A step-by-step guide on how to run a cold email sequence: from finding & extracting leads to running the campaign.

At Captain Data, we’ve mostly relied on word of mouth and inbound marketing.

But at some point, you always need to dig a bit deeper to find exactly what you’re looking for: qualified leads in a specific niche. Why? Well, in B2B it’s always a good idea to start with a niche: test on a small audience, validate, scale.

Working with niches enables you to craft very targeted sequences while aiming at high KPIs. For this exercise, I’m aiming to reach 400 companies with a 20% reply rate.

This means I want my sales team talking with 80 leads. I’m considering that a 25% closing rate is an achievable goal given what we’re selling. In the end, what I’m really targeting is a €4K MRR increase.

(400 companies with a 20% reply rate gives us 80 qualified leads; with a 25% conversion rate at a €200 average transaction per month, that amounts to €4K MRR.)

And it means one thing: we’re going hunting.

I’ve written this guide while doing this exact process; this way you have all the cards.

Drafting your process

Here’s the basic layout:

• Defining your target(s): the first and maybe only thing that really matters is understanding who you’re talking to
• Creating exclusive materials; in our case one landing page and an article (the one you’re reading is a bonus 😄)
• Identifying & extracting leads
• Refining the search
• Creating the sequence layout
• Setting up the email sequence in a tool
• Review
• Launch

Defining outbound targets