I scaled my SAS RBDB to over 6 million ARR, and 32% of that revenue, or 1.9 million, is coming from one single channel, cold email. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Cold email is dead. And you’re right. The way most people do it, it’s dead. But we use a completely different approach, leveraging AI that I don’t see anyone else talking about. This framework generated 20% of all of our signups, drove 30% positive reply rates, and produced one of our campaigns that converted at 12.7%. That’s one sign-up for every eight emails sent. So, in this blog, I’m breaking down the exact cold email strategy that’s generating $160,000 a month for RB2B and how you can copy it for your own business. Let’s dive in.
The Three Mistakes Most Founders Make:
Most founders are doing cold email completely backwards. And when they fail, they just say that cold email doesn’t work. But it’s usually because they make one of these three big mistakes. Mistake number one is focusing on your message before your infrastructure. Your perfect email means nothing if it lands in a spam folder. Most people don’t even realize that their emails aren’t even getting delivered. You need bulletproof infrastructure before you write a single word.
Mistake number two is only sending to completely cold audiences. Random lists of people who’ve never heard of you with no context, no prior touch point, and no reason to care just end up being emails that are noise in an already crowded inbox.
Mistake number three is giving up after a week or two. People send five emails, get three replies, nobody buys, and they quit. They never test different messages or audiences, and they assume cold email doesn’t work instead of admitting they don’t know how to do it.
Our New Cold Email Framework:
Now, here’s what we did differently with cold email. We spent 3 months posting on LinkedIn, generating awareness of me and what we were going to do at RB2B, before we sent a single email. We emailed people who were already showing interest, in addition to completely cold contacts in our ecosystem. And the cold contacts we emailed were B2B SAS, and they were very likely to have seen some of my LinkedIn content, and I may have even connected with them on LinkedIn.
We created an AI-powered system so we can perfectly tailor each email to the recipient, even when sending millions of emails, and we committed ourselves to a 4-month testing window to find what actually works. So let me break down our entire cold email strategy. We didn’t rely on just one approach. We built three distinct strategies. Each one served a different purpose in our funnel, and together they generated 42% of our total revenue 8 months ago. The third one is something that I don’t hear anyone talking about.
Strategy 1: The Waitlist Campaign:
So strategy number one, our weightless campaigns, which were 6% of our revenue. This was the initial strategy that we implemented even before we launched. So, how we built our weight list was that I spent months building in public on LinkedIn, talking about the problems that we were going to solve with RB2B. I shared the journey, all of the struggles, the early wins that we were having.
Then by launch day, 3,000 people were already waiting to sign up for RB2B. I captured these people through a simple CTA at the bottom of my LinkedIn post that said, “If you want LinkedIn URLs of your website visitors pushed to Slack, DM me dot dot dot and it’s 100% free.” This gave us immediate momentum. These people already knew who we were. They’ve been following the journey. They were primed and ready to sign up.
What we did was actually warm outreach disguised as a cold email. I wrote a painfully simple message when we launched. The subject line was RB2B is here. And then the body was, “Hi, first name. I’m thrilled to announce that RB2B is live. You can create your free account by clicking here.
Strategy 2: Pure Cold Email:
Strategy number two was pure cold email, which was 21% of the revenue. And this is what it is. Classic outbound to completely cold prospects. No prior relationship or touch point, just good targeting and great messaging. For targeting, we built a list of all US-based SAS companies that had between three and 200 employees using a company called Apollo.io.
We then downloaded a list of email addresses of everyone in the Apollo database at those companies who had either a founder or a marketing role. That was over 80,000 contacts, and we’ve been mailing each person on this list two times per month ever since.
The Cold Email That Outperformed All Others:
As far as messaging goes, this is the email that’s performed better than any of them. It says the subject line is the name of the person and RB2B. And it basically says, we launched a tool that lets you know when individuals, not companies, are on your site. We send you their LinkedIn profile on Slack, and we don’t charge you a dime. Respond back with yes if you’d like me to send you a link to sign up, and P.S. No, I am not kidding. It’s an exact match to the individual who visited, not just the company behind the domain. And we will not charge you a penny.
