How Cold Emailing (Still!) Drives Outbound Sales and Boosts Conversions

Your sales team is under pressure. Pipeline targets keep climbing while response rates keep dropping. You've tried social selling, paid ads, and every new channel that promises to revolutionize outbound — yet your SDRs are still struggling to book meetings. Sound familiar?

Here's what most sales leaders miss: cold email isn't dead. It's just being done wrong. While everyone chases the latest shiny tactic, the teams crushing their quotas are quietly perfecting the fundamentals of strategic cold outreach.

Business founder, consultant, Apollo user, and cold email expert, Daria Tsvenger, knows this better than most. "Cold email is the best thing you can do for yourself!", says Daria. From starting ELG Leads (a growing sales prospecting solution) to speaking at major events, she's leveraged cold email to unlock dozens of professional opportunities.

In this guide, we'll show you exactly how cold email drives predictable revenue when done right. You'll learn the modern strategies that separate high-performing teams from everyone else, discover how to write emails that actually get responses, and see how to build campaigns that scale without sacrificing personalization. Plus, we'll walk you through setting it all up in Apollo to automate the heavy lifting.

Back-to-basics: What is cold emailing?

Cold emails are the first impression.

They are the initial outreach emails sent to a potential client who has not heard from you or your company, or who may have heard of you but doesn't have a direct relationship with you.

Cold emailing creates touchpoints with new contacts, expands brand awareness, fosters new relationships to get prospects interested and excited, and increases your chances of closing a new deal !

Good cold emails do this through:

• Value-based messaging that's interesting, conversational, and mobile-friendly
• Click-worthy email subject lines
• Plenty of personalization (ie. their name, company, industry, competitors)
• Reference to specific pain points and real solutions
• A strong, single call-to-action

(Stick with us! In the sections below, we'll show you how to create cold emails just like these in Apollo.)

4 reasons why cold emailing is (still) essential to your sales strategy

Reason #1: Open your own doors to business success

First and foremost: cold emails give you maximum sales autonomy. By being able to reach out to whoever you want, whenever you want, strategic cold emailing allows you to take charge of your sales objectives and make your goals happen.

This is something that especially excites Daria, who has created many opportunities for herself through her dedication to cold emailing.

"As an immigrant, I opened so many doors for myself just through cold email," Daria says. "I got my first job through cold email, I started representing big mental health spaces [through cold email], and I am currently looking at celebrity interviews through cold email."

With the right cold email know-how, sellers don't have to wait for the right opportunity to land on their doorstep. They can go out and make it happen themselves!

Reason #2: Reach your ideal buyers where they spend the most time: their email inbox

If you want to fill your pipeline, your message needs to be where your potential buyers are.

Despite the popularity of instant messaging, texting, and social media, email is still the top communication method at work and is only continuing to grow. One study found that workers spend an average of 6.3 hours a day checking their emails!

"For anything you have to offer, there is definitely a person that could be put in front of it with a cold email," says Daria.

Sending cold pitches in your email is a great way to ensure that buyers will, at the very least, see your message and become more familiar with your brand.

Reason #3: Personalize outbound messaging at scale

Unlike other outbound sales methods, cold emails can be personalized for each and every recipient across your email list.

And more personalization = higher open and reply rates, better deliverability, and more interest.

In fact, studies have found that marketers who implement personalized and segmented email campaigns report a 760% increase in email revenue.

Those are numbers you can't afford to ignore…

And with the right email tool, reaching hundreds of potential buyers with a unique and personalized message is well within reach.

Leveraging email personalization in her Apollo campaigns is something that Daria does to keep seeing results. "I love that Apollo allows you to send emails at scale while also creating a one-on-one conversational feeling. I can send 300 emails per day and still have personalized conversations," Daria says.

Reason #4: Create and establish valuable connections through networking

Networking is a powerful tool; creating connections and exchanging ideas with like-minded people, industry professionals, thought leaders, and established brands can fast-track growth and results.

And more often than not, a rewarding connection starts with a cold email.

With no public relations background or official journalism credentials, Daria created a valuable connection and got an article published at Forbes just through cold pitching in an email.

If there is an entrepreneur, sales professional, or any other person that could provide you value, don't wait to reach out. Sending a simple cold email that highlights mutual benefit could secure you an invaluable relationship or business opportunity.

Cold email best practices that drive responses

It's not enough to just send emails. You need a strategy. The difference between a cold email that gets a reply and one that gets deleted comes down to a few core principles. Before you even think about writing, focus on getting these fundamentals right.

