Every cold outreach strategy that worked for SaaS founders

Wrestling AI app: He DMs 100 influencers a day. Once one replies, he sends his phone number and moves to a call, because negotiating by phone is far easier than by DM. Deals are structured with a view guarantee based on a $2 to $5 CPM. [source]

Simple app: To hand video production to low-cost UGC creators, he DM'd about 50 creators a day. [source]

iPhone app: Instead of hiring expensive influencers, he reached out to inexpensive UGC creators through Instagram and TikTok DMs or Fiverr, paying $50 to $100 per video. [source]

Remote-jobs website: He finds creators by DMing people who already make content for fun and offering paid work, and recruited older creators over 50. Making the job extremely easy, with zero research and a sheet of exact formats, keeps the price at $20 or less per video. [source]

Two UGC-driven apps: Creators come in two ways: inbound application forms in UGC group chats, Instagram, Reddit and sites like Sizzelle, and outbound outreach to micro-influencers, which is handed to VAs. [source]

Push-up alarm app: His advice is to send a ton of DMs to influencers early on, aimed at people making day-in-the-life or lifestyle content where the app fits naturally. [source]

Animated videos for B2B SaaS (Scott): His cold emails are two sentences: point out something specific that is missing, such as no video above the fold on their landing page, and ask if they've looked into it. He says people write long emails with big paragraphs and nobody reads them. [source]

UpLead and Signaturely (Will Cannon): Will's cold email is short and human-sounding, with a clear value proposition and an easy ask. He says any business can adapt the same template. [source]

Event app (built in 83 days): His rule for cold outreach outside your inner circle: a simple two- or three-sentence message that grabs attention and pitches the idea. [source]

Twitter ghostwriting business: Each cold DM has three parts: a compliment based on the person's profile, the offer, and a low-pressure close. [source]

Wrestling AI app: Every DM to an influencer opens with 'Paid promo?'. Influencers get hundreds to thousands of DMs a day, he says, and skip yours if the first two words aren't captivating. [source]

Goji Berry AI: Cold email runs on Instantly AI at about $800 a month for high volume, and LinkedIn and high-intent lead outreach runs on Goji Berry AI at $99 a month. [source]

Animated videos for B2B SaaS (Scott): His tech stack costs about $1,200 a month and covers cold email sending software, software to run the lead list, Slack and Stripe fees. [source]

Push-up alarm app: Cold email outreach is automated through Instant email, and influencer sourcing and contracts are managed through Grow Wire and SideShift. [source]

Shopify app (from a spreadsheet): Cold outreach through Instantly is part of the marketing stack, next to word of mouth and the Shopify App Store listing, though the team had not run full marketing campaigns yet. [source]

Wrestling AI app: He suggests hiring a VA to send DMs when you are just starting, then doing it yourself once the brand is established, because response rates shoot up. [source]

List Kit (Andre): List Kit, a cold email SaaS, reached $1M ARR 87 days after launch, grown primarily through cold email, then ads, content marketing and affiliates. Andre found cold email works best for high-ticket agency services rather than low-ticket products. [source]

UpLead and Signaturely (Will Cannon): UpLead got its first customers, and its first $1M in ARR, strictly through a targeted cold email framework. Will tells founders to build one customer acquisition skill, such as cold email, cold calling, SEO or ads. [source]

Animated videos for B2B SaaS (Scott): His first customers came from cold outreach and educational posts on Twitter. His funnel has three parts: posts, DMs, cold email and ads at the top, a booked call in the middle and a sales call with a closer at the bottom. [source]

Two-year-old business: Marketing splits roughly into thirds: referrals and word of mouth, organic search and social media, and cold outreach along with other opportunities. All of it is organic. [source]

Animated videos for B2B SaaS (Scott): Cold email to a software audience gets about a 4% reply rate, so he says you have to reach out to thousands of people. He took about 150 sales calls himself before building a structure to delegate them. [source]

Twitter ghostwriting business: After his first clients on Upwork, he turned the results into a case study and sent 100 to 200 cold DMs a day to software founders on Twitter, which landed his first $1K/month and $3K/month clients. [source]

Event app (built in 83 days): He built a list of 250 to 300 people from Instagram hashtags, sent each a short cold message, got 15 replies and 12 confirmed events that month. [source]

Design studio (Mark): He says people underestimate the sheer volume of work, and suggests asking how many times you need to repeat a task, like cold DMs or posting content, before the chance of not getting a lead is close to zero. [source]

Event app (built in 83 days): Outside his inner circle, he searched Instagram hashtags like #wedding and #birthdayparty to find people likely to host events. [source]

Sync2Sheets: After publishing to the Google Workspace Marketplace, Leandro searched Notion-related groups on Reddit for keywords tied to his product, joined the conversations and DMed people directly. [source]

Animated videos for B2B SaaS (Scott): He sends direct DMs through LinkedIn Sales Navigator and on Twitter alongside his cold email. [source]

Free-tools founder: On a marketer's advice to sell before building, he sent cold emails in the morning to get people on phone calls. On his first sales call, an Australian business owner agreed to pay after 42 minutes; his tip is to ask 'are you sure?' to lock in the commitment. [source]

SaaS that hit $69K/mo in 2 months: For customer discovery calls, they reached out to their personal network and DMed people on Twitter, even offering to pay them, then asked a few questions. Those contacts, along with lead magnets and Reddit threads, built a waitlist of 2,000 people. [source]

SaaS sold through partners: Instead of paid ads or cold email, Ivan recruits 'connectors', people with a network of his ideal customers, as affiliates, and treats winning each one like a high-ticket sales call. Most growth came from two Upwork coaches, and the second was won through cold LinkedIn outreach. [source]

Geosports: He DMs people with large followings on X who have liked his posts and asks them to host: they write the five daily questions, and when their round launches they retweet it to their own audience. [source]

Event app (built in 83 days): His view is that if you haven't been banned on platforms at least two times, you haven't tried hard enough with cold messaging. [source]

Wrestling AI app: His influencer playbook starts from a personal Instagram account that he bots and pays to verify, switching to a business account after a few deals. [source]

List Kit (Andre): Rather than selling the product in cold email, they offered 50 free leads as a lead magnet and upsold the product afterwards. The offer took off, and competitors now copy it. [source]

Booking widget for service businesses: The first 10 customers came from old-school door-to-door sales to local businesses. He showed the product on an iPhone, switched to iPads so owners stopped thinking it was a website, and printed brochures to explain it. He calls it incredibly intimidating, with rejection and harsh feedback. [source]