6% Email Reply Rate Through Hyper-Targeted 50-Person Lists: James @ Hunter.io

Cold email isn’t dying. Lazy marketing is.

In this episode of TLDR, I spoke with James Milsom, Head of Marketing at Hunter.io, about what’s actually working in cold outreach right now.

Here’s some uncomfortable truths:
😟 Campaigns sent to 1,000+ recipients average ~2% reply rates
😟 71% of decision-makers ignore emails because they’re irrelevant
😟 Open rates and click rates? Mostly noise. Replies are what matter

The problem really isn’t the channel.

Marketing is changing and lazy volume-first tactics are getting taxed.
It’s that most teams are still optimizing for volume - more contacts, more sends, more automation, instead of better segmentation, better offers, better sequencing.

James breaks down:

➡️ Why cold email should run 3-4 week structured experiments 

➡️ How to A/B test offers, not just subject lines 

➡️ Why layering LinkedIn with email nearly doubles effectiveness 

➡️ Why email verification is an important step (but most teams skip this)

At this point, you can’t just blast your TAM and hope 2020 tactics still work.
Buyers are smarter. Inboxes are harsher. Attention is expensive.

So you can either tighten your targeting, or accept 2% reply rates.

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