Cold email automation is dying
The automated sending of cold emails is becoming increasingly ineffective.
The likelihood of achieving an authentic dialogue is almost non-existent if you are only sending mass automated emails.
My big prediction for the future is the evolution of a new sales role. This role will be - Prospecting Research Analyst.
Read Here -> https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/rip-cold-email-automation-demand
With this approach, the sales team will have the most reliable information at hand on target accounts. As a result, one-to-one or one-to-few cold outreach will be significantly more successful.
How does that sound to you?
The bulk-and-blast approach is dying but automated follow-up sequences are a different thing entirely.
Most replies come on touch 3 or 4 when timing finally lines up for the other person. Doing that manually at any real volume just falls apart. The automation that actually matters is not the first email but making sure the follow-up runs every day without depending on whether you remembered to do it.
Put together a full breakdown of how I built mine if anyone wants to see the actual setup: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-sent-5-700-cold-emails-automatically-71-open-rate-here-is-what-i-actually-built-4dd90108f6
The author is right that spray-and-pray is dying, but I'd push back on the "new hire" solution. The research analyst role they're describing is actually where AI is most useful right now - not for writing emails (everyone's doing that), but for doing the research that makes each email worth sending.
The pattern that works: pull live signals per company (funding, hiring, news, product launches), then use those to generate a context-specific opener. The email still gets written by a human or at least reviewed - but the research layer that makes it personal is automated.
The bottleneck isn't automation vs. research. It's that most people automate the wrong layer. Automate research. Personalize outreach.
The author is right that spray-and-pray is dying, but I'd push back on the "new hire" solution. The research analyst role they're describing is actually where AI is most useful right now - not for writing emails (everyone's doing that), but for doing the research that makes each email worth sending.
The pattern that works: pull live signals per company (funding, hiring, news, product launches), then use those to generate a context-specific opener. The email still gets written by a human or at least reviewed - but the research layer that makes it personal is automated.
The bottleneck isn't automation vs. research. It's that most people automate the wrong layer. Automate research. Personalize outreach.