Outbound Email's Rise in Volume is Unsustainable
+ What to do about it & where we go from here • The Signal
If you were forwarded this newsletter, consider joining over 1,100 weekly readers—some of the smartest GTM operators—by subscribing here:
Hey y’all!
I’m back from a week at the beach in Florida, and hoping everyone impacted by Hurricane Helene is doing okay. Heartbreaking to see the images out of Western North Carolina. Mother Nature is a powerful beast.
[I won’t try and write a transition sentence from 👆 that heavy topic to 👇 the subject of this week’s post]
You can’t open LinkedIn without hearing about outbound email volumes and strategy.
You’re probably experiencing some version of the pain, first-hand, at your company.
Everyone agrees: outbound email has completely changed over the last ~year.
But, the solution—the current response—is not sustainable, imho.
Spinning up more and more domains/mailboxes, and sending higher and higher volume is not the long-term solution.
And that’s the topic of today’s post.
How we got here
The hoops you have to jump through to succeed in today’s environment
Where we go from here
Let’s get into it.
Outbound Email's Rise in Volume is Unsustainable
The playbook of 5 years ago no longer works → hiring a bunch of SDRs, loading up a sequencer with basic data and messaging, and booking 12-15 meetings a month.
I’m on a mission to discover the playbook that works in 2024 (and what will work in 2025, and beyond). I’m documenting that journey—both the questions I’m thinking through, and the answers I find—here, on The Signal (“Separating the signal from the noise”).
There are a few “arrows” in the “quiver” of modern gtm that seem to be working today. And, I think more “arrows” will emerge in the coming year or two—some of which are nascent today, and some that don’t exist at all yet.
One of the biggest question marks in my mind, in this current moment, is the role of cold email. And where it goes from here. But first…
1/ How we got here
2011: Aaron Ross wrote the book on outbound: Predictable Revenue. That’s when the SDR Playbook was first popularized.
2015: Outreach.io and SalesLoft raised their Series A’s. This started the boom of cold, outbound email, at scale.
2024: Today, Smartlead and Instantly are leading the charge on tooling to enable outbound email at-scale; they have $10s of millions in revenue. Both founded in the last three (!!) years. And companies like 11x.ai and Artisan.co are actively raising piles of cash for their AI SDRs. (Note: these aren’t all spam cannons)
So, here we are.
Sending insane amounts of email to generate pipeline in a world that is overwhelmed with messages across all platforms (not just email).
I put together some charts to showcase the trendlines across a few metrics:
Alright, spoiler: these charts use fake data, for illustrative purposes.
But, anyone sending cold emails resonates with the general sentiment here: the trendlines are heading a direction that is not sustainable.
This can’t be sustainable. Right?
2/ The hoops you have to jump through to succeed in today’s environment
As an example, here are some of the things people on the bleeding edge are doing to stay a step ahead of ESPs in this current cat-and-mouse game of automated outbound email at scale (original post by Jacob Tuwiner):
This is WILD.
But, without adapting to the new environment, you won’t have much success. Trust me, I’ve felt this first-hand.
And to be clear, I think there are situations where sending lots of emails is the right move for a business/segment. In some cases, even thinking about email as an ‘ad’ to get your brand’s name in front of your target audience. And I also think it’s helpful to use tools like Clay to enable you to scale relevance and personalization, in a way that wasn’t technically possible even two years ago. However, the extreme question remains unanswered: Will AI Destroy Outbound?
My goal is to find ways to get in front of the right company/person, at the right time, with the right message - in the most efficient way possible. Said another way, the question I’m trying to answer: How do I send less email (not more), and get the same results (or better)? (I posed this question on LinkedIn last month, and got some pretty interesting replies.)
But, the reality is, you have to jump through some fiery hoops to make outbound work in today’s environment. From email infrastructure, to better targeting (using methods like signal-based selling), to launching creative “micro-campaigns” (using tools like Clay), to thinking completely outside the box and getting out of email-only sequences.
There is no “easy” button anymore. Google and Microsoft took it away in 2021. And it’s not coming back.
3/ Where we go from here
In January, I published a post titled, The New Playbook for Pipeline Generation is Emerging. In that post, I outlined the arrows in the quiver that are working today (and, I think, will work even better in the coming years). Here’s the list:
Personalization at scale
Cold email dies (again)
PLG / Product-led sales makes a comeback
Automation
The rise of the 10x rep
Warm intros through your network(s)
Community flywheel
Influencers in B2B
Founder brand
Partner selling aka "nearbound"
Signal-based prospecting
Growth teams doing outbound at scale
Consolidation szn continues through all of 2024
80% of AI use cases are yet to be created or discovered
A bunch of these hinge on doing cold email at scale.
And, from what I’m seeing, I’m not sure this is sustainable for volumes to continue to rise at the same rate they’ve been increasing over the last ~year. And AI only accelerates this trend.
So, these trends are something I’m watching very closely, and thinking through how to best position companies I’m working with/building, to go-to-market in this new world.
Reply back with what you think about the current volumes of outbound emails and whether you think it’s sustainable or not!
Featured boostrapped product of the week: Kitt AI → “The only tool you need to get your marketing emails to the primary inbox.”
Email deliverability and infrastructure is the hardest thing to keep up with an outbound right now. My friend Erol is a solopreneaur and has built an incredibly powerful data enrichment product that many of the top data providers are using to verify their data.
If you're a data provider, or a rep, you can try it for free!
PS: Erol is not paying me, nor am I an investor or advisor. TryKitt.ai is just a cool product and I want to support Erol, so I’m sharing it today.
PPS: Sign up for his newsletter: The Solo Capitalist*Previously featured boostrapped companies: Kondo, Paage, BuyerExperience.
Portals to interesting corners of the internet that I explored this week:
Meta’s iPhone moment. A neural interface with their glasses is next level. 1 min 30 seconds into this 3 min 30 second video shows off the new feature. Incredible.
Speaking of Meta, Zuck appeared live on Acquired and it was awesome. He opened by saying he shouldn’t have bowed to the government as much as he did in the previous few years, and regrets it. Interesting times!
I rewatched one of my favorite videos about building products, but, this time, through the lens of how to design my life :) Worth a watch: Superhuman's Founder on How to Move Beyond Gamification.
Owning the Workflow in B2B AI Apps. This is probably the most interesting article on software (especially relevant for B2B GTM tech) that I’ve read in the last month.
The answer to the question you never ask, is always “no.”
-Me! 😆
Thank you for continuing to explore the new gtm playbook with me. Your attention is greatly appreciated.
See you next time,
Brendan
🫡
Straight to jail