm in is in into this industry
because I think that's that's the most important information here because I will actually

uh travel to the past with you today a little bit.

Yeah, so I am seven years plus in the industry.

Um I started in twenty nineteen.

I sent cold outreach

I failed and I succeeded because you know cold outreach is such a game.

Uh there is no one who uh does the successful outreach with a first attempt.

So you gonna have these experience for sure and you should not actually be afraid of it.

Uh and in simple terms, you know, I thought of how people present their companies and like
saying we are la blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And uh I just want to say a simple thing about Snov.io and that what actually does um and
what you can do with Snov.io.

So Snov.io is the platform where you can build a system that will help you find leads,
your future clients, prepare for this outreach, send the actual outreach, and then take

care of the leads.

So there's like a CRM where you can manage manage it all.

And care about your domain reputation and your email accounts.

So this is the part where you um care about the deliverability with Snov.io So if we look
at Snov.io this is like an ecosystem, so to say.

Because um people who actually in the market, you may know that some people have

For example, the warmup, some people have the tools for lead generation, some people have
uh the sell the tools for email outreach.

And you buy s a lot of subscriptions for that.

So sometimes businesses that come to us, they have like five subscriptions and you know
they kinda expensive.

So inside of Snov.io you save also the money and you have everything in one place.

But so this is what Snov.io is.

Excellent.

And maybe just a quick note for folks that are listening, you know, if you're on the B2B
side of life and you're marketing business to business, this is probably bread and butter

of your um marketing and sales strategy.

But even on B2C side, I think a lot of startup SaaS founders, you know, the way they're
getting their initial clients is by outreach.

The way they're building partnerships is by doing outreach.

The way that they're trying to connect with other people in their ecosystem is

through outreach.

So I think across the spectrum in the business world, you know, there's different flavors,
but cold outreach, it's pretty rare that there's a business that this is not somewhere

within the organization.

Um so, you know, to that point, I think a lot of SaaS founders send cold emails, even
themselves.

maybe it's just a few here and there.

maybe even without any sort of system, even though you're saying that people come with
like five tools, but sometimes people have no system and they're just making it up as they

go, right?

So what are they missing that they don't even know they're missing when people are doing
this sort of outreach?

To answer to answer this question, I want to say a peculiar thing.

That's what I noticed from my work with the founders, um, that they have like this is like
the characteristic of the founders.

So they see the goal and they don't see the obstacles.

And that's good.

That's good.

Because if you start thinking about the obstacles

You will never even get to that goal.

So you will stop there and you won't go further.

But then later, I think this kind of mood or vibe, right, that has impact on what we're
gonna talk about.

And um to explain this kind of absence of the system, I wanna give you a metaphor.

just to simplify this and you know to romanticize this discussion, uh let's imagine that
founders are the people that are responsible for launching the rocket into space.

Yes, a little bit difficult, there's a lot of details, but anyway, that's a metaphor,
we're simplifying this.

Uh they are responsible for everything.

And they are just the people that send that hit the launch button.

That's it.

They

Don't check the whether this rocket is ready for launch.

They don't check whether it's technically equipped.

They don't check whether all the wires are connected there.

They don't check whether there's fuel in there.

They don't check anything.

They just hit launch.

And what they think about, oh well, they think about the results.

So that rocket is uh there in the space and it's actually completing the mission.

Um, the same thing with the cold outreach So people actually saying that it's well, it's
simple.

And if even if I'm right now telling you all of the storm things, you may also agree that
it's simple.

What do you need to do?

Just click send, send emails.

You have the offer you just write it and send.

That's fine.

That's easy.

That's no hard.

You know, there is no friction in it, for example, right?

Yeah.

But but

There is something that uh they miss.

Uh and um let's call it in simple terms preparation.

In in you know, in industry terms that's called infrastructure.

And that's one of the things that most of the founders uh skip.

What infrastructure mean?

It's

In fact, something technical.

It's not even s the scene where you need to use your creativity.

It's just something that, you know, you need to sit in front of your computer, you know,
open certain tabs, enter certain data, and then all you're set.

That's it.

But it's it's difficult, you know.

So what is included there?

So it's the domains.

By the way, never send cold outreach from your main domain.

I usually say unless you want to burn it down.

If you have this goal, okay, do it.

But so typically it's better to buy separate domains.

That's like one part.

The other part, then you create the email boxes, mailboxes, and you need to warm them up.

By the way, the warm-up stage.

Um I would say cruelly.

uh skipped people like rudely skip it like even people um write on Reddit how do I skip
warm up I you know I will that for you you can't there is no way you can skip warm-up

again unless you want to burn down all your efforts so then you warm up your email
accounts and

Seems like uh it's not all, like you need to send also to set up the domain records,
that's another part, also technical.

But uh when we talk about infrastructure, that's not all.

Um we also talk about data quality and that also goes into infrastructure.

Uh because let's say I had lots of cases where people came frustrated.

They were, you know, the founders or just the marketers.

They didn't know what happened, like, hey, I did this and this and that.

Uh I I have my domain set up.

I have my email account warmed up.

