#260 · if you're not doing outreach 90% of the time, you're doing it wrong
To turn those leads into a CSV list, you can enrich them in various ways—Vain and Airbrake now include built‑in enrichment, or you can use any mail finder. I've found that mail finders generally give higher quality results and let me extract a larger percentage of valid emails, though they add another platform to the stack. So that's an option as well.
I've shown how to acquire 100 leads very cheaply—about 18 cents for 100 emails. They aren't the absolute best leads, but they're probably okay, and I'd run the process. (As a side note, it takes roughly 37.9 Loom videos to close a client.)
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]
There are several ways to get sales email lists. One simple option is to use a scraper like Pipeline Labs, which aggregates old leads from sources such as Apollo, Lucia, and Zoom Info. These leads aren’t the highest quality, but they’re inexpensive—around $150 for about 1,000 leads (sometimes closer to $180). You can try it for free; I ran a quick test and got 100 leads for just 18 cents, all with email addresses. However, many of those addresses will be outdated or deleted, leading to 'email address not found' errors—that's the trade‑off for using lower‑cost sources. To verify whether an email address is genuine before you send, you can use an email verification service such as Million Verifier or MailboxValidator (or similar platforms). Just upload your list and they’ll check each address for you, helping you avoid bounces.
My rule of thumb is about 1,000 leads per variant. If you’re testing two versions, run roughly 2,000 leads in a week. Start by optimizing the subject line and the ice‑breaker personalization—they’re the biggest levers. Early tests should involve massive, distinct changes (completely different angles) to explore a wide search space. Once you identify a promising direction, you can iterate with smaller, more granular tweaks.