At any given point in time, there's some

go to market motion that's actually

working right now. And your job as a

marketer [music] is to figure out, okay,

where does that arbitrage exist and how

do I go and execute on that? And in this

episode, I'm having my friend Nick on.

He's sending 250,000 LinkedIn DMs a

month right now. It's actually insane.

He's going to walk through his system

and his process on how he's doing this.

He's going to share his numbers of how

the response rates that he's getting

there are extremely [music] high in

comparison to what he has been doing

previously with cold email. And these

are the exact same leads that he's

sending to both on the cold email side

and on the LinkedIn DM side. And then

he's also going to share this really

unique idea where he's basically talking

about how he's starting to think more

and more as cold email as a marketing

channel, one-to-one marketing channel

that you can basically customize with

AI. And how every cold email you send

can almost be an ad that is specific to

that person that you're sending it to.

And he's going to give you an example of

a company that's doing this called

getleads.io. [music] And if you're new

here, I'm Cody Schneider. I've been

doing marketing for the last 15 years of

my life. If you're listening on Apple

podcast or Spotify or watching on

YouTube, please go and subscribe to the

show. It's how we keep the lights on

here. And if you enjoy this episode,

leave us a review or leave us a comment

or like it. And this episode is brought

to you by graph.com. Graph.com is

everything you need to deploy AI agents

for marketing. What is a marketing

agent? It's just software with some type

of thinking that's based off of a live

data stream. Graph gives [music] you

everything that you need to be able to

go and vibe code the marketing that

helps you grow your business. You just

connect to the graph CLI and you can go

and build and deploy marketing agents

for Facebook ads management, for Google

ads management, for search engine

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that you can imagine you can turn into a

systems and a process on top of graph

the platform. [music] Go to graph.com to

learn more or click the link in the

description below to go get started. All

right, here's today's show.

>> [music]

>> Nick, what's good? He's back. I know you

you just told me I'm camera ready. Like

I'm ready to yap and I've got so much to

say, so I'm happy to have you, man.

>> Dude, I'm I'm excited to yap. I was a

hermit for like the last week and a

half. Just had my Indian engagement and

so my social battery got drained and

I've been just stuck in the crib and now

I'm I'm ready to yap about cold emails,

growth, all of it. So let's let's let's

jump

>> it, brother. I love it. I love it. Man,

you've been talking so much about

LinkedIn DMs. Can we just start there

cuz I just want to download all this

stuff that you guys have been learning.

I know you're sending like a quarter

mill or yeah, a quarter million DMs per

month, I think is what I saw, which is

insane. Talk me through what's

happening. Why is this the biggest

arbitrage that exists right now?

>> Yeah, yeah, it's it's nuts. So

I mean, like let's think about just the

whole entire like outbound space right

now. So cold email and we've spoke about

this like in our last pods and stuff.

It's never been

cheaper, easier, and faster to launch.

Um and so because of that it is

I don't know if my internet is dying

right now.

>> No worries. Kenneth edit this out.

>> Appreciate it. I don't know yeah I I

don't

Can you hear me though?

>> Yeah, yeah, I got you. You're good.

Sorry if

>> Okay. Sick.

>> I look good on my side. I got like 110

up down, so yeah. Let me know if there's

any issues.

>> me. One sec. Let me Let me just double

check.

Um

I just moved into a new place and so

this house is like a an aluminum box.

>> I understand. Dude.

>> Yeah, it might be me. Let's see. I think

it should be good now. Let me see if I

can

>> fine, yeah. It'll It'll upload the um

the HD in the background, so it I can

hear you well. You're Everything's good

on the audio side, so you should be

chilling.

>> Bet. All right, cool.

>> Yeah, I'll pick it up in a bit. I'll

just start from the top if you're down.

Um

I'll just see the

>> Yeah, let's do it.

>> Uh so tell me about LinkedIn DMs. I know

you're sending like a quarter million a

month right now. It's insane. Tell me

what's going on there.

>> Yeah, and and it's it's absolutely nuts.

Yeah, we're about a quarter million

LinkedIn InMails only on like LinkedIn

DMs across all Clearly customers. Man,

we're probably way over a million plus

per month. Uh and so we we see a lot of

activity and a lot of data on LinkedIn

and you know, if you just

step back a little bit, you know, you

think about the whole entire outbound

hemisphere, right? Like cold email it's

never been cheaper, easier, faster to

launch cold emails than ever before.

Because of that, that channel is just it

is crowded. It's not to say it doesn't

work. Cold email still works. We do it

for, you know, what? Uh 250 plus

clients. We send over 2 million emails a

month. Uh it's still a great channel,

but like if you have a hard offer, and I

would say most people do. They they

don't have anything that really

separates them from the rest of the

market. They don't have something that

can really convert on cold. They're

maybe in a competitive or a commoditized

space. And like let's take a simple

example, like SEO for dentist. Super

hard to sell via cold email. But when

you take it to channels that are harder

to scale, um and are a little bit more

quiet like LinkedIn,

the results are just insane. And so like

if you if you hit my Twitter or my

LinkedIn, I've posted about this and

shown like, you know, clients where we

do LinkedIn for and then we do cold

email for and it's literally like three

X the reply rate, almost double the the

positive reply rate, and it's even with

the most bland offers. And so like we we

had and it was like one of our first

clients when we actually figured out how

to scale InMail.

They did SEO for dentist. And I was

like, there's no chance this works. Cuz

I was like, what dentist is on LinkedIn?

Um and it did work. And it and it was

getting leads. It didn't get like a

crazy amount of leads because it's, you

know, hard offer. But compared to email,

dude, it outperformed like crazy. And I

it just it just blew my mind. Um but it

it's just it like the the pendulum's

going to

consistently swing, right? And and it's

just to go to what market and what

channel is just less crowded, right? And

so right now it's LinkedIn. If you asked

me this 4 years ago, I would have said

the complete opposite. I would have said

email.