You know, what is going on?

My all of my emails are in the spam or they my email account is blocked And the thing is
that they didn't verify the data that they get.

Sometimes people buy oh the lists.

Sometimes they actually do prospecting, but you know, leave this list for a while.

You know, everyone has their own reason for why they leave that list.

And then they get back in three months, and you know what?

We live in a world where data is such a thing that changes constantly.

So it's not something stable that we can rely on.

in three months, all the whole list can be invalid.

The whole.

For example, you have 500 leads there, and all of them may be invalid in three months.

So uh the cases there, why those founders were frustrated.

They sent the campaign, but they sent to unverified emails.

And when we then verified those lists, it turned out that half of that list wasn't valid.

And here's the thing.

uh you can't send emails to invalid email addresses.

So you'll be stopped, first of all by your email service provider.

So that won't destroy their reputation and you know the reputate the all those connections
between the ESPs that they have.

So they will stop you.

Yeah.

So for a couple great things in there, I just want to kind of poke a little bit more at uh
using a different domain makes total sense.

You're gonna burn your own domain when you know you keep getting flagged as sending spam
or something.

But if you use an alternate domain, do you have any thoughts on like does that have the
same credibility when it shows up and the the domain is th you know?

Get Snov.io versus Snov.io?

If I've seen you in the marketplace, I'm like, wait, what is this one?

Um here's the thing.

Uh if you buy the fresh domain, so like it's it's it's a t it's a baby, it's an infant,
you know?

Like one day old.

Yes, it's gonna be bad.

It won't work.

So the common recommendation is that you need to buy domains at least one year and more
old.

and we talk about like you asked me, like

uh you saw the domain Snov.io but then get Snov.io what is this?

The things that here is not in fact the get domain will be I mean GetSnov.io for example
would be percepted as a company name.

Uh here is not this case.

when you create the domain uh your domain should contain your company name so that people
then can find information about you.

But that doesn't mean that, you know, um this is specifically the exact company, in fact.

So uh they will they will find information.

You know, it's easy.

Customers right now, you know, they have access to internet.

And even if they write get snow.io, uh, you know, Google for example, it will suggest them
the variants.

Uh right now Google is not that popular.

Let's take Chat GPT Claude whatever.

You know, those those guys will help even better.

So they will say maybe you meant and suggest the right company name.

And then for example, you follow that website, you see your email, you read what is
written there, and then you see the website, okay, that's the match, these are these guys.

So that's that's not the case.

that's great.

And then on the warming up and people trying to skip the warm up phase, how long does it
take?

I mean, what are what how much time are people really trying to save on that?

Weeks, months?

Well the let's say the least uh period that you need to warm up your account is four
weeks.

So this like one month in other terms.

Okay.

So that's what people are trying to get it get past.

Yeah.

Thing well, I I have a theory, uh, why people are doing it and why they want it.

And I think this is we're we're just all the victims of the industry, but I'm not talking
specifically about the industry that I'm working in or you're working in.

I'm talking about that globally.

So that everywhere you go, for example as a consumer, you know, we're all consumers,
right?

So that's like right now we're professionals, we're like in B2B but anyway, um

besides the work where consumers and they'll also impact everywhere and everything is
easy.

Become a millionaire in two steps and two steps.

You know, do this and get one billion dollar.

And you know, people sometimes I don't know why they believe in it.

Maybe it's good, maybe it's not.

I still don't have my personal opinion on that.

But they have this vibe and then they just enter like for example this cold outreach or
any other thing.

It's yeah, in fact, we can even go like something relatable.

Uh we can take fitness.

You know, I want a super cool fit body, but I I want it in one week.

This is the real story.

Um my coach, uh, she actually told me like the woman came to her and she said, I don't
wanna work out a lot, but I want to lose uh 12 kilograms in one month.

So

Unrealistic.

That's another lesson.

The same thing is here.

So you in fact you can send without warm-up.

But here's the question.

What are you going to achieve?

Do you want to get the results like that satisfies you?

Or you want to get frustration?

Well, if that's the second thing again.

No one is actually holding you.

Do it.

So this is actually a great transition to my next question, which is, you know, speaking
of people trying to do things the easy way, AI tools.

So this has made it super easy for anyone to write and send outreach at scale now, not
even just to a small list, but people can, you know, scale that up pretty high.

Um, has that made cold email more effective, or is it just creating more noise?

I will respond right away.

No.

AI did not make cold outreach effective.

And then I will explain why.

I think I will I will look a little bit skeptical about AI because I saw some of the
podcasts before that you had and you know those guys were so excited about AI and I'm just

like right now I will sit and say that no guys, AI is hype just you know, a little bit

I saw the last episode with Chris because he is devoted.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, so it's it's it's gonna it's it may look weird, especially uh if you compare
that the rest of the world is so obsessed with AI, like in the right garrison.

I am so why you're so obsessed with me.

So uh but uh the thing that you need to understand about AI, and you said like it helps
you scale that.

you know weekly or fast and you know the about the volume in fact it all uh were available
before ai but I want to say one thing that you need to keep in mind when uh you look at AI

um in terms of writing emails right now but as I promised we are traveling back in past
when I started in 2019 there was like the popular saying

Uh people send templates.