Target the right people

The most beautifully written email is useless if it's sent to the wrong person. Your first job is to build a hyper-targeted list of prospects who match your ideal customer profile (ICP). Don't just blast everyone with the same title. Think about their specific industry, company size, and recent activities. A smaller, high-quality list will always outperform a massive, generic one.

Nail your offer

Why should they care? Your email needs to offer genuine value, not just ask for their time. This isn't about listing your features. It's about connecting your solution to a problem they're likely facing. Frame your offer as a clear, compelling solution to a pain point they experience daily.

Personalize, don't just customize

Using a prospect's name is table stakes. True personalization goes deeper. Reference a recent company announcement, a post they shared on LinkedIn, or a common connection. Show them you've done your homework. This one-to-one approach proves you're not just another automated spammer and builds instant credibility.

Keep it simple with one CTA

Don't confuse your prospect by asking them to read a blog, book a demo, and follow you on social media. Every email should have a single, clear call-to-action (CTA). Make it a low-friction ask, like gauging their interest in an idea, rather than demanding a 30-minute meeting right away.

How to write cold emails that get responses

With your strategy in place, it's time to write. A great cold email is clear, concise, and focused on the recipient. Think of it less like a marketing blast and more like a quick, helpful note to a colleague. Here's how to break it down.

Craft a subject line that sparks curiosity

Your subject line has one job: get the email opened. Avoid clickbait or overly salesy language. Instead, aim for something that's either personalized, relevant, or intriguing. A simple format like "[Your Company] <> [Their Company]" or a question related to their role can work wonders.

Write an opening line about them, not you

The first sentence should prove this email was written specifically for them. Start with your research. Mentioning a recent project, a shared connection, or a piece of content they created shows you've put in the effort and immediately sets you apart.

Connect their pain to your solution

In the body of your email, briefly describe a problem relevant to their role and explain how your solution helps. Use simple language and focus on the outcome, not the process. A good structure is: "I noticed [observation]. Many leaders in your space struggle with [problem]. We help them achieve [positive outcome]."

End with a clear, low-friction ask

Your call-to-action should be easy to say yes to. Instead of asking for a meeting, try an interest-based CTA like, "Is solving [problem] a priority for you right now?" This opens a conversation without demanding a commitment.

How to build your best cold email campaign in Apollo

With all of these awesome benefits, surely you're inspired to kick off a new cold email campaign!

Apollo.io is the end-to-end sales engine that makes cold emailing easy and, more importantly, effective. Let us show you how to create your best cold email campaign in Apollo.

Step #1: Find and collect quality contacts that align with your ICP

It goes without saying: to send out cold emails that provide value and generate interest, you need to find best-fit recipients.

In Apollo's database of 210M contacts, users have 65+ advanced filters to help them find the contacts that perfectly align with their company's ideal customer profile (ICP).

Apollo filtering attributes include:

• Job titles
• Company name
• Location
• Employee headcount
• Funding
• Revenue
• Industry and keywords
• Technologies used
• And more!

Let's say the persona you wanted to target in your next cold email campaign was an Atlanta-based private banking or accounting company with over 200 employees that uses Apache or Nginx technologies.

Head to the Searcher, apply your filters in the left sidebar, and there you have it: a list of best-fit contacts ready to be added to your cold email list.

Bonus! With all your filters applied, you can save your search for future use and even subscribe to get automatic alerts when new contacts are added.

If you're like most professionals, LinkedIn is probably one of your go-to prospecting tools. To find email contacts and add them directly to your email campaigns, you can also use the Apollo Chrome Extension in LinkedIn.

When you search in Sales Navigator, the Apollo Chrome Extension allows you to save selected leads along with their contact information. You can also email them, add them to a sequence, or add them to an Apollo list, all from your LinkedIn browser!

To start prospecting alongside our Chrome Extension, download it here.

Step #2: Create highly-targeted sequences and add contacts

Now that you have your contacts, you need to build out the structure of your cold email campaign in sequences. Sequences are automatic outreach campaigns with any number of sequential contact points and tasks that you can customize to personally engage your target audiences at scale.

To create your new sequence, navigate to Engage > Sequences > + New Sequence. Name and schedule your sequence and click + Create.

Then, create the bones of your sequence using sequencing steps.

There are eight different sequencing steps to choose from in Apollo, but for our purposes, we'll stick to creating automatic and manual email steps.