Um and so like right now if you're a

legion agency or if you're trying to,

you know, do any kind of outbound, you

got to find these channels that just

aren't as crowded cuz you could have

a way you worse offer. You could be in a

competitive space and you just will get

naturally better results. You don't have

to do like the 10-step thing you're

doing with email and doing all this like

clay personalization. Like you could

literally just say, "Hey, I saw that

you're not ranking really well in your

city. Can I help you?" You can do that

with a cold call. You can do that with

LinkedIn and it just it just rips.

>> No, totally. I I think that it's just a

piggyback off this. Like this point

you're making is so important. Like

every business type like has channels

that are saturated and like your job is

to go to the places that like it's not

saturated, right? Um So like your

I think your example on the the dentist

is perfect. But I mean we see this in

paid ads all the time as well where it's

like if it's a more competitive market,

right? Like it's a more mature

competitive landscape. Like you the the

ads you have to, you know, create and

run to actually like compete there, like

you you have to be in the top 1%, top

0.1%. In contrast, like if the market is

not super competitive that you're going

into, the creative to win there, you

just have to like throw up an ad, right?

And it will it will

>> [laughter]

>> it will be successful. And I think

that's the thing that people, you know,

for don't think about a lot of the times

with like what they're doing is is

there's this like moment in time where

you can catch that early part of the

wave. And like that is like part of the

job if you're trying to find like out,

you know, outsized returns with

whatever, you know, the resources you

have is to identify that. And it sound

you know, it sounds like LinkedIn DMs

are the actually the way to do this. Get

talk to me like tactically. Like what

are you act guys act actually doing? How

are you sending that volume? What does

that look like? I know everybody that's

listening to this has probably done

something where they've like got some

automatic connection request thing and

then like you know, whoever

they do like a a sequence drip nurture

after that. But how are you guys

actually doing this to to get to the

scale that you're talking about?

>> Yeah, and then uh

it's more I mean, we we used to be kind

of secret about it cuz it was kind of

like the secret sauce for a little bit,

but now it's like more publicly known.

So, I'm happy to like break it all down.

>> Yeah, yeah. So,

>> there there's two types of things on

LinkedIn, right? There's like an InMail,

which is like LinkedIn's email product,

right? So, like that's different from

uh their just regular connection kind of

stuff, right? So, when we talk about

doing a quarter million

uh volume on LinkedIn, we're talking

about InMails. And historically, with

InMails, you're you're getting like it's

a paid LinkedIn product. You get a Sales

Nav license, and they give you only like

50 credits to use per profile or per

license. And what happens is uh you

know, you you

can basically send an InMail, which is

LinkedIn's email, and you know, get

charged a credit. But what

has happened is on LinkedIn, they have a

setting in there called open profile.

And everyone knows about this, like it's

a setting where basically, you can turn

your profile to have an open profile

status, and if someone sends you an

InMail, it doesn't actually charge you

that one credit, right? And with like

Sales Nav, like you can't scale that, 50

messages per month. Like it it it it

literally comes out to like if you do

the the cost per credit, like almost a

dollar 30. So, it's like imagine sending

a cold email, and you're paying a dollar

30 per every email. Like it it just

doesn't scale. Like it's not a channel

that people are like, "Yo, this would

make sense to do."

Um and so, what you can do is use

different APIs. We use this one from

Appify to basically identify which

profiles have that open profile status.

And then you could just target those

specifically, cuz you don't get charged

an InMail credit. And and like

everyone's known about that. That's not

no secret sauce, it's nothing new. Um

you could scale it, whatever. But where

the secret sauce is is on Sales

Navigator, there's a totally legitimate

use case with like sales consultants,

fractional roles, recruiters, where they

basically have multiple Sales Nav

licenses attached to their profile.

Right? And so, what you can do now is

send

and stack these licenses and rotate in

and out of them to send mass amounts of

InMails. So, basically how the math

works out is per Sales Nav license, you

can send about 600 800 open profile

InMails. Like, even though it's an open

profile, they still put a limitation on

the amount you can do. And then if you

stack like four of them, you know, 4 *

800 3200 InMails you can send from a

profile safely without actually using

paid credits. And like then you kind of

keep going further and you say, "Okay,

like how can I make this an actual

scalable like profitable channel that

doesn't cost me a lot, doesn't risk my

LinkedIn profile?" Then you kind of keep

going down the rabbit hole. And so,

basically, you know, allegedly, you

could go on Fiverr and find people from

like other countries that sell LinkedIn

Sales Navs at discounted rates, right?

So, you're not paying the $100 you pay

in America, you're paying the rate in

India, which is like, you know, 30

bucks. So, like, you know, what is that?

Like a 5x decrease on cost? Um and so,

you know, you huge savings there, right?

And then

and then and then it goes even further.

It's like, "Okay, well, I only have my

one LinkedIn profile. Like, do I stack

like 20 licenses on there?" No, you're

you're going to get restricted, you're

going to get banned. You could allegedly

find vendors that, you know, go find

SDRs in other countries and rent their

profiles out to make some extra side

money. And so, now you have the

scalability of getting profiles, you

have the scalability of stacking

licenses to send massive amounts of

InMail. And because it's just a channel

where you get way less volume,

like the reply rate, the

positive reply rate, the lead rates just

jumps up. And so, that's that's the

entire playbook. Use Appify to identify

open profiles. Use any vendor on link or

on Fiverr to go find Sales Nav discounts

for you know, profile rentals. Just type

in LinkedIn avatars, you'll find a whole

bunch. And just run like that's the

sack. And then you could use pretty much

any sequencer cuz a lot of the

sequencers are starting to find out that

you can rotate these Sales Nav licenses.

So, I think Aim box and a couple others

they are

building out like the setup to be able

to rotate the Sales Nav licenses

internally to the tool. We actually

built our own for it just cuz we have a

couple more checks and stuff we do in

place. And

like I did simplify it, but like that is

I would say 90% of what

>> level that's that's how it functions.