Cold email templates that were such a popular, you know, we need to find the best convert.

Well, it's it's now it's also n something that people are searching for, but uh at that
time there was like something like let's say AI right now.

Maybe I'm exaggerating, but anyway.

Uh and what AI is actually doing, we all know that AI is being taught.

By what?

By open source data and that means internet.

And as earlier people just searched for the websites where those Hodima templates were
published, they copied and pasted that and send.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And right now, the AI is taught by these templates.

So for me, if we talk about writing of the emails, nothing changed.

In fact, AI produces the same templates that people used in 2020.

And the peculiar thing you may notice uh in your inbox, and you can definitely say right
now that is written with AI.

and it's one of the features that actually um help you detect that it is the AI written
templated email.

Is that the first line?

I hope your email finds you.

Well, I hope my email finds you.

That became a meme already.

But still, if you see this, you can close the email because this person definitely does
not know what they are doing and actually me well.

Probably that's exactly what I said.

They don't they they don't understand what they are doing.

So in terms of writing, uh if if people consider that copy-pasting the template was hard
and right now they can just write um the prompt write an email for me and it's easier for

them right now, maybe it's somehow simplified the life and writing emails in general.

But if we look at the

let's say at the core nothing changed just the way people the the the only way that
changed the the way people find those templates the other thing that is important here to

notice that as far as this is the templates they are generic they they are let's say let's
find an adjective here they are humorless so you won't

find anything there.

So they're like robotic.

In fact, people started detecting those generic robotic messages before AI.

Currently they they have their AI inside their brains that detects that instantly.

Like no, there's AI.

They don't even read.

They just see the patent, closed, block, or send a spam.

And

Uh second part of your question whether it's actually creates noise or somehow make the
life better of those who you know do cold outreach.

Uh it creates more noise.

But I can't say that um so that definitely currently we have uh more emails stand like
cold emails.

There's like definitely a lot of emails.

It's more emails than in 2019.

Actually, there was a trend in the cold outreach, uh and it started way earlier than AI
AI, is that when you send more emails, uh you will get better results.

So more emails, more replies, um, you know, more money.

But it's not that.

And with AI, whether it actually increases that thing, yes, but before that

The prospecting boxes were already flo flooded by the emails, like those templated generic
emails.

And back in the days it was already hard to, you know, catch the person's attention.

Uh right now it's even harder.

But it's not only because of the increase of the noise that AI helped, you know, created
more.

That's also the changes that in fact happens

To all of us.

Uh right now we have so many distractions around us.

Yeah.

And uh we even have, you know, with the TikTok and reels and Instagram, we have the
changes in our attention.

So that uh if I'm not mistaken, it's called popcorn brain.

So you just like

Yeah, people

People uh besides that they have this AI detection in their head, besides that there is a
lot of noise and distractions it's super hard, super hard just just to focus, you know, to

catch their focus.

Mm-hmm.

This is you made a couple points that are really kind of uh insightful for me.

One is that, you know, if AI, we're thinking if we're generating templates with AI, AI is
trained on the templates from five years ago.

And so all we're doing is recreating knowledge we already have.

Not even recreating, just re-spitting out knowledge we already have.

And then the point you make around like our own brains sort of automatically are pretty
good BS detectors and see stuff.

And I know that's always a question with people, like, well, you know, AI is going to get
good enough that you won't be able to do that.

Well, okay, whatever.

But for right now, most people can spot it.

And I think that speaks to one question people might have, which is, well, what if I'm
using AI to personalize my templates?

So that, you know, it says, instead of saying, Kseniia, I hope you're feeling well or hope
you're doing well, mine says, Kseniia, I saw on LinkedIn that, you know, you published an

episode recently.

Isn't that so cool?

love to talk to you and you know they're personalizing it.

But I think even still the auto detection filter, you're still gonna see the pattern and
be like, yeah, this was written with AI.

Um in fact the example that you gave currently it's you know it doesn't um well s it's it
is not well spread right now.

I mean like I saw your post on LinkedIn, people don't use that.

But uh definitely I need to say a good thing about AI.

And you know, I was like

Not trying to force you to.

No, but well, it i it it's obvious because like uh it has bad side and it has good side.

And where it's good it can actually help you research better and faster.

That's where AI is really useful.

ah when we talk about volume, yes, but still it doesn't mean if AI searches for the
information you should you should believe it, like you should rely on it one hundred

percent.

Point.

Yeah.

You need to always remember that and I I think that you saw those videos online that uh AI
is asked to spell the word syllable and say how many L's in there.

And uh the responses are like one, then no no no, think about it.

Two, and you know, maybe in the third response the AI will say yes, there's like three.

So you need to remember this.

This is an AI, yes.

It's technology, it's created but humans people make mistakes, so the technology makes
mistakes for sure.

So yeah, uh in terms of AI, it fastens the process of research.

It help it may help you with analysis, it may help you if you you know, uh do those
things, uh do those steps good.

