I sent 5,700 cold emails automatically. 71% open rate. Here is what I actually built.
My cold outreach was a mess.
I had built a WhatsApp automation system for restaurants using Make.com. The system ran without me. Getting new restaurant owners to hear about it was a problem I had not solved at all.
I was building lead lists by hand. Copying emails from websites one by one. Writing each message individually. Never following up.
One evening I looked at the Make.com scenario on my screen and thought: I had already built something that automated messages at the right time. Why was I still sending emails by hand?
I spent a few weeks getting Make.com, Airtable and Brevo talking to each other. Webhooks failing. Filters not catching duplicates. One step working. Another breaking.
One email every 15 minutes. Running 8am to midnight. 64 emails a day, pulling from a list in Airtable.
For the first two weeks, almost no one replied.
I nearly convinced myself it was pointless. I had spent weeks building it and it felt like sending emails into silence.
Then I read through the Brevo reports. Emails were being opened. People were clicking. The problem was not the system. It was what the emails said. I rewrote the subject line. Rewrote the opening. Tracked what changed. Kept going.
Three months. 5,700 emails. Open rate at 71%.
Replies came in. Calls got booked. First paying customers came through while I was doing something else.
It runs on free tools. Make.com, Airtable, Brevo. No monthly fees. I documented the setup so anyone non-technical could follow it.
I put it on Gumroad. Thirty seven euros.
If you are doing cold outreach manually right now, this is the system I was wishing existed before I built it.
https://oliverthulin.gumroad.com/l/cold-email-outreach-machine
What part of manual outreach takes you the longest?
Interesting build.
The thing I'd be careful with is that the system and the reason someone buys the system are not necessarily the same thing.
A lot of people will agree manual outreach is painful. The harder question is what specific moment makes that pain expensive enough to pay €37 instead of continuing to do it themselves.
That sounds small, but it can change how the product gets evaluated.
I wouldn't make that call casually in a thread.
That is a fair point and I have thought about it. The moment that seems to convert is when someone already has a list and just keeps not sending it. The €37 is not really solving the pain of outreach, it is solving the fact that the setup never gets done. Once it is running the problem removes itself.
What made you land on that framing, are you working through the same question for something you are building?
Possibly, but I'd be careful going further in-thread.
The useful part isn't the framing itself. It's what that framing changes about the buyer, the offer, and the point where someone decides €37 is worth it.
That's not a call I'd make casually from a few comments.
If you'd like the tighter version, drop your email and I'll put it together properly.