the gtm engineer The Winning Cold Outbound Formula with Eric Nowoslawski, Founder of Growth Engine X
Eric Nowoslawski is the founder of Growth Engine X, one of the first Clay agencies that has served over 300 customers. As Clay's first marketing contractor when they had just four employees, Eric helped build their early YouTube and LinkedIn presence before launching his own agency. Growth Engine X is now Clay's largest user by enrichment volume and will send over 4 million emails this month.
In this conversation, Eric shares his framework for creating high-converting campaigns for massive scale, why he believes signals aren't the silver bullet many think they are, and how to build offers so compelling that prospects would pay for the discovery call.
In this podcast, we discuss:
* The crawl walk run framework for getting started with Clay and cold outbound
* Why offers matter more than personalization and how to craft irresistible value propositions
* Growth Engine X's creative ideas campaign that remains their best performing approach across all clients
* Why signals aren't a silver bullet and what to focus on for sustainable growth
* Evaluating whether cold outbound is right for your business based on TAM size and unit economics
* Finding and hiring top GTM engineering talent from the agency ecosystem
Episode highlights:
* Eric's creative ideas campaign uses AI to generate three specific ways your product can help each prospect's business. To ensure the outputs remain consistent, he makes the AI focus on predetermined value props rather than generating random suggestions.
* Eric crafts offers by asking what he could say that competitors can't say, focusing on creating value so compelling that prospects would pay for the discovery call itself. Every offer must answer why someone wouldn't respond and address their hidden objections upfront. Growth Engine X's free test campaigns exemplify this by removing all risk and proving results before any payment is required.
* Growth Engine X always maintains backup inboxes equal to their sending capacity because no matter how good outbounding copy is, some will mark it as spam. When primary inbox delivery goes down, they instantly switch to warmed backups with zero downtime.
* For a Google reputation management client, Growth Engine X achieved positive replies on 1 in 70 emails by finding businesses with 3.5 to 4.5 star ratings, pulling specific negative reviews, and offering to remove them with payment only after removal.
* Eric recommends TAMs over 100,000 and customer lifetime values over $10,000 for cold outbound success. He emphasizes that a business’s customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratio should ideally be 1 to 10, though 1 to 3 is acceptable. This ratio ensures cold outbound campaigns remain profitable with healthy margins.
* To find GTM engineering talent, Eric targets small agency owners with teams under 10 employees who are tired of running a business but have proven outbound skills. These operators often make perfect full-time hires.
Where to find Eric:
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/outboundphd/
Transcript details:
(00:00) Intro
(02:55) Eric's journey from Clay's first marketing hire to agency founder
(10:12) The crawl walk run framework for Clay and cold outbound
(12:55) Infrastructure, list building, and crafting the right message
(17:55) Building successful campaigns and understanding what conversion rates are “good”
(24:39) Deciding if a business should do cold outbound or not
(26:43) Defining offers and why they're crucial for success
(29:41) Why signals are overrated for building a reliable outbound motion
(32:35) Examples of strong offers
(39:49) Personalization strategies for your entire database — firmographic vs person level data
(41:14) Eric’s creative ideas campaign
(48:34) Hiring GTM engineers
(53:48) The future of cold email
(58:25) Email deliverability and the importance of backup infrastructure
(01:02:23) Favorite tools including Supabase and Pipedream
(01:04:25) Predictions on the future of GTM engineering and conclusion
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