It may help you actually create personalization.

Mm-hmm.

it's not something that you know you can again delegate to AI.

Uh it's something that r still requires your involvement.

And here's another thing I just that s sli slipped my mind.

Uh I just thought about that.

um recently there have been the term circulating.

Currently we say single signal based

outreach Signal base outreach.

So I think well uh it doesn't mean that it's something new or the terms is new.

No, it's not new, it's something that uh, you know, been in the industry.

But I think right now with this term, all the people that are in the industry that know
what they do, they want to focus people's attention to that, you know, to make the emails

relevant and to, you know, somehow stop that AI noise because

In fact, uh, you know, if you send those generic mails, they don't bring you any results.

And signal-based outreach is that, you know, a lot of examples, like the most typical one
that you hear is that um, for example, someone is hiring uh SDRs, so that means for

example, they are expanding and blah blah blah, or maybe

Um this company got a new VP of sales and he's new he's ready for some new things, you
know, trying blah blah blah.

But it's obvious, right?

So it's like this signal is obvious, but I think um what's also an important thing to
mention here, uh the about the relevance is that when you know your solution pretty well,

you know.

Who you built the solution for, you know, the pain that these people that might be
interested in your solution have.

And you can use this as a signal to reach out to them.

And here's another thing that I want to add about cold outreach is that your initial goal
is not to sell with your first email.

It's not.

Your goal is to see whether there is an opportunity for you and involve the person into
the conversation.

That's what you do.

And then when you start communicating with the person, you actually see whether they are
interested and blah blah blah.

Then you continue the conversation.

That's how it works.

Then you can pitch, then you can go on a meeting with them and blah blah blah, you know,
proceed with the cycle that you have.

It's funny you say that about the um signal-based outreach.

I literally got emails this morning that were those of like, I saw Fastpring recently had
this happen in the market.

Is this the right time?

And I'm like, I ignored him because I know that it's exactly what you're describing.

So let's let's take a look at some kind of of the details and numbers stuff.

most founders who do track anything when they're doing this sort of outreach, regardless
if they're using AI or not.

Um

They're usually looking at open rates.

Is that actually a useful number to gauge success off of?

I I'm thinking whether to keep an intrigue or to say it right away.

But I say No intrigue intrigue.

All right.

I I I just did that previously.

I I r I responded right away, so I think I I I have a right to keep an intrigue.

Um I wanna start with that uh we are humans and we love to create stances.

And uh I look back again at my past experience and about open rates in general, and um I
think we actually created uh the stance for this statistic.

Maybe you know, someone actually created you know this option and you know they need to
sell this.

So, you know, they they made us believe that it's important cold outreach.

But uh here what I wanna say maybe when when there weren't

less noise, you know, about the dinosaurs that who started cold outreach.

For them, open rates may have been a useful um rates because they were like an additional
thing, additional signal to say that your emails are getting delivered to the prospect's

inboxes.

Currently it has no sense in tracking open rates at all.

Because think about this.

The second second, like two seconds after your email is sent, it's already opened.

And it's opened by your email service provider.

By bots, but they by their checkup system.

And think about this.

This is like the first meeting, so to say, with a bot.

On the journey to your prospects inbox, we can only imagine how many times.

Um the email is opened by again the boss of the other mailbox provider, s email email
service provider about antiviruses.

Uh we don't uh have to forget about the internet service providers that also check because
they care about IP uh IP reputation as well.

So when the email lands right now, it has been opened a lot of times.

Yeah.

Not by humans, by machines, let's so to say, but still.

Yeah.

So you cannot say, well, let's say you see in your open rates that it's like five opens,
but you cannot even guess that those opens, at least one, was from a real person.

That's why it's useless.

You need to concentrate on reply rate.

These are the rates that actually sign to you whether you're doing great.

Or not when you don't have replies, it's actually the signal for you to think what you are
doing wrong.

Maybe this is something about your infrastructure, maybe this is with the list.

Maybe, maybe there's something else.

So you need to check these things.

For example, there may be replies, for example, like I'm not interested, is also uh the
signal for you.

Maybe this is not relevant for this segment of people right now.

But anyway replies that's what she need to concentrate on.

So what about um spam?

So a lot of times you send an email, you think like this was seemed like a good email.

I sent this and I'm seeing it's ending up in spam.

Like why why does that happen?

Um I want comment here a little bit about uh writing emails generally in cold outreach.

Uh and about this vision like perfect email.

I wrote a perfect email and boom, nobody responds.

Um or it got to spam.

In cold outreach, you need to keep that in mind that there is no perfect email copy.

Why?

Not because you are bad at writing or something is wrong with you, no.

Just because cold outreach is an ongoing experiment.

Again, as I mentioned before, about the data that you know it's not stable, the email copy
is something that is not stable as well.

And you can even check this within the segment.

For example, this email copy generates a lot of replies with this certain segment of
people, for example, from

This tier of companies or from um this specific industry or country.

And then you take the exact same thing, the pain points, the all those things, they all
the same, but for another segment of people and zero replies.

Even you know, the difference may be in such a tiny circle, so to say.