>> Yeah.

>> I It's funny, man. Like I've heard this

a similar struc- I know this guy I'm I

might have him on the podcast at some

point. I'm

but if he if he wants to come on, but um

he sends uh 600,000

uh

LinkedIn DMs per month. Um he connected

with me cuz he's like, "I need something

to sell on this like Canon that I have."

>> [laughter]

>> Um but HighLevel uh what what they do so

he runs a staffing agency. It's

basically like for general purpose VAs

in the Philippines. And to be like a

part of his program, you have to give

him access to like your profile, and he

basically goes and like places you is

the idea. Um but for them what they're

doing is uh I mean he just has it

connected to some I think he's using

HeyReach or Bot Dog or one of them,

right? And it it's basically just like

sending from the profiles that are

connected. So, he's you know, it does

the connection request and then sends

like a sequence.

But he was uh the data he showed me

though is like his cost per engagement

was like

I think it was right around like 2

cents.

And so he's like when he

>> ridiculous.

>> W- Yeah. So, when when we when we did

the math, it was like the cost per

thousand impressions, basically. Like if

you thought about it as like a marketing

channel, um was was cheaper than like

anything that you could buy across

Facebook, across Google, across across

anywhere else. And so, anyways, it was

just like this really interesting way

that he was like talking about it and

thinking about it. And I think that more

and more people are starting to realize

that I I have some friends that do this

where they get like South American, um

uh like Brazilian, you know, Colombian,

uh etc. They have them do like ID

verification, and then they take those

profiles and they're doing like

outbounding with that, right? Um that

also can structure. I think what you're

talking about is even like a gnarlier

scale than what, you know, anything else

I've seen that was

>> Yeah.

>> But the cool thing, too, is like, you

know, with email, like you're kind of

always having to do spin tax and

worrying about deliverability and doing

all this like technical stuff to kind of

land, right? But like there is no spam

filter, really, with with LinkedIn. Like

they do have this other folder, and like

there's some things that, you know, get

you there. But for the most case, like

you can just put links in your first

initial message, you know? Um and so,

it's like if you have a no-brainer

offer, you could literally just say,

"Hey, feel free to chat with me here,"

and just put your calendar link, and

you'll get bookings. Um which is pretty

pretty cool to see.

>> Um and so, yeah, there's there's

there's just tons there. And you know,

the thing I always tell customers, too,

is like, you know, if you go look at

your LinkedIn today, you will have found

maybe one InMail. But if you go look

inside your actual inbox that you

operate out of, you would have had at

least 10 cold emails, right? And so,

it's it's strictly a function of that of

why it works so well. And then you just

got to figure out how to scale it. And

like your your cost per message sent is

definitely more expensive than email,

right? Probably by like three or four X.

But when you kind of take the math down

further and say, "Okay, like what's my

cost per positive reply?" It's it's just

way cheaper.

Um and so, that's that's why it's just

such a good channel.

>> No, I love it, man. Um Okay, so company

types that you're seeing this work for.

I mean, you just said dentists. Like

what what are the other Like if you're

if you're a company that's listening to

this, what is who is a who is this a

good good option for?

>> So, anybody that's selling and and and

actually one other thing I forgot to

mention.

If you use Appify, they have really good

and like this is generally good for any

kind of LinkedIn

uh

outbound.

Appify actually has a couple scrapers on

there where you can identify if

someone's been active on LinkedIn in the

last like 30 to 45 days. And if you

target like your segment of your ICP

that has been active on LinkedIn, like

your reply rates will almost like

double. And so, that's that's like a

critical thing to do on on any LinkedIn

outbound. But, markets that are doing

really well, dude, like I I it's it's

crazy. Like, I haven't found a market

that hasn't done well, you know?

And so, it's like

if email isn't working,

I would just jump into that immediately.

And like

yeah, like any kind of service-based

business, it just it just crushes. B2B,

obviously, like everything like that. It

yeah, it just it just crushes across the

board.

>> No, totally. I I that makes a lot of

sense. I it's really that that mark or

that target customer that is again, it's

that

Who who's spending time on LinkedIn?

Like, that is who you're going to be

getting in front of, right? Like, that

is who

>> Oh, 100%.

>> doing a lot of experimentation with

Instagram DMs lately, Nick. It's been

pretty funny. We found this partner They

literally have like I think an army of

humans in I want I think it's India that

like actually send the messages, but

they expose an API for us. So, like you

can we're sending like 10,000 DMs a

month right now on on Instagram for I

think it's like $500 in infrastructure.

Um but the

it's been fascinating. Like, these

there's these like SMB categories where

they like they live on IG, right? Like,

for example,

like, you know, say you're selling to

like tree trimming businesses. Like,

they spend a lot of time on that cuz

like their job is like they do before

and afters of the trees that they trim,

right? Like, that's their like lead gen

strategy.

And then, you know, you hit them with a

DM that's basically doing with like

whatever the offer is, etc. But anyways,

we're really early in this, but the

results have been really fascinating.

Like cuz it I don't think anybody else

is really doing it there cuz it's just

like a harder system to to implement.

And it feels really like you know,

again, just to reiterate and kind of

beat this dead horse. Like the whole

point that we're trying to get across is

like the art There's arbitrage that

exists in like all marketing channels,

all go to market you know, channels. Um

like at a given point of time, like your

job is to identify that, find that, you

know, here's a couple of you know,

handful of them that are that are

working. So, okay, taking a step back,

tell me about email. So, it is still

working, but it's become I mean, the

landscape I mean, we've seen this

universally across everything that we

are doing as well, right? Where like the

reply rates like just I I mean, it's

it's just gotten it's it's it's red

ocean, right? And it's it's it's so much

easier than it was even 2 years ago to

to do this at scale. Um I'd love to hear

from you what what you're seeing work.

