10 Steps To Book 20-40 Meetings Every Month with Cold Outbound

1 / Define ICP

Define your ICP at the...

• Account-level (firmographics, technographics)
• Person-level (user, decision-maker, approver)

Firmographics

This includes:

• Industry
• Employees
• ARR / revenue per year
• Funding
• Locations

Technographics

This includes:

• Technologies they currently use
• Technologies they are investing in
• Technologies they want to invest in

Personas

For user, decision-maker and approver, you want to define the following for each:

Demographics:

• Job-title
• Seniority
• Department
• Years of experience in company or role
• Education

Psychographics:

• Pain-points
• Goals
• Fears
• Values
• Interests
• Habits
• Attitudes
• Beliefs
• Motivations
• Priorities
• Preferences

Watch the video below for the full breakdown:

2 / Build Your Offer

For each product / service, you want to define:

• Target audience (segment of ICP that applies)
• Problem (biggest, hairiest problem, root causes and cost of inaction)
• Dream outcome
• Buying triggers
• Signals (both account-level and person-level)
• Solution (your solution to the problem that results in dream outcome)
• Benefits
• Pricing

3 / TAM Mapping

• Create TAM Master list (account-level and person-level)

TAM Accounts

• Define filters based on ICP
• Pull data from various sources (Apollo, Ocean, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, etc)
• Merge and dedupe in Clay (using company domain as unique identifier)
• Use claygent to enrich and filter out non-ICP (using HTTP API costs 0 credits)
• The result gives you your TAM master accounts list

TAM People

• Upload the TAM accounts list to Apollo to find people with the following roles: a) user; b) decision-maker; c) approver (if same person covers multiple roles that's fine - expected in smaller companies)
• Dedupe (if non-unique)
• The result gives you your TAM master people list

4 / Calculate No. of Domains & Inboxes

• Determine number of emails to send per month
• Determine number of domains and inboxes to setup

Monthly Sending Volume

• Determine your TAM coverage cycle (recommend 3 months i.e. reach out to your entire TAM every quarter)
• Determine number of prospects to sequence per month (TAM people divided by TAM coverage cycle)
• Determine number of emails per sequence: a) if TAM is between 5k and 20k, use a 4 email sequence; b) if TAM is between 20k and 70k, us a 3 email sequence; c) if TAM is greater than 70k, use a 2 email sequence
• Then calculate number of emails per month (number of prospects to sequence per month × number of emails per sequence)

No. of Domains / Inboxes

• Max. 2 inboxes per secondary domain
• Max. 25 emails per inbox per day (50 per domain per day)
• Max. 20 sending days per month
• Double the domains (excl. backups) to get total domains (incl. backups)
• Use the look-up table below to work out total number of domains and inboxes

5 / Tech Setup

• Purchase and setup tech
• Here's the tech stack we use (feel free to copy it)

6 / Email Infrastructure

Follow this infrastructure best practices checklist (to ensure high deliverability):

✅ Setup Secondary Domains

• Create variations of primary domain
• Purchase from reputable providers like Porkbun
• Stagger domain purchases
• Calculate domain needs based on monthly sending volume
• Stick to .com domains
• Avoid black-listed domains
• Buy back-up domains

✅ Inbox Configuration & Management

• Set up 2 inboxes per domain
• Use trusted re-sellers like PremiumInboxes (Google), Zapmail (Outlook), ScaledMail (SMTP)
• Diversify your sending infrastructure e.g. 50% google, 30% outlook, 20% SMTP

✅ Email Authentication and DNS

• Configure technical records including: SPF, DMARC and DKIM
• Setup URL re-directs from secondary domains to main website

✅ Gradually Warm-up New Inboxes

• Set warm up settings to start at 5 per day, increase by 1 email per day up to 15-20
• Set warm-up reply rate to 70% before scaling further
• Use warm-up tools like Instantly, Smartlead or Lemwarm

✅ Sending Volumes

• When warm-up is complete, send maximum of 25 cold emails per day per inbox
• Ensure warm-up stays on at 10-15, 70% reply rate
• When starting cold email campaigns begin with 5 cold emails per day in week 1 and gradually increase to 25 emails per day by end of week 2