That's one thing, and let's get back to to the spam.

Um honestly.

Honestly, people I think this is something in our nature.

We cold outreach is something that you you you never saw the person and you want to be
good and you know how can you represent it in text, you know, with the letters, how can

you look good?

And sometimes people start, you know, stuff in their email with the things that in fact

impact their deliverability.

For example, people write the H you use the HTML emails.

And for you to understand how it may look like, think about the marketing email.

But you know, the first thing that comes into your mind that it's something like bright
and blah blah blah, but it's not all.

You know, you can make it pretty good, not that bright, but still it's gonna be created in
HTML, it's gonna be created in the code And that's what

ESPs don't like.

Why they don't like it?

Because this code makes the email heavy.

The same thing here, not the same, but another thing about the heaviness of the email.

Sometimes you may see people write the plain that's gonna be a plain text and people
attach the PDF uh with the catalog, with the sales presentation, whatever.

Also makes the email happy and it may go to the spam box even if everything was good, even
if you're targeting and your offer is relevant for those people.

You know, it's you know, they don't look at it.

They look like heavy get to the in get to the spam.

The other thing uh is that the formatting of the email, like

People sometimes use different colors or different fonts in one of the in one email.

So like you open it the email and you don't know whether it's screaming at you or what is
going on there.

Right.

So that's also what ESPs don't like.

That's a complete spam.

Go.

Go to that corner, so to say, where nobody will see you.

The other thing is um links.

Yeah, it's in fact I would say not only links, it's also tracking the links and tracking
the opens, by the way.

there's another thing not to track opens.

So if you talk about uh open rates, how they are tracked, they are tracked with the
tracking pixel.

Currently the ESPs detect this and they will send you to the spam.

Uh you may find the reason you may you may have a plain text email, but they will send you
to spam and you will see that notification there's like

uh phishing or suspicious links, but you're saying I didn't insert any links, but boom,
you have tracking pixels that you know, ESPs they don't um, you know, have to explain to

yourself to you, you mean I mean why they send you to spam.

Like they found this suspicious and actually it's a tracking pixel, you know, that were
figured out by industry later.

That's why you go to spam.

we go back to the link tracking

And here's the thing, people uh want um their prospect to book a call, visit their
website, I don't know, check this um valuable resource and they all put that in one email.

Uh that's what ESPs don't like.

And there's another thing, as I mentioned previously.

with your cold email you need to establish connection you need to involve the person into
conversation and only then you can exchange the links and you know all that sort of thing

but not in your first email uh that's suspicious for the as looks suspicious for ESPs and
the other you know downfall here is that uh those links you know why do we insert them?

We want to trend them for sure we want to know

Whether people that receive our email they actually follow the link.

And here's another thing: like, again, the links are opened by bots as well.

And uh when we talk about tracking links, um, imagine this: like your link is a candy, and
the tracking link is a wrap.

So the tracking link wraps your link, and when the

ESP gets the email, they see like, hmm, there's like one link and then behind the other
link, they do not match.

They're completely different.

And we all know that this is a common phishing tactic.

I think you once in your life got those emails, for example, from Microsoft.

By the way, you don't use it, but you still need to activate or reactivate your account.

You see that, so there is a link.

Kinda with the Microsoft domain, but when you click on it, you are redirected to somewhere
else.

So that's why that's why links is not something that you need to put in your cold emails.

Interesting.

Which it seems to really make a case for having multiple emails, that your outreach
instead of it instead of viewing outreach as a single email, like stage your relationship

building and when you're going to actually deliver those valuable resources, links, sales
pitches, whatever across multiple emails.

With is that is that fair?

Is that accurate?

Uh yeah.

In fact, well, as I mentioned, we it's so hard to attract people's attention.

And uh we if I say this, I d I don't think that the you know, I I would be people will
throw tomatoes at me.

But we don't like when someone tries to sell us something, even if it's relevant to us.

Even

If you need it, you don't like it and you feel it.

And in most of the cases, yes, from one side, people like you know, they don't hide an
email anything, like they are straightforward, this and this and this and that, but you

feel that they they they want to sell you this and you don't want to communicate with
them.

So yes, you need to let's say not pitch or sell in your quote email, you need to establish
their relationship.

Mm-hmm.

need to involve the person into conversation.

And then, you know, you know what to do then if you if you sell.

Yeah.

What so let me ask about LinkedIn.

So particularly in, you know, um business to business, I would say even in those
environments of D to C, business to consumer, where you're kind of reaching out to

partners and to other founders and other types of outreach, um, there's often like you're
gonna try and reach out to on LinkedIn.

Um does that or I I assume you are.

Does that in fact fit into a good strategy with email?

And maybe you can talk about that for a minute.

Yeah.

It's definitely a good thing to do, but there is one thing that you should not do.

You should not consider LinkedIn as a platform where you just copy paste your email.

So you need to understand the specifics of that.

So so LinkedIn is a social media platform.

You have the option there to chat with people in private messages.

