Wrong order to A/B test cold email:
1. Subject lines
2. CTA
3. Offer
4. Pain point
Right order:
1. Pain point
2. Offer
3. CTA
4. Subject lines
Subject lines are the lowest-leverage variable. Most people start there because it's the easiest to change. Pain point is what actually decides whether someone replies.
Test what matters most.
once we hit 30 days everything flipped
replies came back
pipeline came back
3 weeks of pain for a lesson that took 5 minutes to fix
if you're running cold outreach on domains under 30 days old
stop
just wait
your future self will thank you
also 2 weeks of warmup isn't the standard anymore
it used to be
it's not today
the game changed, most people just don't know yet
the actual checklist now:
→ 30+ days domain age
→ 21+ days inbox warmup
→ clean copy
→ no spam words
→ Spintax
it holds you there for 30 days
then removes itself automatically
we had no idea this even existed
and here's the part that hurt
we had warmed our inboxes perfectly
clean copy, no spam words, everything right
didn't matter
then we hunted for spam words
cleaned everything up
still nothing
then we ran ESP tests
google to google
outlook to outlook
every combo
STILL nothing
then we found it
there's a blacklist that flags your domain the second you register it
no warning
no email
just flagged
We burned 1 week of outreach because of something nobody talks about
here's what we found 🧵
started cold outreach on fresh domains
reply rates were basically zero
so we started debugging
first we thought it was the copy
rewrote everything
still nothing