Struggling with cold email? · AI Automation Agency Hub

Liam Ottley

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May 18 (edited) • 💡 Liam's Insights

Struggling with cold email?

Hey everyone,

Cold outreach was one of the biggest pain points in your responses.

Different words, same pain:

“I’m sending emails. I’m getting no replies. Why isn’t this working?”

Cold outreach isn’t broken. But there are 4 reasons it’s probably failing for you.

1. Your emails aren’t being seen. Most people send cold emails from their main domain with zero setup. No separate outreach domain. No warmup. No authentication.

The result? Their emails land in spam.

They send 100 emails, get 0 replies, conclude cold email is dead. Reality: most of those emails were never seen by a human.

The other half is your subject line and the first few words you write. Even if the email arrives, if those don’t feel relevant to the person reading them, it’s deleted before it’s opened.

Which email do you think your leads would be more likely to open?

"AI Automation Solutions for [Company Name]"

or:

"[Company's Competitor] just automated this"

Fix the infrastructure. Make the first thing they see feel targeted & personal. If it feels generic, it's probably going in the trash.

2. Your message is wrong. Most people try to close the sale in the first email. “We build AI automation systems. Here’s what we do. Want to hop on a call?”

That message gets ignored every time. You're asking a stranger for trust they haven’t given you yet.

The fix: sell the meeting, not the service.

Compare these two:

“Let’s schedule a 30-minute call to walk through our AI services.”

“Mind if I send you a 2-minute video showing how a similar business is using AI?”

The first one asks for a commitment. The second asks for curiosity.

3. You quit too early. Cold outreach converts at fractions of a percent, even when it’s done well.

Most people send 50 emails, hear nothing, and walk away. But the math doesn’t work in 50 emails. It works in hundreds, with follow-ups.

Industry research says it takes an average of 8 touch points to get a meeting with a new prospect. Most people send 1.

Follow-ups aren’t optional. They’re where most of the conversions happen. Cold outreach isn’t a single message. It’s a sequence.

4. You’re assuming, not researching. This one’s personal.

I get cold outreach hitting my inbox every day, and most of it goes the same way... Someone assumes I have a specific problem at Morningside, then pitches me on solving it.

Problem is, half the time the problem they’re “solving” isn’t even one I have.

It’s a dead giveaway they haven’t done their research before sending me a message. And the second I clock that, I’m out. No reply.

So before you send a single email, learn the business. The industry. The day-to-day. What they actually care about.

Generic pitches lose. Researched ones win.

Fix these 4 and you’ll start seeing cold email work the way it’s supposed to.

Cold outreach is only half the battle. You can do everything right, get the reply, get the call booked, and still blow the deal in the first five minutes of the discovery call.

In the next email, I'm walking you through exactly how to run a discovery call that converts.

One last thing before I sign off.

There's only so much I can pack into a single post, and cold outreach has way more nuance than the four points above. So I want to give you something.

One of our Outreach Coaches at the AAA Accelerator, Harry Latos, recorded a full session on the Cold Email System. The mindset traps that stop people from sending, why cold email matters, the email journey from send to inbox, and the full 5-step system.

Watch it here.

Talk soon,

Liam

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Struggling with cold email?