✅ ESP Matching

• Send Outlook to Outlook, Gmail to Gmail for greater deliverability

✅ Create Signature with Unsubscribe Option

• Include a note at the end of the signature with the option to unsubscribe
• E.g. “If you do not want to receive my emails, just reply “unsubscribe”

7 / List Building

TAM List to Execution Lists

• In step 3 (TAM Mapping), we created a TAM accounts and people list
• Now we want to split the TAM people list into 3 execution lists (List 1, List 2 & List 3)
• You can separate by geo, company size, revenue range, as well as others filters
• Then you can reach out to List 1 in month 1, List 2 in month 2, List 3 in month 3 (covering your full TAM in 3 months)
• You will want to keep track of your TAM list and execution lists in a Notion table or spreadsheet

8 / Copywriting

• Write copy for initial campaigns. It's recommended to run 3 campaigns, with 3 message variants per campaign
• Follow this copywriting best practices checklist (to ensure high deliverability):

✅ Plain Text Only

• No links, no attachments, no HTML
• Plain text emails to avoid spam filters
• Turn off open and link tracking (as this contains HTML)

✅ Subject Lines & Email Body

• Avoid spam trigger words like “free”
• Use Smartlead’s Spam Word Checker
• Keep subject lines non-salesy

✅ Spintax / AI

• Spintax: Rotate words/phrases to create unique variations. Example: Hi {Jack|Simon|Oliver}, {Hope all is good|Hope you're well|Hope this finds you well}
• For more personalization, send fully AI-generated emails based on real data

✅ Encourage Engagement

• Ask questions or personalize to increase reply rates
• Avoid sending mass identical emails, which trigger spam filters

✅ Test & Optimize

• A/B test different subject lines, openings, and CTAs. Find winner, then A/B test on the winner. Repeat

9 / Enrichment

• Use Clay
• Enrich with unique data (ICP, signals, etc), clean and filter
• Double-verify email lists (ZeroBounce for initial verification, BounceBan for catch-alls)
• Create personalized subject lines and email body by combining pre-written copy in Step 8, with enriched ICP and signal data as variables
• Send to sequencing tool when finished (Smartlead for email, Heyreach for LinkedIn)

10 / Launch & Manage Campaigns

• Pre-launch checklist
• Launch campaigns
• Handle replies
• Monitor key metrics
• A/B Test
• Track positive replies
• Run placement tests

Pre-Launch Checklist

• Complete the pre-launch checklist (already covered above but go through again just to make sure):

✅ Inbox Setup & Client Management:

• Add client tag to each inbox (if launching campaign for client)
• Tag each inbox with source (e.g. Premium Inboxes)
• Add client to the campaign (if launching campaign for client)
• Add email signature to every inbox: Name, Title, Spintax
• Add unsubscribe option to every inbox
• Add blocked domains and email addresses to client blocklist

✅ Send Volume & Warm-up

• If using new inboxes, start at 5 emails/day
• Gradually increase sending volume to 20 emails/day over 2 weeks
• Set warm-up to 70% reply rate, 10-15 total warm-ups daily

✅ Campaign Settings

• In your Smartlead campaign settings, recommend you toggle on the below:
• Stop sending messages when lead replies
• Optimize for email deliverability
• Turn on “Send email as plain text”
• Enable “Don’t track opens and links”
• 50% follow-ups, 50% new leads
• Do NOT enable enhanced email sending
• Send to all
• Intellicategorize responses using: Do not contact, Wrong person, Interested, Meeting request, Not interested

Launch Campaigns

• Launch 🚀

Handle Replies

• Manually respond
• Reply from same email until after the call, then change to primary email (ensure continuity)

Monitor Key Metrics

• The metrics below you should track

• Do not track open rates or click through rates because they add HTML which harms deliverability.

A/B Test

• A/B test, find the winner, then A/B test the winner. Repeat
• Messaging fatigues over time, so you'll want to continuously A/B test
• Recommend 3 variants per message, across 3 different campaigns

Track Positive Replies

• Track positive replies in a Notion table or spreadsheet

Run Placement Tests

Run automated placement tests twice per week for every campaign

Takeaways

• In just 10 steps, you can book 20-40 meeting every month, and take back control of your pipeline.