Something that we are obsessing with is

like we have to find some type of

hand-raising signal, whether that's like

you know, they're hiring or they're

interacting with certain LinkedIn

content or etc. But I'd love to hear

from you guys like how you guys are

approaching it. Like what are the things

that you're finding work right now?

>> Yeah, in

like our old playbook, which was like

our 2021 playbook, which is, you know,

let's go pull a big list, let's run

volume, direct response offer, you know,

and then let's have a conversational

CTA.

Like that worked amazing. Now,

it works only if you have an incredible

offer. Um and so, the way I think about

outbound specifically on cold email is a

little bit different. It's more of like,

okay, let's, you know, map out the

entire TAM and then go identify as many

contacts as we can that, you know, are

working within that TAM. And

what you want to do then is start like

identifying like certain signals to be

able to sub segment your your campaign

into as many like mini campaigns as

possible. And then like with those mini

campaigns you segment it by like your

actual infra provider or like you know

what like segment it belongs in when it

comes to their infra and then you can

kind of like cross match your infra to

there and and write the campaign in

certain style so you have a better

chance of delivering. And so it's a lot

more

work per se compared to before but like

you just have to think of it more of

like

like a marketing channel, right? And and

so it's like you know, how can you get

as many eyes as possible?

And and how can you do all the tiny

little things that give you an extra

push on delivery? And so a good example

of this is actually funny enough we're

running outbound for for one of my

friends. He actually just released funny

enough you're on that tool now too

called Get Leads. And so like

>> it's epic.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's been we've been

We start there and then waterfall and

rich from that. So anybody that's

listening it's you should please go

check it out. It's one of these like

unlimited

Go ahead. You can probably tell it

better than I can, so.

>> I mean it's a no-brainer, right? It's

like unlimited for 500 bucks a month you

access their entire database. You can

get it via API or write in your AI

agents. Like it's a no-brainer. So like

for it's a core of like what we'll use

to kind of be able to be able to like

splice and dice our list. And so like

for him like we basically went into his

database and we mapped out his entire

TAM which is legion agencies for the

most part. That's like the main segment

that he wants to sell into. And then

we're slicing it by the type of you

know, we're using a Disco Gen which is

inside of Disco Light which just

basically does like AI research at scale

like ClayGen. And then we're we're

slicing the list to say, "Okay, what

channels do they provide?" Right? These

legion agencies are they cold email, are

they cold call, are they LinkedIn? And

then we create specific messaging based

off of that, right? So it's like if

they're pure cold call agency being able

to say something more specific on the

lens of hey, like would you be

interested in unlimited phone number

enrichment that works directly outside

or directly inside of your AI agents

like Claude. Um it'll probably help

reduce your cost for your uh cold call

agency, right? God, that's probably

ripping right now. I can You know what I

mean? Exactly.

>> [laughter]

>> Oh, insane. Like

It it it's cool, too, cuz like I mean

his his I'm like this is the other thing

with cold email. It's like I've changed

my views on a lot of things cuz I used

to not think of it as like a marketing

channel and I I used to think for like a

PLG SaaS, this is like not the greatest

channel to really scale with. But like

he's been a real good test case study

customer where I'm like, wow, like

there's just so much you could do here

now cuz of like all the AI that's out

there cuz like

yes, is it more competitive today? 100%.

But 5 years ago, it was almost

impossible to do these campaigns

unless I sat there for a whole day and

did everything like one at a time. Like

I could literally just speak into Claude

and get all of this slice and dice and

put together and and and then be able to

just run massive volume really quickly.

And so it's like being able to really

sub

sub segment your list to create these

like like little tiny miniature

campaigns within your ICP to create

super relevant messaging is just

printing. And then it's like you take it

a step further, right? So now you have

let's say

all the cold call agencies, you have

that specific message variant. You then

take that and you use Google's free DNS

endpoint to identify, you know, are is

that user using uh

a security email gateway? Are they you

know, just a regular Google user? Are

they a regular Microsoft user? Are they

um I mean, I guess are they are they

using like an SMTP, right? As like the

recipient's inbox. And then you can kind

of do a lot of things on the monitoring

side to make sure you deliver better. So

it's like, you know, right now we're

seeing a lot of security email gateways

be super sensitive and so they'll spike

up your bounce rate. So as soon as we

see that, we'll just pause it, right? Um

cuz we don't want those bounces to spike

up um and we know we won't probably land

in there as well. And so then it's like

it just makes it easier more on the

management side I guess cuz it's like

you don't have to pause all the

campaigns. You just pause that one

specific one where it's like cold call

agencies, security email gateway. And

then we keep our

you know, cold call agencies Google,

cold call agencies Microsoft alive. And

then you can kind of like

play with a little variance here and

there cuz like for example with

Microsoft, we see Microsoft actually in

the last week or so has gotten a lot

easier to land in. But then we can like

do stuff like you know, uh

adjust the copy to be shorter because

the reply rate is low. So then I know I

can inbox better. And then on Google

maybe it's the opposite. So it's like

having that kind of like organization

and structure is very important in my

opinion. And then to kind of take it all

back, the other thing too is like the AI

agents have just gotten so much better.

So like I bet you on one of our first

pods, I was probably like a huge hater

on like inbox managers or AI inbox

management. But now it just it just

works really good cuz like you can have

it integrated really tightly with your

CRM so you can see whenever someone

signs up and turns into a customer. And

so with Ryan for example, we have an AI

agent that replies to emails in like 10

seconds. It just pushes them straight to

go sign up. And then it has follow-ups

queued and based off of if it converts

in their CRM as a customer or not. And

so it's like that's the stuff that can

actually, you know, allow you to run

cold email as a like a an acquisition

channel for a PLG SaaS.

>> channel, right? I I want to go

>> Yeah.

>> on this real quick if you're cool with

this.

>> Let's do it.

