Is it worthwhile to email decision makers at small local businesses using the email addresses listed on their websites, or should I focus on a different niche?
Small businesses often have a generic info email that routes directly to the person in charge, though it may be filtered through junk folders. While this approach typically yields lower response rates compared to more targeted methods, it can still be viable, especially if it's the only data you have. Gathering email data is cheap and easy: you can search Google for relevant terms, scrape the resulting websites, and extract email addresses via simple HTTP requests. This can quickly generate thousands of contacts for just a few cents, making it a low‑barrier entry point despite the competition.
No. You'll get significantly lower response rates with this method. That said, it is doable. If that's the only data you have, try it first before making assumptions. The good news is that data is cheap and easy to obtain. You can simply enter a search term into Google SERP, get hundreds of results, page through them, extract all the websites, make an HTTP request to each site, and scrape any email addresses you find. This gives you thousands, even tens of thousands of emails for just a few cents. It's totally doable, though the low barrier means many others are doing it, increasing competition.
Having a website is marginally important; it's like a business card. When I was door knocking, not having a business card made me seem unprepared, so I bought one for $50 and it helped. A website serves the same purpose: it signals legitimacy. The cost can range from $5 for a simple card site, $10 for another type, $50 for a Webflow site, or free with custom HTML. If you send cold emails and your domain leads to a 404, it looks like a scam and reduces trust. So a basic website helps perceive legitimacy, but it's not super valuable or important beyond that.
I feel like I've already answered this, but to be clear, I would use Apify's 1.5 per 1k scraper, which gets you about 1,000 leads for roughly $1.50 to $2. Then I'd run them through Million Verifier to validate emails—I'm not affiliated with them. That would give me about 60-70% valid emails, meaning you'd spend around $3 to $4 per thousand leads on average. That includes phone numbers too, though they're sparser than emails. You could also enrich with something like Lead Magic for phone enrichment if needed, but I wouldn't worry about that right now. [gasps and sighs]