And that means

that like what chat even the word chat actually shows us what you need to do you should be
short be novels so if in the email you actually can write you know the benefits you know

you use more space there and you can you can use that if it's relevant if you describe the
benefits that the person will get but in the email in the LinkedIn the situation is a bit

different so I wanna

give you an example of the outreach that in fact is not good and I I honestly I would love
to talk to that person and just but they don't answer by the way when I ask them about the

you know the their strategy and what they were trying to achieve they don't answer you
know to those questions so I would say just uh what what I got I got is actually one of

one of the practices that can be used.

I got not a big message

Uh and there was the useful resource.

There was something about LinkedIn and you know, I am interested in LinkedIn.

I I post about LinkedIn and blah blah blah.

So it's something relevant to me and yeah, what I followed the link.

And the part in your opportunity here is to start the conversation about what you send to
me.

You use it like a hook, so to say.

You use it like

you know, bait, so okay, I got it.

And we can build our conversation based on it.

In fact, this is the whole idea of sending the person the valuable resource.

But we didn't have a conversation.

In more than a week I received the second message.

It was long, but it was pitch.

Like

Something like I could see uh in my email, you know, it's something like the person just
copied from there and send it to me.

No, it's not it doesn't work that way.

So on LinkedIn, you again, there's like you can chat there.

So it means that the entrance, so to say, is quick.

So you jump into conversation and you need to, you know, catch this opportunity, not leave
it for long or

Bombard a person with the novel on LinkedIn, people won't read it.

People won't read your long messages.

They will they will see that they will we are ske we don't read by the way.

We skim.

Like we find the important words there.

Well, definitely that's a bitch by.

Goodbye.

I won't uh continue conversation with you.

And in l on LinkedIn, when you start this way, for example, these there is another version
how that person

Could um communicate with me uh right away.

For example, he sent to me that valuable resource.

He saw that I opened the message, but for example, I didn't respond to anything.

I checked, and he could use the information that he sent to me.

For example, uh, create a question about the information from that resource and send it to
me, like what you think or.

Do you see and somehow to try again to talk to me in this case?

Yes, the there may be the version you always need to understand that people may ignore
you, so yeah, you need to accept this.

This is the part of cold outreach, but it's another version.

So you so you didn't wait for too long, you gave the person the time to read the resource,
then you got back.

And then you start a conversation with them, maybe they respond, and then again you start
discussing, and naturally you may lead the person to the thing what you're actually

selling while you have this communication.

But here's another thing that works amazingly.

the best thing that you can do in those uh in that tiny conversation, you need um to make
the person feel good.

Mm-hmm.

Uh I'm not talking here about the jokes because you know.

Uh jokes are pretty tricky and especially if you work with the global market.

Um it may be funny in your country, but um, you know.

And yeah.

Not funny at all.

And it's not a good thing to start with the joke.

For example, it's another example of the outreach, uh, a little bit off topic, but again,
just the example of what you should not do.

Uh I received a cold email uh with the subject line Give me your money, and then the
email.

No, I did not kidnap your

family, like relatives and blah blah blah.

And I was like reading and then he wrote like I want your money and we both know it.

And I'm like w I I don't even know what he was uh offering.

Like there was nothing about offer.

So there's about the money.

And like m probably that was a joke where he thought this is a like a kind of a creative
way to attention.

Yes.

He attracted my attention.

But the feelings that I got, uh, they are negative.

So make sure that you create a positive um feelings while communicating with the person.

Let's get back to whether it's a fit for your strategy or not.

combining email and LinkedIn right now, uh for example, you can even not only, you know,
limit yourself with email and LinkedIn, you can also use the phone and make this like flow

uh

But you can also stay with email and LinkedIn.

Why is it why is it good?

we talked about the noise uh a lot.

And um, you know, to stand out in the inbox is super hard.

And besides standing up standing out um in the inbox, there is such a thing as trust.

And let's let's look at this example.

You send your initial email.

We don't know whether the person opened it or not.

We don't know about that.

And then you send the LinkedIn connection request.

Let's use the perfect example.

This person saw you in LinkedIn, connected with you on LinkedIn.

Here's the chance you can continue the conversation on LinkedIn.

We actually discussed earlier what how you can start the conversation.

Or you may leave it as it is and continue.

uh send in the email but engaging with that person on LinkedIn as well.

For example, commenting their posts or liking their posts if they are active.

You also need to look at this thing because not a lot of people are active on LinkedIn,
which is um currently think a huge disadvantage because this is like a free platform where

you can be visible for free.

And

It does not take a lot of effort and it does not take a lot of time.

If we compare this with, for example, SEO or with the paid ads.

Stand out there just with your content, with your personality, with your expertise.

Well, this is like if you if you don't have uh a good LinkedIn profile, think about it.

So you can engage with that person and what that what it kick what it creates.

by the way, a small hack.

make sure to have the same avatar on LinkedIn and in the email.

Person can easily um you know detect you as yeah they may not know your name, but we all
have eyes.

We you know just our brain did not let's say uh it remembers everything but you know gives
that the priority so to say it still remembers so what tactic creates

Next follow-up that you sent, this person may open the email.

Okay, I saw that guy.