>> Like

so I had ran this test. This was like

probably 4 years ago and we just like we

cold emailed 100,000 people that were

like a target cuz this is for another

company um not Graft but something else

I was working on back then and

we I was just curious. I was like, you

know, if we if I get in front of enough

people, like even if they don't respond,

even if they don't

like you know, they just open the email,

like will we see results from this? And

what we found is that like, 1% of all

the people that we contacted would sign

up. And then it would be just like a

normal funnel on a from a conversion,

you know, standpoint. It was like just

product led growth. And so this like for

me this was this epiphany of like, oh,

if I can get cold email cheap enough,

like it's literally a marketing channel.

I should think about it as like the cost

per impressions. And then we started to

do the math of like, oh, if we send

enough volume, like we will get enough

people to like sign up for this, right?

So, anyways, um I think what you're you

described is like the you know, the the

the version two of that, where it's

like, okay, now it's not just like

sending with like a generic offer. I'm

relating it to the business.

And right in like I can have an agent

now go to their website, consume all

like, you know, every page on their

website, understand what they are as a

company, and then like write basically

this perfect ad

that is in, you know, maybe you have

some type of template and structure, but

it's based off of what their actual

business is.

And that one-to-one email, you know,

turns into

uh like something that resonates

directly with them. Like imagine, you

know, again, just to realize this for

the people that are media buyers that

listen to this. Imagine like having an

ad that's like a one-to-one ad.

Everybody gets the like a unique ad to

them based off of like their specific

like, you know,

challenges or or or or or you know,

their specific information about

themselves. Like this is that this is

that that core idea. And then what you

said there of like, we now have it

respond

driving them into the funnel, right?

Like a huge like this this would be

impossible to scale with a human

previously, but now we can actually have

the scale at a level that you know,

never was possible before. So like this

actually it's like to your point turning

into this like one-to-one marketing

channel. And like yeah, maybe response

rates are super low,

but [laughter] it hypothetically like it

this could be the if you just think

about it in the marketing context, this

is actually probably like a cheap

channel, you know, in comparison to what

you're paying on, you know, paid ads or

across any of the platforms that

actually work for B2B, so.

>> Yeah, and and the other thing too that I

forgot to mention is like, okay, you can

relate it to the industry, which is

great, but then when you actually have

the person, right? So, like for Ryan, he

was like, "Dude, I just want every lead

gen agency to know about us, right?" And

and every person that works in that lead

gen agency. So, he's like, "Dude, you

can hit up the finance person and talk

about, hey, like on the P&L, are you

guys spending a lot on phone number

enrichment credits? Uh because our APIs,

you know, unlimited at 500 bucks per

month, let's help you reduce your cost."

So, it's like, if you're reaching out to

a cold call agency and you just pulled

the finance world, which you typically

wouldn't hit up because it's not, you

know, usual for your product, but then

you kind of relate it to the cold call

agency and the finance world, like

that's a banger campaign.

Um and it just gets conversations going

and and and I mean, it's it's working

for him. Like I I always think back to

on POG SaaS, like

sometimes

if you can't execute it at, like, this

high of a level,

it's usually not worth it. And

I I always think back to as well, like,

there might be better channels to like

like turbo scale with, but when you're

going from brand new, from scratch, from

zero, and you're trying to just get like

your first thousand users,

like

easiest way to do it, in my opinion. Um

and and like it can get you there. But,

like, if you're trying to go from a

thousand to ten thousand, you might have

to like really crank the volume, you

have to have a massive TAM, and you have

to like do all these extra layers and

have it like on a really plug-and-play

system um to be able to get there, but

it is not to say it's not impossible. Uh

but yeah, like everything on on using it

for a POG SaaS, it's it's just

completely changed. And and it now it's

like

like I was kind of getting bored of just

doing like the typical cold email stuff,

which is like, "Hey, let me pull a list.

Let me do some personalization and just

run volume." Like, I'm like, "Dude, I

got to I got to go ham with this." Uh

and so, yeah, it's it's been fun. Um

but yeah, it's it is definitely more of

an intense engagement, so um shout out

to Ryan.

Uh we we ran into quite a few bugs.

>> Yeah, I can imagine. I I can only

imagine how much data I mean we we ping

that thing like ridiculous and it's been

incredible for us on our side. The

I'm I'm curious how you're thinking

about this in the landscape cuz I know

you guys are doing like cold calls as

well and like

>> Yeah.

>> Dude, direct mail and cold calls are

back right now. It's insane but like

we're having [laughter] success with

both of those.

Sorry.

>> know Do you know what's crazy?

Uh so we I I like monitor all Legion

agencies websites. We have like a whole

like play for that and and it's more

just for like market analysis but I was

reading the report from this month and I

actually saw three agencies that are

Legion agencies actually add direct mail

as a channel on their site and I was

like, "Oh, that's crazy. The channel is

definitely coming back." So my eyes are

like, "Oh, okay. Maybe I need to go like

play around and test this."

But yeah, it's it's crazy. It's just

something to point out but cold calls

are really cool. Yeah, I'm

learning a lot there. It is super hard

to scale as like a service. Like if you

And and like me and Daniel like cold

email is we talk about this all the time

where we're like, "Dude, whoever can

figure out how to scale a remote call

center

like from an operations standpoint,

they're looking at a 20 to 30 million

dollar per year business. Like there's

so much opportunity there. There's been

no large company that hasn't built a

remote call center and if you can't

build a remote one, the issue is is that

your

your cost is going to be super high so

it's not going to be like a a sexy high

margin business which I I see obviously

everyone wants

the the agency side of things but

yeah, it's

it's it's it's a ton of learning.

