Are you referring to using Loom videos for Upwork job applications when you say they're the best form of cold outreach?
Email deliverability isn’t a simple spam‑or‑not‑spam binary; it’s more like a sliding scale. Adding a link to an email nudges it toward the spam side, but excellent copywriting can pull it back toward the inbox. Adding images moves it further toward spam, yet a strong warm‑up routine, a pristine list, and high engagement can still keep you in the inbox. If you send a Loom video that’s incredibly high‑value and gets a great response, you might willingly take a small deliverability hit because the back‑end conversion makes up for it. Likewise, cutting your daily email volume—say, from 25‑30 down to 5‑10—improves your sender reputation and helps the mailbox provider see you as a real user. Platforms like Instantly let you run separate campaigns (e.g., a Loom‑video‑only campaign) and monitor deliverability on just those mailboxes, so you can isolate any impact. In short, when I say Loom personalized videos are the best form of cold outreach, I’m talking about using them to apply for jobs on Upwork (and similarly via Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn DMs, and email).
Using Loom videos in cold emails works and can be effective, but it lowers deliverability because links and media trigger spam filters. You trade volume for personalization—send fewer, highly tailored emails with a Loom video that shows you’ve already built the asset, which creates a pattern break and raises perceived value. To compensate for lower deliverability, reduce volume or improve mailbox practices. It’s not fully scalable like pure text cold email, but it’s a valuable tactic when you need to stand out.
The Loom video approach was terrible for me. My other approach was sending a lead magnet (a Google doc). To reconcile scale with customization, there are two approaches: low volume, high customization—sending a personalized Loom video that solves a problem, delivers value, and builds a warm connection to maybe 10‑30 people a day; and high volume, low result—blasting a generic “do you mind if I send you a Loom video?” to a million people and only recording when they reply. The latter is overdone and saturated; it’s not effective anymore.
I think there are a couple of things to clarify. First, the idea that a Loom video almost always lands in spam is not true. Sending links in email at larger volumes does decrease deliverability and can negatively impact your ability to reach the inbox, but it doesn't mean every email goes to spam; deliverability might drop from, say, 95% to around 75%. Some emails will still land in spam, and if your Loom videos are poor, recipients may mark you as spam, which can hurt your sender reputation over time. However, it's not an all-or-nothing situation. Think of deliverability as a gradient. You can move toward the delivery side by improving practices—using multiple mailboxes, low sending volumes, perfect DNS records (DMARC, DKIM, etc.), good subject lines, and valuable content. Adding a link pushes you toward the no-delivery side, but strong deliverability practices can pull you back. Regarding your specific tactic: I don't send a 'can I send you a quick two-minute video?' preamble anymore. That approach used to work, but now it's common and doesn't stand out. Instead, I record the Loom video ahead of time, make it highly valuable and customized, and then distribute it across multiple channels (email, Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, etc.). If each platform gives roughly a 20% chance of being seen, the combined probability of being seen on at least one channel is about 1-(0.8)^5 ≈ 67%. Multiplying that by a conservative deliverability estimate of 75% gives roughly a 50% chance the video is seen. If the video is really good and hyper-customized, maybe one out of two recipients replies, yielding around a 25% response rate. The bottom line: there's no definitive rule from email providers about links causing spam; they approximate based on signals. Use common sense, test the approach, and see what works for you.
Treat personalized video outreach as a separate campaign from your regular cold email. For the video campaign, gather prospects using Apollo or social‑media scrapers, then send customized DMs that reference specifics from their profiles or websites so it’s clearly not a template. Keep your standard cold email process distinct. Within that flow, I’d record a Loom video for about five to twenty prospects per day — enough to add a personal touch without overwhelming your workload — and run the video outreach alongside your usual cold email sequence.