Author: Dereka M. Smith

Cold email outreach isn’t dead—it’s just evolved.

Response rates are plummeting across the industry, countless “revolutionary” outreach strategies are being misused and overdone. The companies that are thriving in this new era are ones who understand that beneath all the tech noise, we’re still dealing with humans who want to feel understood, who crave authentic connection, and can smell insincerity from three time zones away.

2025 has changed the terrain with tightened filters, flooded inboxes, and redefined what it means to reach out. So I’ve changed, too. Here’s what still holds weight, and what no longer does.

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1. Personalization Is Still Queen👸🏾—But Relevance Is Her Throne

I’ve written cold emails since before sales leaders realized that “Hey {First Name}, saw you went to {College}” was more parody than personalization. I used to believe, back in my early SDR days, that referencing a funding round or a company’s new office was enough to pierce through the digital noise. I would spend fifteen minutes sculpting these handcrafted intros that danced around the actual point. And prospects ignored them, politely and thoroughly.

Everyone preaches personalization. Few understand its anatomy. Without relevance, personalization is just a warm pat on the back—comforting, maybe, but directionless.

You have to understand that personalization is not flattery or a prospect’s LinkedIn activity. It’s about framing their pain in a way that feels like it was plucked from their Slack messages.

Here’s How to Make It Work:

The 3-Layer Research Framework:

1. Layer 1 – Company Context (2 minutes): Recent product launches, leadership changes, or market shifts
2. Layer 2 – Role Reality (3 minutes): LinkedIn posts, any podcast appearances, or conference talks that reveal their actual priorities
3. Layer 3 – Pain Patterns (5 minutes): Industry forums, Reddit threads, or Glassdoor reviews that expose what keeps their team up at night

The Opening Formula That Works:

“Noticed [specific observation about their business challenge] while [credible source of insight]. 

Most [their role] I work with struggle with [related pain point]. 

Curious if you’re seeing the same thing at [company]?”

Example: Instead of: “Saw you raised $20M in Series B funding – congrats!” Write: “Saw your engineering team grew 3x after the Series B. Most CTOs tell me their deployment velocity actually slows down during rapid scaling. How are you keeping ship velocity high while onboarding?”

What we’re witnessing now is the death of surface-level personalization, and while it’s been painful for many salespeople to watch their carefully crafted templates become ineffective, I’d argue this shift is actually beneficial—it’s forcing us to dig deeper, to develop real empathy, to become students of our prospects’ industries and challenges rather than just collectors of their publicly available information.

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2. Intent Data is a Strategy

We’ve become obsessed with signals. A download here, a webinar registration there, a glance at a pricing page. But these are breadcrumbs. Treating them like coordinates to a hot lead is the fastest way to overlook the other 97% of your total addressable market.

Yes, I pay attention to intent data, but not to build my lead list. I use it the way one reads weather patterns: to understand where the winds are shifting, what topics are heating up, what anxieties are forming underneath industry smiles.

Mini Intent Data Playbook:

Use Intent Data For:

• Timing your outreach (not selecting your targets)
• Understanding trending pain points in your industry
• Crafting emails that match current concerns
• Building talk tracks around active problems

Intent-Informed Emails: Track what content your market is consuming, then mirror that language:

• If they’re downloading a “cost optimization” guide → “Quick question about (company’s) infrastructure spend”
• If they’re attending “AI implementation” webinars → “Your ML ops stack”
• If they’re downloading “remote work productivity” resources → “Async collaboration for (company)”

The key is making it feel like a natural continuation of their research journey rather than obvious tracking.

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3. The AI Paradox: When Perfect Becomes Perfectly Forgettable

AI is efficient. It’s even helpful—if you use it to gather language, observe tone, track forum conversations, or spot patterns you might otherwise miss. But what AI generates is, at best, scaffolding. And scaffolding doesn’t move people.

The mistake I see now is salespeople (and people in general) outsourcing not just their writing but their thinking to a robot. You can’t automate understanding and business acumen.