Like, oh, he commented on that post, or oh, I just recently uh accepted his invitation.

So it may, by the way, the good thing about the developing your LinkedIn profile, as far
as people have the success to check everything, it's so good, they may go to your profile,

see what you're doing.

Here you can show your expertise and then, you know, if you combine all those those
things, when they read your email, they think, Oh, I saw that guy, he commented on my

post, I saw his LinkedIn, he probably knows who we what he's talking about.

So why not having a chat with him?

Yeah.

So this is how it may work.

That's why you should definitely try.

So this is this is great.

And I even love the little the hacks and stuff.

This is this is really insightful.

Um I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of zoom out for a second and you know, there's been so many
details we've we've talked through.

Um that is probably if if somebody's starting at the beginning because they're a SaaS
founder or they're a small team, um, you know, question is where do I start and maybe what

are the first things I might trip over?

And so if you're a SaaS founder, you're a small team, you're doing cold outreach.

for the first time, what's the mistake that kills you before you even get started?

You know, what what should people watch out for just as they try and begin this sort of
thing?

Um that's a that's n that's simple and uh not simple question at the same time.

Because I can say like infrastructure right away.

This is the most common problem, but I think it starts way earlier and it starts with the
targeting.

the other thing that actually kills everything is wrong targeting.

You may have great infrastructure, you know.

This information is available everywhere.

You just even ask Chat GPT, he will give you the pieces of advice, you know, how to build
your cold email infrastructure.

but uh wrong targeting is something that will spoil everything.

And this is actually the problem that I see so much.

Uh because because why?

Because on the internet they saw that for one of the cases, they saw that like send.

more emails get more results or something like that or I sent uh one million emails and I
got one billion dollars.

You know, people are inspired by those things and they don't think that everyone uh does
not need their product.

That's the most important thing.

So you need to clearly know your customer or your potential customer.

Not only their pain points

um, you know, just to create your solution and blah blah blah, but also understand the
value that you bring to those people.

And uh I would say, I don't know, this time probably uh I will be thrown the tomatoes will
will be thrown.

Yeah.

But uh cold outreach, the successful one is always with small batches of uh leads.

These successful cold outreach campaigns are not the campaigns for million leads inside.

That's the people that were taken, you know, that were gathered, the information was
gathered, they were researched on, they you know what things necessary things were

analyzed.

the personalization was created.

You know, for example, as may we talked about the signals, signals were also included in
that campaign.

And then they send.

Not something like I will send to everyone, you know, because sometimes people think like
you know, they generalize their product uh so much, which is not which is not good.

So this is the first thing you need to to actually take

your focus on that's the targeting.

Who we're gonna target.

Then the infrastructure, because that's the second thing.

After the wrong targeting, that's the second problem where you know you get to to spam
folder or you get blocked because like scenari the scenarios are various.

So like sometimes getting into spam is not that really bad because sometimes you can be
blocked for example by Barracuda that's um

you know, uh the Titan of the block lists and uh, you know, you you definitely you do not
want to have any d anything with them.

It's better to do everything right at the beginning.

So so you kind of got right into my final question, which would be, you know, if somebody
wants to start off and they're starting from scratch, what's a quick list or like how

would they actually step by step set this up?

And you I think you started to say targeting infrastructure next.

Maybe you can just break that out for a second.

What would like my startup list look like?

let's say with the targeting I want to repeat this again.

Uh and when you find the right category of leads that will be interested in you, the other
thing is the data quality.

And we've talked about that.

If the leads may be interested, but the data that you have, the contact information, it's
not valid.

So you need to make sure that the data uh you know, the contacts that they are valid.

This is one thing.

The other thing, that's the infrastructure, and we go.

The best scenario that can you can use is like the Gmail API sender.

This is just the way of the connection.

There is an SMTP, there's an API, so most Gmail has bowls, but it's better to use their
API.

Next, the domain age, we mentioned that it should be not one day old.

It should be one or two years old.

That's important.

The necessary records that you need to set up and no, there are no exceptions.

You cannot miss one and set the rest.

You set you need to set all of them.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, that's for sure.

The next thing is the warm up.

No, you cannot skip it.

I will again repeat it once again.

You can't skip it.

You need to warm up your email account for at least one month.

If we talk about, for example, the sending behavior, in fact, we didn't talk about it
while you know the general conversation that we had, but it's also important because the

part of the infrastructure, why we need so many domains or why we need the email accounts,
because you cannot send one thousand emails from one email account.

That's why you need to have multiple and use.

It's better to use mailbox rotation.

And you cannot send more than fifty emails, but generally and it's better to send twenty
thirty emails per one email account.

So yes per day.

Yeah, pretty you know, this is where people like they have the same expression that you
had because like hey, twenty emails is not a lot.

I just like

Yeah, I in my dreams I had like, you know, those guys said that uh would they send one
million emails and you say me that I I can't I want to repeat that they are success and

you say me just like twenty emails per email count.

Yeah.

So this is one of the important thing.

Uh you need to keep in mind so before you um create your strategy, you need to plan with
your entrance, uh I mean how many email accounts you're gonna have at the beginning.

