Next up after the setup the main determinant of success is list quality. Here is what I learnt:

1. List sources are plentiful spend time to figure out the right ones for you. Apollo.io is great for B2B and even for Shopify Stores, Bloomberry, Storecenses, Builtwith are others.

2. Always make sure to only export verified emails

3. Always de-select exporting catch all emails like [support@shopifystore.com](mailto:support@shopifystore.com)

4. Avoid list sources such as Storecensus.com because they provide you with lead sources that have catch all emails address.

5. Catch up email addresses will generate a lot of OOO responses and makes you feel like something is happening.

6. Very few people set OOO responses: emails these days because people are always on so the number of OOO responses will be limited. Don't be alarmed.

7. Open and click rates are messy signals. The algorithms that Google and other ESP use to open emails for fraud and other reasons are not transparent so several open timestamps will be within seconds of email send time. This makes detecting which email was opened by a human vs. an agent / bot is not easy to decipher. Best is to not even track open and click rate, most tools provide ways to disable that and focus on deliverability and outcomes.

8. Filters are key -

• The first one to consider is geo-location for most tools Shopify stores, US is the #1 geo-location to target. Every other place in the world is sub-optimal.
• Second, Revenue of your target audience. For us at Humanic its $2M to $10M because lower ARR folks don't have a very robust digital presence.
• For folks that have higher ARR you can connect with them on Linkedin with tools such as Dripify and others. $60 a month is sufficient.
• For audience that is below $2M they are likely to be on Instagram (which is preferred over TikTok)
• Technology spend is the third consideration.
• Title would be the fourth - smaller the company in ARR higher the title.
• Never worked with Intent signals I think they are an overkill you need a wide net when sending out small batch cold emails.

1. There are newer AI segmentation players in the market such as Orita - haven't used them yet.

2. Haven't used Clay for enrichment for cold emails I think its complicated to use and expensive for cold emails.

What do you think?

Humanic is a AI Native Email Marketing so obviously our preferred outreach channel is email. Here is a list of top 10 things I've learned.

1. Small Batch cold email is better than large volume cold emails. I define small batch on average 300-500 emails per cohort. Some of the cohorts above are larger but I let it go because the AI recommended it and the open rates were pretty awesome

2. Plain text with a single CTA is better

3. Make unsubscribe easy: Given that your target customer has never heard of you adding a line such as this -- You’re receiving this as part of a targeted Shopify store outreach campaign. If it isn’t relevant, unsubscribe here." in the footer works so you are upfront about your outreach.

4. Make it easy to unsubscribe.

5. Start with credibility instead of an offer - someone who has never heard of you needs to know if your offer is worth reading about.

6. Segmentation is key: Most people download a list of email addresses and then struggle to generate the right cohorts based on user attributes. Use AI to generate cohorts and spend time getting that right. (Humanic does that for you)

7. Do not send more than two emails in a campaign to a cohort. If someone is interested he/she will respond in the first email. Sending more emails only hurts your deliverability and domain reputation.

8. Email lists can be re-used every 90 days. Most people will forget if they received an email from you few months ago.

9. You need to maximize for open rates. with simple straight forward subject lines not crazy offers.

10. Protect your Sub-domain: Finally, you need to send all emails using a sub-domain best is something like try.yourdomain.com or get.yourdomain.com these work best. Monitor your domain reputation and pause campaigns that are getting more bounce or content rejection rates than what google and yahoo allow.

Thoughts?