I think the the cool things on the cold

calling side that I've learned is

playing with a lot of like AI voice

agents. So one thing we've been testing

right now is

when we have like super high volume cold

emails running and this is what we do

internally. We have an SDR that calls

all the positive replies. But what

happens is we get like 10 to 15% of our

pause replies happen after the SDR logs

out. So, then the logical answer is

like, "Can I find, you know, an SDR to

work, you know, the first start of the

shift and then have an SDR that works

and at does the second start of the

shift and then have 24/7 like,

you know, uh coverage. But, like we

don't get enough volume for that second

to really make sense. And so, then I was

like, "Okay, let me try some AI voice

agents." And I typically don't find AI

voice agents to be good, but uh Close,

the CRM, they released their version,

which is called Chloe. And dude, it's

it's it's actually really good. It

sounds human. And it can integrate with

your CRM. So, if you have like

everything integrated from your CRM to

your sequencers and you're having all

your replies piped in, you could

basically set up a workflow where it's

like, "Hey, after my SDR logs off, so

weekends as well as after hours, Chloe

can actually call the lead when I get a

pause reply from cold email, qualify

them, and book them onto my sales team's

calendar." And that to me is like, bro,

that's insane. So, now you have 24/7

coverage. Is it better than a human yet?

No, but for those 15% of replies that

are coming after hours, you still need

speed to lead. You still need to be able

to hit them. And that's where something

like Chloe really comes in and and it's

an interesting space. It's it's

definitely getting better. Um

I'm interested to see if like TCPA ever

makes like AI cold calling where you're

hitting just raw lists legal. Right now,

it's illegal. But, yeah, I don't know. I

I think it's a cool space.

>> Dude, I see all these startup founders

right now on Twitter talking about this.

And like also like cold texting people

and I'm like,

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Y'all like I I

>> [laughter]

>> I know people that have gotten hit with

this, like the $500 per call or per

message. And it racks up

>> It's brutal.

>> so fast. Especially if you're using like

a multi-dialer. Like I saw this kid

that's doing like 300 text messages a

day to a list and I'm like, even even

though it's him manually sending them,

allegedly. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Yeah,

you're manually sending my ass." But,

>> [laughter]

>> that so quickly turns into like a

massive fine that actually, I mean, you

you will get your ass handed to you, but

um I I just want to come back to the to

your workflow. So, so your uh cold

email, um positive response, uh and then

basically you're like immediately doing

the cold call after that positive

response occurs. So, that Is that the

sequence? And then that's where Chloe

like closes fitting into that? Is

basically doing that call?

>> Exactly. And like yeah, you have to like

if if you keep going a little further

into it, it's like, "Okay, you could do

LinkedIn and cold email." So, you're

tracking both in your CRM. So, basically

like what our flow looks like is we have

Master Inbox set up, which is like a

tool that integrates both Smart Lead,

which is what we use for our email

sequencing, and then HeyReach for our

LinkedIn sequencing, and then we have

like our own like Leadbird integration

that pushes our InMail replies into

there. And then we have a webhook set up

to send all incoming and outgoing

responses through Master Inbox to our

CRM, which is Close. And then what we're

doing is basically setting up a workflow

inside of Close where we run enrichments

for every positive reply. If a phone

number is found, we assign it to the

SDR. If it's after hours, it goes to

Chloe.

Um and then if no number is found, then

it's just going to our SDR to manually

reply. And then if it's after hours,

we'll use uh Master Inbox's AI agent to

actually do the back-and-forth handling.

Um and that's that's kind of how we're

having like speed to lead, which I think

is a huge thing for converting more

positive replies into booked meetings.

Um and then yeah, that's basically the

entire workflow in in a nutshell. Uh one

thing to add, but actually I guess two

things. One is like an opportunity for

anybody listening. I think there's a

huge opportunity for

like these AI voice agent guys to

integrate with sequencers like Smart

Lead and uh Instantly.

I think that's an immediately like an

immediate $150 to $250,000 per month

business

for whoever can do that and sell

strictly to legion agencies and just,

you know, do as much as you can to

integrate really nice and neat with

them.

Um

And like it doesn't break TCPA from what

I know, I'm not a lawyer, maybe someone

can tell me better. But like if you're

calling someone that's showing some

level of interest and is replying to you

and you're just calling that person in,

you know, I think you're green. And if

you could also handle the phone number

enrichment as well for a lot of these

founders. And yeah, just just have that

playbook in. Like I think that's an easy

$150,000 to $200,000 per month business.

The second thing is is like if you're

using a CRM and and like

what AI has done in this space is just

insane. Like

you see the you used to need a full-time

revops person to be able to set up your

CRM. I used to hate my CRM because I

would have Zapier hooked up to it and

have like 15 little zaps that would just

break all the time and I couldn't do all

these things properly. But if you hook

up like Close or any CRM that has an MCP

or a good API into Cursor,

dude, you can build the craziest stuff

ever. So like you can ask Cursor to spin

up an AWS server

on Lambda and then you can have it, you

know, give you a webhook that you use to

basically push all your data back and

forth into. And then you can have it

basically help you design your entire

sales ops and sales workflows. And the

cool thing is is that like it's

it's AI, so it's like fluid and and it

can understand your contacts and what

you're trying to accomplish. So it will

remember all these different like custom

property fields that you built in your

CRM and change them and update them and

do all these things. And so then

you have your CRM kind of living on, you

know, AWS's server and you have all your

tools and stuff integrated into that and

pushing and pulling data out of it. It

actually works the way it's supposed to.

And like that to me has been also

probably one of the biggest revenue

drivers for us in Q2, is just like

having our CRM work at such a high level

that has never been able to do before

because we were using Zapier for duct

taping all our tools together and now

it's like

it's all built via cursor. We just speak

to cursor and like I have full overview

of it. I don't have to involve my dev

team and it just allows me to make our

like our outbound so much more efficient

cuz like I think that's like where a lot

of people are are dropping outbound and

and where why they think like cold email

and outbound suck. It's like it's easy

to launch campaigns now. It's like it

takes two seconds. It takes a voice note

with Claude, some MCPs.

