Cold email's average reply rate dropped to 3.43% in 2026. Here's the complete system — targeting, infrastructure, copy, sequences, and reply handling — to consistently hit 5–10%.
The exact steps to run founder-led outbound: set up cold email and LinkedIn, write sequences that get replies, and book your first meetings.
Connection request, pitch, follow-up — the sequence everyone runs, and the reason it converts worse every year. Here's what we run instead.
Why most cold email campaigns die in spam folders, and the exact infrastructure setup we use to keep client domains out of trouble.
