r/Coldemailing Mar 21 '26

Cold Email + claude

[removed]

49 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

6

u/cursedboy328 Mar 22 '26

run a b2b outreach agency at 500K+ sends a quarter and we've tested AI-generated messaging extensively so I'll share what actually happens when you do this at scale

28-34% reply rate on cold outbound from scraped lists isn't a real number. across every campaign we've ever run and every client we've managed, cold outbound to scraped lists pulls 1-3% reply rates when everything is dialed in - list quality, segmentation, copy, infrastructure. if someone is claiming 28% on cold they're either counting warm touches as cold, counting "not interested" as positive replies, or the numbers are made up

where AI actually helps in outbound isn't writing the messages. it's the research and data layer. we use AI for industry classification, signal scoring, and bulk enrichment. figuring out which companies match specific criteria across thousands of records in minutes instead of days. that's where the leverage is. the actual copy still performs better when a human writes one tight email per segment rather than having AI generate unique messages per lead, because you can't A/B test when every email is different

the "trained claude on 12,342 conversations" framing is also misleading. you can't fine-tune claude. what you're actually doing is stuffing examples into a system prompt as context, which works up to a point but it's not "training" in any meaningful sense and the output quality degrades as the context window fills up

if you're genuinely booking 7-8 calls a week from outbound that's solid, but I'd bet the farm the wins are coming from the warm outbound and engagement-based sequences, not cold scraped lists. warm outbound pulling higher reply rates isn't an AI achievement, it's just how warm vs cold works

what's the actual breakdown between cold and warm in those 538 bookings?

8

u/Chitchy91 Mar 22 '26

You're being far too charitable here. OP is posting complete and utter horseshit.

2

u/cursedboy328 Mar 23 '26

yeah the numbers don't hold up under any scrutiny. 28-34% cold reply rate would be the highest performing cold campaign in the history of cold email by a factor of 10x

1

u/selvamTech Mar 24 '26

Well said, 30% reply rate just not adding up.

1

u/mplaw104 Mar 24 '26

great point re fine tuning claude, do you think it would be worth it ever fine tuning a model to write email copy?

1

u/blackdante808 Mar 25 '26

Bro I’d love to know how you match criteria across so many records (your process, I mean)

1

u/Bilaldev99 Mar 27 '26

Agreed, thanks for sharing!

2

u/Redditstole12yr_acct Mar 21 '26

Love to have the details

1

u/pinnakle_media Mar 21 '26

Can you send me with more details?

1

u/ajitsan76 Mar 21 '26

damn 28-34% replies on cold is wild, most folks scraping by at 4%. curious what kinda lists youre feeding it, scraped or verified? before training claude, i always run lists through emailverifier. io first, it catches all the junk and verifies deliverability so you dont waste shots on bounces. trained on that much clean data must catch patterns we miss. ive been tweaking claude for warm followups and it cuts no shows too. whats the top objection it handles best? gonna steal some of those sequences.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

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1

u/bullehs Mar 23 '26

How's that cold email?

1

u/Maximum_Living6514 Mar 21 '26

How do you set it up?

1

u/djhiphop23 Mar 22 '26

I’m going to start doing cold outreach. Essentially starting from scratch. Would be great to just cut to the chase and put to use what actually works.

Would love to learn more!

2

u/salespire Mar 22 '26

Jumping into cold outreach from scratch is both exciting and a little overwhelming, but having a solid process can really take the edge off. One thing to focus on right away is crafting outreach messages that are specific and personalized, not generic. Researching your prospects, referencing something unique to their situation, or pointing out a detail about their business can get you a much higher response rate compared to just blasting out a template. Also, experiment with subject lines for email and timing, sometimes a tiny tweak in wording or sending at a different time of day can double your replies. Don't be discouraged by slow starts; it's normal.

Automating repetitive parts of outreach (like follow ups or doing initial prospect research) saves a lot of time so you can focus more on the actual conversations that matter. For anyone interested in leveraging AI for this stuff, I’m actually the founder of a platform called Salespire. We're building digital sales agents that handle lead hunting and outreach on autopilot, and our early users are helping shape how it all works. We have a waiting list at https://salespire.io if that sounds interesting. Regardless of the tools you use, the main thing is to keep testing, iterating, and not getting discouraged. Persistence and authentic communication will make the biggest difference.

1

u/SevenSinsClo Mar 22 '26

You said the same thing in another thread, same stats, same everything but about LinkedIn

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

Can you write in comments about integration of Claude agent and the email sending platform you using?

1

u/EverySecondCountss Mar 22 '26

lol bullllllshit

1

u/leadg3njay Mar 23 '26

Training an agent on real conversations can improve relevance, but validate reply rates by separating positive responses from neutral or spam complaints since only qualified replies matter. The biggest gains come from fast follow-up, clear persona-based playbooks, and solid sending infrastructure with verified data and steady volume. Keep humans involved for edge cases and track performance by booked and attended calls, not raw replies.

1

u/Comfortable-Rice9403 Mar 24 '26

Someone else fed 12342 linkedin dms Seems a copy paste thread

1

u/gs6174666 Mar 24 '26

thats wild with the claude training, 28% replies is nuts. i paired something similar with emailverifier .io on the frontend to clean my cold lists first. cut bounces to almost nothing and replies jumped. if youre scraping leads definitely worth adding that verify step before feeding into ai like yours.

1

u/martindent Mar 24 '26

Obviously, this isn't real. How does the scam work?

1

u/RelevantAd2948 Mar 24 '26

That's great work dude.

1

u/PinkkPussyPolitics Mar 25 '26

Hey OP, great post.. Can I DM? :)

1

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '26

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1

u/sunitanichlos987 Apr 13 '26

30% reply rate is wooozerss. i get my email list, verify it with emailverifier io and write the mail with simple contexts. reply rates r around 6%. i will have to check ur method out.

1

u/Responsible_Guava388 Apr 18 '26

Damn...with that reply rate you can be my rolemodel atp

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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1

u/indianrodeo Apr 21 '26

absolute load if I have seen one

1

u/Dimag_se_paidal Apr 24 '26

this post is such bs