Wanted to share a win from my latest cold campaign . For a long time, my campaigns struggled. I thought the problem was my email copy or my warmup tool. It wasn't. The problem was the level of leads I was targeting. Most people in AI automation are stuck sending to Level 1 leads. Here is the difference: Level 1: Dead Scrapes (Zero Intent) Scraping 5,000 emails off Apollo or Google Maps by generic title (e.g., "Founder"). You don't know if they have money. You don't know if they have the problem. Result: Low replies, high spam complaints. Level 2: Cleaned Leads (Basic Filters) Verified through Zerobounce / Debounce. Correct headcount and industry. Better deliverability, but you are still just a stranger pitching out of nowhere. Level 3: Signal-Based Leads (Active Intent) This is what produced the numbers in the screenshot. I stopped emailing people based on their job title. I only emailed them if they triggered an active signal: Spend Signal: They are actively spending money on Meta or Google Ads right now (proof they have budget and value customer acquisition). Tech Signal: Specific tools or pixels detected on their site (proof of their exact workflow). Growth Signal: Active hiring or specific changes in their business. Why this changes reply rates: When a lead is Level 3 (Signal-Based), you don't need a 300-word pitch. You don't need fancy AI personalization. You just point out their live signal in the first sentence: "Saw you're running ads for [X] on Meta..." Because the relevance is 100%, the perceived friction drops to zero. They reply because it’s timely, not because of sales hacks. I documented my exact scraping setup, the 3 intent filters I use, and the email sequence inside a Notion doc. I dropped the direct Notion doc link in the first pinned comment below 👇 No pitch, no gate. Take the filters and test them on your own campaigns.