How to Use AI Without Losing Your Soul:

AI for Research (Good):

• Extract key themes from their company’s last 5 blog posts
• Identify patterns in their LinkedIn activity
• Generate industry-specific terminology lists

AI for Writing (Dangerous): Never fully rely on AI to write your actual email or other sales content. Instead:

1. Write your first draft with pure human insight
2. Use AI or a tool like Grammarly to check for jargon or unclear phrases
3. Ask AI to suggest alternative ways to phrase your subject lines or CTAs
4. Always rewrite in your voice

The Humanity Test: Before sending, ask:

• Would I say this out loud to someone?
• Is this something I would say to this person at a networking event or industry conference?
• Does this sound like something only I could write?
• Is there at least one line that might make them smile/think/react?

People don’t buy from companies; they buy from people who make them feel understood, who can articulate their frustrations better than they can themselves. Prospects want brands that can tell stories that resonate not just with their logical mind but with their emotional reality. 

Your emails need to make prospects feel heard, seen, maybe even challenged—they need to create that moment of recognition where someone thinks, “Finally, someone who gets it.”

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4. Real “Value” Is Educational and Emotional

We’ve diluted the word “value” into something toothless.

Value is not always a tip, a blog, or a whitepaper. Sometimes value is a sentence that makes someone stop scrolling or a truth they’ve avoided naming out loud. Sometimes it’s just the perfect echo of their own doubt.

The Value Hierarchy That Actually Converts:

Level 1 – Recognition (Weakest): “Here’s a blog post about sales productivity”

Level 2 – Insight (Better): “Your sales team is probably spending 64% of their time on non-selling activities”

Level 3 – Revelation (Strongest): “Every sales leader I know says they want their team selling more. But then they add another tool, another process, another meeting. What if the problem isn’t productivity—it’s permission?”

The Email Structures That Create Emotional Value:

The Confession: “I used to think [common belief]. Then [specific event] happened. Now I realize [contrarian insight]. Seeing anything similar at [company]?”

The Question: “Quick question: When your [team] says they need [common request], what are they really asking for?”

The Pattern: “Talked to 4 [their role] this week. All mentioned [specific challenge]. All tried [common solution]. None of it worked. There’s a different approach that’s worth exploring…”

The companies that are winning understand that cold email is about joining conversations their prospects already having, about providing value that exists independent of any potential sale, and building the kind of trust and credibility that makes people want to engage.

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A 6-Email Sequence Framework That Doesn’t Annoy Prospects

Here’s the exact sequence framework I use that generates 50-60% open rates and 4% reply rates, and doesn’t annoy prospects.

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5. Email deliverability can be a constraint or a catalyst

I hate deliverability.

But I respect it.

Google, in all its algorithmic majesty, has raised the bar. If your domain isn’t properly authenticated or your emails look like they’re part of a generic twenty email sequence sent from a ghost domain–you’re out. Possibly, digitally exiled.

The Technical Checklist You Can’t Ignore:

Domain Setup (Do This First):

• SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly configured
• Separate subdomain for cold outreach (e.g., reach.yourcompany.com)
• 3-4 week warmup period before full volume
• Daily sending limits: Start at 20/day, increase by 10 every 3 days

Email Hygiene Rules:

• Validate every email with tools like Instantly
• Remove anyone who hasn’t engaged after 3 touches
• Maintain <2% bounce rate and <0.1% spam complaint rate
• Use varied subject lines (no more than 3 emails with same subject)

Show legit activity in your inbox:

• Subscribe to 5-10 industry newsletters from your sending address
• Reply to some of them occasionally
• Send personal emails to colleagues from the same domain
• Vary your sending times (no blast at 9:00 AM sharp)

Email deliverability is tedious house-keeping, but it must be done in order to reach your prospects.

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Final Thoughts

I write cold emails that don’t apologize for taking space in someone’s day. I write for the reaction, the double-take, the half-smile, and the skeptical curiosity that becomes interest.

So no, cold outreach isn’t dead.

It’s just become a mirror. And if your email reflects nothing of value, humanity, or insight back to the reader then maybe it deserves to be ignored.

But if you follow the frameworks above, you’ll find that the inbox still rewards those who treat it like a conversation between humans, and not a transaction between logos.

Want to turn your inbox into a revenue generating machine? Contact me here.