But it's like

driving the positive reply into a booked

meeting or into a sign up is so much

harder and being able to, you know, if

someone drops the ball, doesn't respond

to you, doing the follow-ups, okay, they

still haven't engaged you, having that

data in your CRM and then running

reactivation campaigns every quarter,

like that stuff is so hard

operationalized and it's the things that

are absolutely to be able to get the

most juice out of your outbound and

that's where everyone's just dropping

the ball. And so it's like AI has now

allowed you to to do this at such a good

scale without having to hire a rev ops

agency or a rev ops person. And so I

think that's that's the entire game

right now. It's like you just have to be

so integrated and in depth with AI

and just speak to it and it allows you

to just make outbound like a super

scalable infinite channel.

>> Dude, 100% agree with all of that. I

think the big thing too is that the old

CRMs don't feel like they're ready for

this, right? We just migrated or helped

the company migrate from HubSpot to 20,

which is like this like newer startup by

we've been pretty impressed with, but

it's basically instead of building their

own custom solution, it's like the

underlying infrastructure for the agents

to interact with. Um

I also just want to double click too on

like giving your sales team like a cloud

code instance with these API keys with

access to this, right? Like their their

job should not be thinking about ever

enriching the CRM, right? Like they

should just be doing like sales motions

and that's naturally like happening in

the background,

really like passively as much as

possible, right?

Um It it it it it turns it from like a

job to be done that they have to like

think about and manage and like waste

their mental bandwidth to like no, it's

just like a system of record that is

actually useful to me. So, I mean we're

just seeing this like across, you know,

everything that we're doing. We're like,

"Okay, what is what is your day-to-day

look like? Like how do we give you like

a coding agent that basically enables

you to do that job and like whatever

you're working on be thinking about how

can I automate this? How can I build

custom software around like what I'm

doing?" So, um the uh

I think the thing you said to like I I'm

curious your thoughts on this like how

you guys are thinking about I mean we

we we think about marketing now is like

it's just code. Everything is just code,

right? Like it's just GitHub Like what

is an agent? It's a script with a

sinking loop, you know, an LLM call and

then like some data live data stream

that's connected to it. That's all it

really is under the hood, right? Um and

when you look at that, it's like it's

just code. Like it's like this is a

GitHub repo that like a coding agent can

go and read and explain how this

actually functions and like what's going

on. And then when you give it that

business context, I'm I'm curious how

you guys

are approaching this and thinking about

like

okay, we used to have all these systems

and processes where like a human was

looking at a you know, a GUI. How are

you actually recording that information?

Like bubbling that up. Um I I don't know

how big your team is, but like do you

think about governance at all of like

who sees what data? I I'm just curious

your thoughts there on like as you guys

you know, scale your team and your

operations.

>> Yeah.

Yeah, and like

I honestly don't have like the greatest

like AI agents for like replace this

specific role. It's more of just and and

I'm like still a beginner with AI. Like

we have like we've used like the same

process and like product for everything

that we've done at Lead Bird for so

long, even at Cleverly as well.

Um but

where we use AI a lot is like for all

our internal tools. Like it's a

requirement for our devs to build a

really good MCP so that our team can

just use it inside of Claude.

Um

and like all our tools now, they just

need to integrate properly, have really

good APIs, and then we just use skills

to build really good workflows. Um so

that it could QA stuff and everything of

that sort.

Um honestly, like my team comes to me

with like new things all the time where

I'm like, "Oh, that's actually a amazing

use case." So like I'll I'll give you a

funny one. Um our our one of our account

executives, he was like, "Hey, can you

launch a cold email to this list?" And I

was like, "Yeah, like how'd you get this

list?" He was like, "Dude, I asked it to

pull all our deals that I closed from

HubSpot where then I used Get Leads' MCP

to say, 'Hey, who here has left their

role and joined a new company?' And then

I want to just basically run an intro

email to them saying, 'Hey, you used us

at your previous company. Like are you

Would you be interested in using us at

your new company? I'm sure your you

know, your new team would love us.' Or

something like that. And I was like,

"Oh, dude, that was a great idea. Like

that's like a champion play. Like that's

amazing. Like let's do it."

Um and so yeah, like honestly, like I'm

still learning, but I learn mostly

through my team cuz like they're just

figuring out all these like tiny things

when it comes to how they want to use

AI, how they want to integrate in stuff.

Um and and it's cool, too, cuz like

yeah, I mean the the space is just

growing so much. Um another thing that

we've been doing, one of my friends,

Justin, and and I don't know how he does

this, but I mean it's it's working.

Um he has a this this company just

created called Cheap Credits. And

basically, you can get any like you you

just add one extra line on top of your

API call to any AI model and it runs

through his back end or whatever or

something like that. You still use the

actual model, but you get it at like a

40% discount. And so it's like if your

AI usage bill is super high, like ours

sits at like 3 to 5K a month, nothing

super crazy, like it gets cut down

almost in half.

Um and so that was like something else

that I was like, "Wow, this is amazing."

Um

but yeah, to kind of answer your

question, I honestly don't have a great

answer there. We just kind of use it

here and there and and just, you know,

hope for the best. Like we try to limit

as much like access to core data. Um so

like our whole entire back end, like

database, so that it doesn't like

overwrite information. Like we've had

situations where it has done that on

smaller projects and it kind of messed

up a lot.

Um so we're we're learning some small

like a lot of those small things, but

for the most part like we use Cloud,

it's MCP, co-work, code, all that stuff

to just, you know, do a lot of things.

Um

and yeah, that's that's really about it.

>> Awesome, man. No, I think that's great.

Anything I didn't ask you about today

that you're just like stoked about that

you're like, "I wish we would have had

this conversation, you know, talked

about this on the call today."

>> Well, I had one more thing on um

deliverability cuz I think that's like a

topic that like everyone constantly

keeps hitting me up about. Um it's

funny, I'm on like a SmartLead webinar

tomorrow and I already know that I'm

just going to get hammered about, "What

deliverability do you use? What What

What's your split?" All this stuff. And

and for the most part I think like

everyone overcomplicates deliverability.