Because it in factually defines your speed.

Think about it.

Uh the email limits, like those limits, they are distributed not only to the first email.

So for example, if you have twenty emails per d uh I mean like you can send twenty emails
from the email account, you have a list of one hundred people.

So think about it.

For example, the follow-ups, you have this this

The first email, 20 people sent the next day.

For example, in your sequence, those people that got the first email, they should receive
the follow-up, but they won't receive the follow-up because you know the rest of 80 people

didn't receive their first email and the sequence can't go further.

So you need to keep that in mind and calculate how many you need for the entrance.

And then if you want to scale, then you need to plan how fast you want to scale.

And based on that, you go, you know, you create mailboxes, you buy domains.

Uh yeah.

The next thing is the daily, not not daily, but um the interval between sending emails.

Well, for example, uh the c one of the common mistakes, in fact, this is the worst
scenario.

I want to send more emails and I want to send fa them fast.

And they use the five seconds delay.

Super, super small.

And uh by the ESP such behavior, um, you know, it's defined as suspicious.

They start to think that it's probably bots, you know, something artificial, people cannot
send the you know emails, oh, you know, five seconds, every five seconds, so there is

something wrong in there.

So they block.

They can block you just because of that interval.

And again, I will repeat here, you may have best targeting and the great infrastructure,
but but if you have this short interval, you will be blocked or sent to spam.

Uh what is the number that you need to focus on when we talk about the interval?

This is 200, 500 seconds.

And we already mentioned that small batches work.

Mm-hmm.

So uh my personal thing, from my personal experience, when I see the people that say like
I send one million emails, I understand that there was something generic.

Because when you really receive results, you receive results from the list of prospects
that you kinda know.

I mean like I will I will pull a joke here, you know everything about them, what they
drink for breakfast, you know.

Doing the union, but I'm joking, uh we're not talking about stalkin, but this this is uh a
metaphor, so to say, for you to understand that you know those these people and when they

respond to you uh you you you know you don't have to think a lot to continue the
conversation with them because you know them and you start, you know, this happens in

naturally.

So small patches of recipients next tracking.

No tracking, no open, you know, opens no with this is not something that you think about.

Reply rates.

No open tracking, no link tracking.

you know, and danger of it, we actually discussed what may happen.

Yeah.

if we talk about email contact email content, uh no HTML, concentrate on plain text.

With no links, with nothing extra, with you know

Not all those formatting, no, just a simple plain text.

Personalization for sure is everything and anything in cold outreach.

So you need to make the person understand that you're, you know, you know what that you
are talking about, that this thing that you're talking about is relevant.

Well, they might may feel that.

And how you can do that?

We already mentioned about the signals, you can use them and they're perfectly well in
this case.

Uh we didn't talk about spam words, and uh by the way, this is the other thing um that may
actually uh lead you to spam folder.

So you can find those lists in uh the internet, just type that or ask AI if you if you
like AI, you can ask that too.

So the general understanding they will give you the list of

The words that may trigger spam filters.

For example, such words like free, buy, urgent.

You know, sometimes people use that in subject line, urgent.

That may be just a signal for the spam filters to send you nowhere.

The subject line, five ten words, um, the email lands, like 50, 200 words.

But what I can say about the email content.

Here, I just want you to leave with one thought.

We meant I mentioned that earlier, cold outreach is an ongoing experiment.

Oh, you should not stick to one right moment.

Even the data that I'm saying to you right now, this is the data based on the research
that we did inside the company.

But uh, you can find the other data online.

Uh, what I want you to have in your mind.

Is that you always need to try different variants works best for you because you know
better and you you know no one in the world knows what will work definitely for you, so

you need to test, test, test, test.

This is something that you need to go to bed and wake up in the morning with, and uh
preferably it's good if you target Gmail recipients.

Currently, uh, for example, in Snov.io, when you find the leads.

and their emails, you can see where their email is hosted, for example.

Whether it's Gmail or Outlook or some other providers.

So it's better to target Gmail as in combination with a Gmail API.

It's given you better deliverability.

This is like in short

Yeah, that's a great list.

Thank you so much.

this has been an amazing conversation.

It's been very interesting and insightful for me.

I think it will be for folks.

Thank you, Kseniia, so much for doing this today.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um, let's go ahead and wrap up.

I think if people wanna learn more, because there's so much more.

I mean, even as we're closing, I'm like there's a bunch of questions I still wish I we
would have had time I could have asked.

But I think people can probably find you on LinkedIn and then they can get to Snov.io at S
Nov dot Io.

And is that the best way to connect with you guys?

Yeah, yeah, we we have the chat there on uh on the website so you can jump into the
conversation with our customer care agents right away or you can talk to our sales guy.

Yeah, we're so open to see you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Kseniia, so much.

And thank you, everyone, for joining us on Growth Stage Podcast today.

Again, I'm your host, Jesse Paliotto I'm grateful to be able to spend time with folks like
Kseniia here on the podcast and talk about this sort of thing.

So many thanks.

Catch you all on the next one.

Have a great week and cheers.

Thanks, guys.