When you create an email step, this is the time to choose your sequence schedule, create your subject line and email body, add in personalization snippets, and/or create and load a email template.

Once you customize each step to your liking, your sequence might look something like this:

Now, you're ready to add contacts to your campaign via the Apollo Searcher, the Chrome Extension, a CSV file, or straight from one of your Apollo lead lists. To learn more about adding contacts to a sequence, check out this instructional video.

Step #3: Fine tune your messaging with A/B testing

Creating successful cold email campaigns isn't a one-and-done kind of thing. It requires continuous testing and optimization.

In fact, the ability to test and adjust her cold email strategy is one of Daria's favorite things about using Apollo. "Apollo is great at helping me test my messaging and different assumptions in the business development journey," she says.

One of her biggest pieces of advice is to leverage A/B testing in all your cold email campaigns. This allows you to test multiple messages in a sequencing step and determine which message engages more prospects and helps you better reach your audience.

It's as simple as selecting the Add A/B Test button under the desired sequence step, selecting the email you wish to edit, and adding the desired varied email copy. From here, Apollo will send an even traffic distribution to each message variant in the test.

Daria suggests that you test your email subject line first, and then your email body second (but, remember, not at the same time).

"Invest in one subject line in terms of the open rates that you see, and then proceed to the next step of optimizing the email copy that gets the most replies," advises Daria.

Step #4: Track cold email campaign performance and optimize

To build out cold email campaigns that continue to produce results, you need to leverage performance data.

Alongside tracking and optimizing your messaging with A/B testing, look to Apollo Reports and Analytics to gain valuable insights on cold email interested, replied, and open rates, # of emails delivered and bounced, sequence performance, net new people in your funnel, and so much more.

Your cold emails might not get results immediately, but that's ok. Daria says, "It can take about a month to understand which is the best messaging combination, to properly scale messaging, and to effectively outreach to potential buyers."

As long as you stay consistent and are responsive to what the data suggests, the results will come…

Measuring and optimizing cold email performance

You can't improve what you don't measure. Sending cold emails is a science, and the data tells you what's working and what's not. Tracking a few key metrics will help you turn your campaigns from a guessing game into a predictable revenue engine.

Key metrics to watch

Don't get lost in a sea of data. Focus on the metrics that matter most for outbound success:

• Open Rate: This tells you how effective your subject lines are. If it's low, test new subject lines.
• Reply Rate: This is the true measure of engagement. A high reply rate means your message and offer are resonating with your audience.
• Conversion Rate: How many replies turn into positive outcomes, like a booked meeting? This is the ultimate test of your campaign's ROI.
• Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate can hurt your sender reputation. It's a sign you need to clean your email list and verify your contacts.

Always be testing

The best sales teams are always experimenting. Use A/B testing to systematically improve your results. Test one variable at a time—your subject line, your call-to-action, your opening line—to see what moves the needle. Over time, these small optimizations lead to massive gains in performance.

Ready to transform your outbound sales with cold email?

Cold email isn't a relic of the past—it's a powerful engine for growth when done right. It gives you the autonomy to build your own pipeline, connect with high-value prospects, and create opportunities that wouldn't exist otherwise. But doing it at scale requires more than just a good template; it requires an intelligent platform.

Apollo gives you everything you need to execute a world-class cold email strategy, from finding verified contacts to personalizing outreach with AI and tracking every result. Stop guessing and start building a predictable sales machine. Sign up for a free Apollo.io account and launch your most effective campaign yet.

Frequently asked questions about cold email

Is cold emailing illegal?

No, cold emailing is legal in most places, including the U.S., as long as you comply with regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act. This means you must include a clear way to opt-out, use non-deceptive subject lines, and provide your physical address. It's about sending legitimate commercial messages, not spam.

Does cold email really work in 2025?

Absolutely. While inboxes are crowded, a well-targeted, personalized, and relevant cold email stands out. It remains one of the most direct and cost-effective ways to start conversations with your ideal buyers. The key is focusing on quality and value over sheer volume.

What's a good cold email response rate?

While it varies by industry, a reply rate between 5% and 10% is often considered a solid benchmark for a standard campaign. However, with hyper-personalization and a highly targeted list, it's possible to achieve rates of 20% or even higher. The goal is to continuously test and improve your baseline.

How do I avoid spam filters with cold emails?

To improve deliverability, always verify your email lists to reduce bounces, warm up your email account before sending large volumes, and avoid using spammy words or excessive links. Personalizing your emails and encouraging replies also signals to email providers that your content is valuable.