#74 · How I Went From 0 to 100,000 on Instagram in 83 Days

youtube ↗Cold Email

You mentioned in a cold‑email video that personalization didn’t affect your results much. Is that still your opinion, or is depersonalization now worth trying?

I definitely recommend depersonalization now. In a recent campaign I tested sending Apollo leads without any real personalization—just solid copy that pretended to be personal. It worked because it required less effort. However, not every campaign can survive that approach, so you still need to sprinkle in some personalization when the copy isn’t strong enough. The best way to find out is to run a test: send a thousand emails with only the first name and company name, no AI‑generated personalization. If the results are good, keep it; if not, try adding back some personalized elements or other tactics.

cold emailpersonalizationdepersonalization

Related answers

youtube ↗Cold Email

How can I deeply research prospects and personalize cold emails when I find it hard to get information? How deep should research go, and can you give a quick guide?

Don't personalize the whole email—personalize only small snippets using enhanced variables. For example, use a template like 'Hey {first name}, love {thing we have in common}, fun to see you mention that on {platform} where I got it.' Then continue that vein to your offer. If AI writes the whole email, it will likely produce something stupid and obvious as AI‑generated. Keep the AI constrained everywhere and feed it only small variables (enhanced variables) with examples, letting it spin the initial info into a tightly woven, human‑sounding message. For research, use Claude to look up the person, compile company info, and grab all social media profiles; if you can't, use scrapers or similar tools.

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youtube ↗Lead Generation

What’s the best way to target niches on Apollo or Google Maps and find their emails?

Digital marketing agencies and SaaS companies are the two main niches on Apollo. You can also use depersonalization in cold email campaigns: if personalization isn’t adding much, you can send generic copy that feels personalized. However, for many campaigns you’ll still need to sprinkle in some personalization to keep them effective.

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youtube ↗Cold Email

I’ve built an automated personalized outreach system but have almost no credibility. How should I market my system?

Even with zero credibility you can still get traction by using a conversational tone in your outreach. Write longer, personalized emails that give context about who you are, what you’re building, and why you’re reaching out. Make it sound like a genuine conversation rather than a sales pitch. This approach works well for beginners because it feels authentic and helps you stand out from the generic offers flooding inboxes. Give it a try – the personal, story‑driven style often lands the first leads when you don’t have a brand reputation yet.

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youtube ↗Cold Email

I recently started sending cold emails using leads from an Apify/Apollo scraper, and my Instantly campaigns keep stopping because bounce rates are too high. Is this an issue you run into, and how can I keep my lead list legit — preferably for free?

There are a couple of free email-validation alternatives, but they're not great — Lumbrid is one, though it's overly aggressive and flags a lot of good emails as bad. Depending on which Apollo/Apify scraper you're using, I'd recommend two things: pull personal emails alongside business ones (I weave both in and actually get a higher reply rate from personal addresses, and it lifts overall deliverability too), and either run an email verifier or just turn off the feature that auto-pauses your campaign at a bounce-rate threshold — Instantly will warn you it hurts deliverability, but on the campaign from my “watch me start and sell an AI service in 10 hours” video, I raw-dogged the Apify/Apollo export with zero validation and I'm still sitting at a 4% reply rate with healthy mailboxes. So you can just raw-dog it like I did.

bounce rateemail validationapollo scraperdeliverability