Cold messaging was never alive. Not really.
Cold outreach has always been a volume game.
It’s about playing the lottery. Sending and hoping something comes back. In the early days it was successful because people’s inboxes were less cluttered. There was less competition for attention.
Now? Most people see over 6,000 marketing messages per day. On average, they receive 7 outreach messages daily. Inboxes are overflowing. Attention is scarce. The average response rate to cold outreach is just 0.6%. That means for every 1,000 messages you send, you get 6 replies. And not all of those will be positive.
The Timing Problem
Cold outreach is fundamentally about timing. You’re pitching a service to a large group hoping something lands with the right person at the right time.
Most of the people you contact don’t have the problem you solve right now. Or they do, but they’re not ready to address it. Or they’re already working with someone else. Or they’re too busy to care.
You’re hoping to catch the tiny percentage who happen to be in the market, at the exact moment your message arrives, and who haven’t already been worn down by the dozens of other pitches they received that week.
That’s a lot of hope.
Why Results Vary So Much
Some people swear cold outreach works. Others say it’s a complete waste of time. Both are right, depending on how it’s done.
The success of cold outreach isn’t about the tools you use. It comes down to a few critical factors:
Deliverability. Are your emails actually reaching the inbox? Or are they landing in spam? This is much harder to achieve these days. Email providers have become sophisticated at filtering out mass outreach. If your emails aren’t being seen, nothing else matters.
Data quality. Are you reaching the right people? Bad data means you’re contacting people who will never buy. You’re wasting time and damaging your sender reputation.
Subject lines. Does your subject line catch your prospect’s attention? If they don’t open the email, your carefully written message is worthless.
Message relevance. Is your message highly relevant to the recipient? Does it speak to a problem they actually have? Does it drive action? Generic pitches get deleted instantly.
Test Before You Scale
I recommend testing all of these elements before you send any volume.
The last thing you want to do is burn lots of opportunities because you were too quick to fire the gun. If your deliverability is poor, you’ll damage your domain reputation. If your message doesn’t resonate, you’ll exhaust your list with nothing to show for it.
Start small. Test your subject lines. Test your messaging. Check your deliverability. Refine until you have something that works. Only then should you consider scaling up.
The Best Outreach Is One to One
Here’s the truth most people don’t want to hear. The best performing outreach is one to one.
The more you try to reach more people, the more you dilute your message to appeal widely. And the more you dilute your message, the less it resonates with anyone.
A highly personalised message to 10 people will outperform a generic message to 1,000. It takes more time. It requires more effort. But it actually works.
When someone receives a message that clearly took thought, that references their specific situation, that feels like it was written for them alone, they pay attention. When they receive something that looks like it went to hundreds of others, they delete it without reading.
So Is Cold Messaging Dead?
It’s not dead. But it’s on life support for most people who do it badly.
If you’re sending generic messages at volume and hoping for results, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re taking the time to research, personalise, and reach the right people with the right message, you can still get results.
The question isn’t whether cold messaging works. It’s whether the effort required to make it work is worth it compared to other approaches.
TL;DR
Cold messaging was never truly alive. It’s always been a volume game, and it’s far less effective now that people receive thousands of marketing messages daily. The average response rate is just 0.6%. Success depends on deliverability, data quality, subject lines, and message relevance. Test all of these before scaling. The best performing outreach is one to one. The more you try to reach more people, the more you dilute your message. Highly personalised outreach to fewer people will outperform generic