They freak out about like, you know,

blacklist. Like basically the way you

want to think about it, in my opinion,

is you always want to have a good

spread, right? Have some Outlook, have

some Google. That's the you know, top

two. You know, and and it's always going

to swing, right? Like Google is

outperforming our Outlook, but if you

asked me that last week or the week

before, I would have told you the

opposite. So you just need to be

balanced there. And just remove your

anybody that has a security email

gateway, for the most part, in my

opinion. Like unless you're selling

strictly to enterprises, that's going to

be like 90% of your list.

If you can do that, you spin text your

copy, and you just genuinely have a good

offer, and you're writing like relevant

messaging,

deliverability is not an issue. Like, we

have clients where they just have a

no-brainer offer, and like, they will

get a 4 to 5% reply rate. Versus others

that are competitive spaces where they

might get only a 1%.

The other thing I would add there is you

want to always store your reply data,

and use that to score your leads,

because this is massive. So, we

basically took everybody that's ever

responded with interest to cold emails

in the 5 years that we've been on

SmartLead. So, this is, you know,

hundreds of thousands of people. And we

basically use that as a scoring metric

on our list now when we pull it, because

if someone's responded to a cold email

with interest or just like positive

attitude, they're more likely to do that

again, right? And so, we run campaigns

specifically to what we say is like

power responders. And what happens is

those campaigns will have like a 9%

reply rate, which is insane. Like, you

don't ever see that in cold email. So,

like, yeah, I think like, you think

about all these little tiny things,

and you will make stuff work. I think

when people consider, and infra

providers as well, they try to find

someone that can like change their

entire life. Like, I think for the most

part, a lot of the infra providers are

really like the same. Like, you just

want to look at it most from who has

the best support, the quickest

turnaround time, can provide the top two

Google or Microsoft stopped inboxes, and

just has like pretty relatively good

pricing, right? They're not putting you

into bundles, they're putting you into

just like regular stuff, like regular

per inbox or per domain pricing.

And that's it. Don't don't

overcomplicate it. It's It's It is that

simple. Um, and then yeah, just focus on

just sending as much volume as you can.

>> Are you Are you guys incorporating any

SMTP into what you're doing? I'm just

thinking about like this idea that we

were talking about on the one-to-one

marketing. Like, it does it make sense

at any point to ever incorporate that in

or is it just still use micro Microsoft

and Google?

>> Yeah, it's it's it's like we use the

hyper type like they call it Entra,

which is it's not an SMTP, it's using

Microsoft IPs.

Um and then we use like their regular

Google inboxes and that's been great for

us. Like the pricing's better than

anything else on the market um and then

you also look at

just like the support as well as like

the response time as well as how fast

they can get things back up and going.

The easiest investment for me um and so

like we've used them for like I don't

know 3 years now. It's I I haven't had

any complaints. So I'm I'm happy with

them. But I think with like SMTP we've

tried

like whenever someone pitches me some

crazy offer of like, "Hey, we have an

SMTP that can do this, this, and this."

I'm like, "All right, you know, I'm

willing to give it a shot." I've just

never seen an SMTP work really well over

time. Like I've signed up and I don't

want to you know, put anyone in the dog

house, but I've signed up for like all

the big ones. Um and like in some cases

really good for a week. Sometimes it's

really good for 2 weeks. But then it

just drops off a cliff. And then it's

like you have to play that game of just

constantly replenishing domains and

replacing the infra and you still have

to do that with Google and Microsoft,

but with SMTP it's like times 4x that

you have to do that. And so I'm not a

big fan of SMTP like that. One thing I

would say though is like

and and like I don't know if this is

like technically breaking rules or not,

but like

when you get a positive reply and then

they kind of ghost you after you've done

your follow-ups, we'll always, you know,

throw them into like a beehive nurture

campaign. They obviously use like

SendGrid transactional emails and we see

pretty good engagement from that. I

think that helps over time cuz you know,

you're just staying in front of the

person's face at all times. Like if you

have like a newsletter drip that sends

like a weekly kind of like informational

email once a week, I think that helps

massively. We've seen a lot of success

from that. And so

yeah, that's that's another kind of like

thing I I recommend people to start

doing is just like take anybody that

doesn't engage with you and and just

drip them. And and like you'll see some

good wins from there. And and if it does

break rules, then I never did it. And

And that was totally uh a joke.

[laughter]

>> Honestly, it's it's CAN-SPAM compliant

in the US if you have a physical

address, you're not spoofing somebody,

and and there's like a list of things,

but you can you can 100% just add people

to a list. You're going to be fighting

the provider. That's the problem, so.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I definitely going

to do this.

>> Yeah, yeah. The title for The title for

this episode, I feel like is like cold

email as a marketing channel, not like

outbound.

But anyway, dude, thank you for coming

on.

>> You got to run one of those where the

title is like cold email is dead, and

then you'll have like the entire army

[laughter] of everybody hitting you up.

But dude, absolutely, I love coming on.

Let's do it again in like 6 months, and

I'll probably tell you cold email is

dead.

>> and we'll have you back on the state of

the union of what's going on. It's

always good to have you. Nick, if people

want to find you, where's the best place

to reach out?

>> Uh just type in Nick Abraham anywhere. I

think there's only one of me,

thankfully, that's posting cold email

content, and so I I I pop up everywhere.

LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube.

And then yeah, if you guys want

outbound, go to leaper.io. We can maybe

help you.

We're pretty selective with who we take

on.

You know, some industries we just have a

hard time getting results, so we try to

And I actually don't know if I mentioned

this to you. We actually do free trials

as an agency offer now. And so like

we'll launch campaigns for no down, and

see if we can actually make it a channel

for you. And if it does, we'd love to

have you. But if we can't, then we don't

want you to spend and waste money. But

that's that's us in a nutshell. That's

where you can find me.

But yeah, Cody, thanks for for having me

on.

>> Yeah, thanks for coming on, brother.

We'll We'll include all that in the show

notes as well. We'll have you back soon.

Thanks again.

>> Yes, sir. Appreciate you.

>> Later, man.