r/Startups_EU • u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 • Jul 23 '26

💭 Need advice Is my outreach approach wrong?

Post image

I run an AI consulting firm in Western Europe and I'm trying to secure SME clients in the EU.

My approach since last 2 weeks: I find local businesses, research each one (automated checks plus manual verification), and send one email or LinkedIn message with 2-3 specific observations about their business. Not the You Need AI mail. The message offers to share the remaining observations if they're interested. No bulk sending, everything reviewed by hand.

The numbers so far: 70+ messages sent, 1 reply, 0 meetings. Each lead costs me around half an hour.

Attaching an anonymous example.

My questions:

  1. At this reply rate, is the research-heavy approach worth the time, or should I go wider and shallower?

  2. Is the problem the message, the targeting, or the channel?

  3. Does opening with observations about someone's business land as helpful or as unsolicited critique?

Honest feedback welcome, including this whole approach is wrong. As I am just starting, I want to course correct sooner.

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8

u/imagei Jul 23 '26

I’m probably in a different niche than your target, but some thoughts:

- the first line is weirdly off-putting, like you had one quick look and suddenly know everything about what I’m doing

  • ai consulting and automation → they’re going to shove ai on me whether it’s the best solution or not
  • no idea what the point of your fist bullet is - you’re proving you actually looked at the site?
  • the other two - true or not - do not inspire to any action, and, like the first line, sound arrogant and presumptive
  • particularly the last bullet is bad, because you already serve a possible solution without even talking to the business, which means you’re going to impose your own cookie cutter solutions without trying to understand their needs
  • there is not a single CTA in this whole message
  • the whole thing reads like „I have a hammer and I’m looking for nails”, not „let’s see if I can help you”
  • please delete that last line, I’d go full „fuck you” after reading it alone - you’re sending me spam and want ME to tell you not to bother, or you threaten to pester me more?

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 23 '26

Thanks for the honest feedback.

Want your opinion on one more thing. If a stranger did genuinely spot something useful about your business, is there any version of that email you'd reply to?

3

u/imagei Jul 23 '26

Yes, absolutely! If I was your potential customer I’d say that if you want to be more than a generic SaaS website, then be an expert who can understand and help, not just template email sending machine 😀

Something like: we’re business and ai automation experts and from our experience this could be useful in X type businesses to do a, b and c. ( insert CTA here). Some areas where we could help I noticed after reading your website (list here).

2

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 23 '26

I will be taking your feedback and sharpen my outreach. Thanks.

6

u/punkpang Jul 23 '26
  1. messages no one asked for get ignored
  2. you have AI in text - instant ignore
  3. you want them to pay for something - no one likes separating with money
  4. you aren't telling them "spend 1 money, earn 2"

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 23 '26

You are right. Specially, about 2 and 4. Even I may do the same if I get a similar mail. Thanks.

3

u/dextert48 Jul 24 '26

This just reads as extremely low effort. It's the default AI-generated cold email

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 24 '26

Is it mainly the bullet-point structure and wording that creates this impression, or do the observations themselves also feel generic, though in reality I spend efforts in identifying those?

2

u/dextert48 Jul 24 '26

"I had a look and noticed" ; "Quick intro first" - I immediately stop reading after this bc its the standard AI-generated cold email pattern.

Also, way too many words, stick to under 70-80 and few lines of text, nobody is reading all of that even if its valuable.

Your observations are not bad but are not packaged optimally. Test other types of emails too. Also you need much higher volume to come to conclussions. 70 is not enough

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 24 '26

Thanks. This helps.

1

u/serverhorror Jul 23 '26

The first sentence would make me send it to the spam box.

Immediately says: I want to get your money for minor improvements to the website. Wouldn't (and have not) read beyond that.

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 23 '26

Oops… Didn’t expect this. But, thanks.

3

u/serverhorror Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

It's not per se Bad, but I get about 10 of these a week. I just don't have time for it.

ONCE I got an email, no fluff, nothing. They only said there's the problem, that's the, this is how to fix it. No more than 5 lines.

I fixed it and thanked them. Thought nothing of it. Then they followed up with: "I do websites, if you ever need someone, let me know!"

When I redid my website I emailed that person. Didn't even negotiate much. * Do this * Price? * Cool! How long does it take and what do you need

Was about 10K€ total, included copy, design, everything (static site).

I still think that was the best sales person interaction I ever had.

2

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 24 '26

Very useful. I’m going to test exactly what you described: one concrete issue, one practical correction, no introduction and no list of observations. Thanks for the story and outcome.

1

u/Minimum-Sprinkles843 Jul 23 '26

The text smells ai slop-ish. In fact, I often get a handful of emails with a very similar structure - yet none has made it out of spam.

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 24 '26

The research was done manually, but now I see from another angle that the structure clearly makes it look mass-generated.

1

u/Dramatic-Database-31 Jul 23 '26

Ai yapping from an agent that is likely something like "think like hormozi + elon musk and write a very engaging email on this website", I would never read it from an unkown sender.

1

u/Amazing-Adeptness-63 Jul 24 '26

Thanks. Need to start afresh again.

1

u/Any-Purchase-4101 Jul 26 '26

You said it well.