So here’s why it worked. It’s short, punchy copy. It captured my actual voice. It’s not corporate speak or formal business language. And the direct benefit of RBDB is in the first line. And there is a clear and simple call to action. As I mentioned earlier, infrastructure is even more important than the message that you send. We use hundreds of domains like tryb.com and the realrb.com. And the way we buy those domains is through instantly. You can buy and create the domains, and then create two inboxes per domain. And you can instantly send two to 10 emails per day to each inbox. And the effect that has is that it sneaks past spam filters at Gmail and Hotmail to make it directly into the primary inbox.
We started sending with Smart Lead years ago, and we now use Instantly, but we go back and forth depending on what’s going on in each platform. Why do these emails get through? It’s because we have a huge volume while maintaining list quality. Every single email has passed through multiple verification steps, and we monitor deliverability metrics obsessively.
Strategy 3: Website Visitor Retargeting with RB2B:
Strategy number three is website visitor retargeting with RB2B. RBDB itself was and still is our absolute secret weapon. Here’s how it works. Somebody visits the RBDB website, and then our tool identifies them in real-time and captures their LinkedIn profile. Within minutes, AI generates a personalized email, and the email references the exact pages they visited. It goes out automatically while they’re still thinking about us.
How We Built Hyper-Personalization:
So, here’s how we actually built this. Step one is you install the RB2B script and which identifies the website visitor in real time. The moment somebody lands on our site, RBDB captures them. We get their full LinkedIn profile pushed to our system, and we know their name, title, company, and what pages they viewed. All of this happens within seconds of them visiting.
Step number two is Clay processes and enriches the data. Play takes the raw visitor data from RB2B, and it automatically enriches it with other additional information like company size, industry, the tech stack, and recent funding that has happened for the company. It filters out existing customers using a HubSpot integration.
And then step three is AI generates personalized copy. Clay’s AI writes a custom email for each visitor, and it references the specific pages they looked at. It adapts the tone to match their industry and their role, and every email feels like I personally wrote it.
The fourth step is pushing to instantly. The AI-generated copy gets pushed instantly, and it’s sent to hundreds of different domains, each with two inboxes, and they successfully arrive in mailboxes without getting caught in spam filters.
The 10.4% Conversion Message:
And what about the messaging that made one of our campaigns convert at 10.4%? It was the simplest messaging we’ve ever written. It just said, “Hey, saw you on our site via RB2. Do you have any questions? Why does it work? It’s because it’s simple, direct, and contextually relevant. They literally just visited, so the timing is perfect. And it’s one sign-up for every 9.6 emails since.
This demolished our other campaigns. 26 times better conversion than the average cold email. And people were already interested. We just gave them a reason to reply. The personalization was not fake, and we knew exactly what they looked at. Timing is everything. And we caught them at peak interest.
The Two Rules of Success:
I want to remind you, infrastructure first, everything else second. Your perfect message means nothing if it lands in a spam folder. We had 200-plus warmed-up domains before sending anything. And you can do the entire warm-up process in Smart Lead or instantly. Tailor monitors deliverability metrics obsessively every single day. And with that, we’re able to send over 1 million emails in just the first 6 months.
The second step is continuous testing over 4-month windows. We launched 40 different campaign variations, and the results of the first few weeks did not tell the full story. Most founders give up after sending only 500 emails. We committed to 4 months of testing to find message market fit. This patience and systemic testing are absolutely essential to making cold email work.
Conclusion:
Cold email isn’t dead, it’s just evolving. With solid infrastructure, smart AI personalization, and consistent testing, you can turn a “dead” channel into a growth engine that quietly drives six figures a month.
FAQs:
1. What makes this cold email strategy different?
It uses AI for deep personalization and timing.
2. Why do most cold email campaigns fail?
Poor infrastructure and no testing.
3. How long should I test cold email campaigns?
At least 4 months for real results.
4. What tools were used in this strategy?
Instantly, Smart Lead, Clay, and RB2B.
5. How does AI help in cold emailing?
It tailors messages to each recipient automatically.
6. What was the top-performing email?
A short, simple message sent right after a site visit.