145: Why You Should Send More Emails

Welcome back to the Practical Prospecting newsletter!

Today I want to make the case for something that goes against what most people believe about cold email.

Most people should be sending more volume. A lot more. And if you're not, it's probably because you're scared of the wrong thing.

Agenda:

• The Two Sided Spectrum

• So Which One is Right For You?

• The Fear of “Burning TAM”

• The Math Behind Scaled Cold Email

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The Two Sided Spectrum

There are really only two effective ways to do cold email. And they sit on opposite ends of a spectrum.

Side A: Full TAM volume. 

You identify your entire addressable market, segment it, build the infrastructure to reach all of them, and work through it systematically (i.e. reaching out to everyone once a quarter or once a month, depending on TAM size).

Side B: Hyper-targeted one-offs. 

You spend real time finding the warmest possible leads, research them, and send very direct, personalized emails to a small select list.

Both strategies work. But a lot of people get stuck in the middle.

If you're doing "somewhat targeted" emails at "medium volume," you're getting the worst of both worlds: not enough scale to generate consistent pipeline, and not enough personalization to break through on quality alone.

So my advice is to pick a lane and go all in.

So Which One is Right For You?

It starts with one question: how big is your TAM?

There’s no exact number, but in general, if you have fewer than 10,000 reachable contacts, full TAM volume probably isn't your play. For context, we don’t even take on clients who’s TAM’s are smaller than ~100k-200k.

With a market that small, every touchpoint matters more, and you'll exhaust it fast.

If that’s you, go the highly targeted route: tighter targeting, higher intent signals, more research per send.

But if your TAM large, you should almost always default to the volume approach (while still being personalized/targeted toward the small percentage that have the highest intent).

Here's why: you have no idea who's in-market right now…

• The VP who ignored your email three months ago just got a new budget approved.

• The company that seemed like a bad fit just hired a new ops leader who's actively evaluating tools like yours.

The only way to be there when timing shifts is to keep showing up.

You're never going to personally research and hand-craft emails to 100,000 people. So if you don't build the infrastructure to reach your full TAM systematically, you're leaving entire pockets of your market completely untouched, and your competitors who figure this out will get there first.

That said, volume doesn't mean spray and pray.

The right approach with a big TAM is both:

• Reach everyone systematically with clean, segmented campaigns

• Then run a separate motion for your highest-priority accounts with more intentional, personalized outreach.

The volume strategy surfaces who's interested. The personalized strategy targets the accounts you care the most about.

But if you're not doing the volume piece, you're guessing at who's ready. And that's an expensive guess.

The Fear of “Burning TAM”

The most common reason people undershoot on volume is fear of “burning their TAM”.

Here's the reality: cold email is much more forgettable than you think.

When was the last time you remembered a cold email you received? Probably can't think of one. MAYBE a handful.

Here's what actually happens when you send an email to someone:

• Some percentage goes to spam regardless of how good your deliverability is

• Of what lands in the inbox, less than half gets opened

• Of those who open it, the vast majority click away immediately

• A small slice actually reads it

• An even smaller slice replies, and most of those will forget about it a week later

The only time people actually notice and remember you negatively is when you pile 4, 5, 6+ emails into the same thread or in a single sequence.

That's when people block you.

If you're running clean 1-3 email sequences with good copy (that shares value/compelling offers), you are not burning your TAM.

Cold email reply rates have been dramatically decreasing year over year. Especially with how cheap and easy is now to scrape a bunch of data, research/personalize with AI, and mass purchase email inboxes to send high volume.

The top cold email agencies will tell you this (the honest ones, that is).

Most of them publicly share the reality that 1-3% reply rates for automated cold email at scale is, in most cases, as good as it gets.

Just check out this post from Taylor Haren, who I consider to be one of the best in the game.

That's not because agencies are bad at cold email. It's just how the math works at scale.

The Math Behind Scaled Cold Email

Once you accept that cold email is a volume game, the only question is: what does your funnel actually look like?

Here's an example of how the math breaks down (and the funnel image above):

• 500 leads contacted

• 2% reply rate → 10 replies

• 20% positive reply rate → 2 positive replies

• 50% conversion to meeting → 1 meeting booked

That’s what solid conversion rates look like today.

Most people are in the 1k-5k leads per meeting booked range. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it just depends on your TAM size and what you’re selling.

Now look at your full TAM and do the math. If you have 50,000 people in your market and you can contact all of them once a quarter with messaging that converts at 1 meeting per 500, that's 100 meetings from a single TAM pass.

Do it every quarter. Rotate the angle, update the message, re-engage the non-responders with a new hook. That's 400 meetings a year just from systematic TAM coverage. Before you even layer in signals or multi-channel.

The cold email agencies that consistently generate pipeline at scale aren't doing anything magic.

They're just strict about their funnel math.

How to fix each layer

The funnel only works if each layer is actually optimized. Here's where to focus:

Top of funnel — your TAM list. If your list is garbage, nothing downstream matters. I've written before about how to build a clean TAM from scratch (see here). This is the foundation.

Deliverability. Domain setup, sending limits, bounce rate, etc. these are non-negotiable. I’ve also written about that here.

Reply rate — your copy. This is where most people spend all their time, but it's actually the layer that matters least if the layers above are broken. Once your infrastructure is clean, then you optimize here. Specifically work on getting the pain point and value prop right.

Positive reply rate — your offer. Getting replies is different from getting interested replies. If your reply rate is fine but positive reply rate is low, it’s almost always your offer. Come up with new offers or just position your current offer differently.

Meeting conversion — your follow-up. Most leads die between "positive reply" and "meeting booked." Speed of response, calling them ASAP, and following up more than once is key.

Fix them in order. I wrote a whole guide on this here.

So the question is, is your TAM big enough? If so, you should be sending more emails.

If not, go the other route.

Thanks for reading,

Jed