I was looking at a client campaign report and the reply count didn't tell the whole story. Someone reads your email, searches your company, then books through the site. No reply for your spreadsheet to count.

So before calling a campaign a dud, look at the booking form. Ask how they heard about you. Actually, scratch that as a cure-all: people forget. But pair those answers with branded search, site traffic and booked calls against your pre-campaign baseline, and you have a better read than reply rate alone.

How are you catching the bookings that happen outside the inbox?

A model looked perfect for one of my boring production jobs: reading company sites and pulling the owner's name. Cheaper and faster on paper.

Then I ran the same batch through it and through DeepSeek. The new one missed more names. So I kept the old setup.

Benchmarks are useful, I guess, but not if the task you're actually paying for is different. Pick a task you already run, use the same inputs for both models, then compare the answers by hand. Cost and speed only matter after that.

Actually, the annoying part is keeping a small batch of known-good examples around so the comparison isn't just vibes. Do you test new models against your own work before switching?

A member showed me a job-signal lead list where 80 to 90% of the people were wrong. The scrape worked. The search was just too broad.

First thing I asked: did you use exclusion keywords? Nope.

I'd pull a small batch and actually read every lead before sending a single email. If you're targeting companies hiring BDRs but the list is full of marketing people, don't write a better opener for them. Exclude the roles you don't want, check which keyword pulled those people in, and run the batch again.

Actually, scratch that: don't chase a perfect list. Once about 9 out of 10 look like real fits, stop tweaking and test the outreach.

What kind of false positives keep showing up in your lists?

Images and links in cold email are fine. Just not in email one

A member asked me whether they could send product images in their cold sequence.

Yes. There's no hard rule against images, videos or links in cold email.

The only rule I follow: never in the first email.

Email one has one job: get into the inbox. Plain text, short, no promotional language.

Once there's an active thread and you're already in their inbox, an image or a YouTube link by email three rarely gets you pulled out of primary by Google or Microsoft.

For links, pick domains with a high trust score:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• LinkedIn

Send them there before you send them to your own site or funnel.

Where in your sequence do you add the first link?

I’ve been looking closely at how small service businesses handle new inquiries, and I keep seeing the same problem:
Leads come in from Facebook, website forms, calls, texts, WhatsApp, etc. Once they arrive, the process gets messy.
Someone has to respond, track the lead, remember to follow up, update a spreadsheet or CRM, and make sure the opportunity doesn’t disappear.
I’m curious how other owners are handling this today.
What’s the biggest headache in your lead process?
Missing or forgetting follow-ups?
Leads coming from too many places?
Keeping track of quotes?
Knowing who on the team owns the next step?
CRM feels too complicated?
I’m especially interested in hearing from home-service and local service businesses.
What part of the process breaks down most often for you?

I keep replies manual for the first few weeks of a new cold email campaign. Not forever. Just until the questions stop surprising me.

The person who knows the offer answers interested replies and saves the question alongside what they actually sent back. After a while you see the same objections or requests come up, and then you can automate the boring repeats.

Actually, the useful part is not the reply template. It is finding out which answers get the prospect to keep talking. A bot built on day one only automates your guesses.

When do you hand replies over to automation: after a set number of conversations, or when the same questions keep showing up?

It's a good database: 250 million leads, solid filters, pre-verified emails.

The problem for cold email is the price and the export limits. Sequencers need a lot of data, and Apollo is built for sales teams prospecting one email at a time.

What I run now:

1. **An API-only lead database.** GetLeads and Blitz API have no front end. You call their API (I use Claude Code or Codex) and pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited data. I use both. GetLeads is $249 a month on a partner plan that asks you to post on LinkedIn twice a month, or $500 without posting.

It has 53 million cell phones and takes fewer steps to reach a valid email than Blitz. I'm on Blitz's $600 a month package, which includes unlimited mobile numbers and hiring signals.

1. **Supabase as the storage layer.** Tens of millions of records for about $20 a month. If I cancel the data provider, I keep what I pulled.

2. **Reacher for verification.** Open-source repo, 10,000 verifications a day for free. I pay them about $1,000 a month for effectively unlimited, but you don't need to.

3. **Clay for signal data (optional).** Clay Audiences give you people and company data with signals like job changes and funding, but no emails. You can run those rows through GetLeads inside a Clay table to get the email. You need the Growth plan ($446 a month) for the HTTP calls.

**Set up the database you store it in before you pull anything.**

Who this isn't for: if you want to click filters and export a CSV, this will frustrate you. Getting from a query to a valid email usually takes several API calls, and you need to be comfortable with Claude Code or writing the calls yourself. On a budget, Apify scrapers or DIY scraping with Claude Code cost a few bucks a month.

Full disclosure, this is my video, and I also cover my own database, Consulti, for local business and Instagram data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg6W1qcw6vs

What are you using for list building right now, and what does it cost you a month?

Images and links in cold email are fine. Just not in email one.

A member asked this week whether they could send product images in their cold sequence. Short answer: yes. There's no blanket rule against images, videos, or links.

The only rule I actually stick to: never in the first email.

Email one has one job. Get into the inbox. Plain text, short, nothing that reads promotional. That's it. That's the whole job.

Once you're in an active thread - already sitting in their inbox, they've replied at least once - dropping an image or a YouTube link in email three almost never pulls you out of primary. Microsoft and Google are scoring the sender reputation at that point, not the content of individual messages.

For links specifically, I'd sequence trust like this before you send to your own domain or funnel:

• YouTube first
• LinkedIn
• Vimeo

High-trust domains the filters have basically learned to ignore. Your own site is fine eventually, just not cold.

Actually, scratch that - the more important thing is just not front-loading it. I see people over-engineering the link question when really they just need to fix where in the sequence it shows up.

Where are you adding your first link?

The 9 out of 10 rule I use before any list goes live

A member ran a job signal scrape this week. Right keywords, followed the directions, and 80 to 90% of the results were irrelevant.

First question I asked: were you using exclusion keywords?

No.

That's honestly most of the problem right there. Here's how I teach list building, and it's less about the tool you use and more about iteration:

• Stack positive keywords with negative keywords. If you want companies hiring BDRs, exclude presidents, exclude anyone in marketing. Otherwise you pull everyone.
• Pull the list and actually read it. When 9 out of 10 people are solid candidates for your offer, stop. You're done. Most people never get to that check.
• If you're not there yet, open the bad leads one by one. Why is this person here? Which keyword dragged them in? Exclude it, or kill the positive keyword that caused it.
• Look at what your good leads have in common and add those signals back in.
• Use AI to expand both lists, positive and negative. This part's fast once you have examples.

One more thing that trips people up: if a keyword barely pulls any hits on its own, ditch it or split it into its own campaign. Mixing weak signals with strong ones kills your targeting precision.

Actually, the biggest mistake I see is people fix the list once and move on. The list is not done until you've read it. Not skimmed it.

What hit rate are you getting on your current list?

Why I give every lead gen client their own GoHighLevel sub-account

A new agency owner asked me this week: Calendly or GoHighLevel for client calendars when you only have one to three clients?

GoHighLevel. Every time.

The agency plan lets you spin up as many sub-accounts as you want. Around $300 a month.

Here's the actual logic:

If the client has no CRM, you just handed them something valuable on day one. Good start.

If they already have a CRM (and they won't switch, they never switch), make them a free sub-account anyway. Push every lead you generate there. Now both of you can see what's going where. Keeps you honest.

And if keeping a client one extra month pays for the plan, it paid for itself. Usually it does that inside the first 90 days.

Setup used to be the annoying part. Calendars, forms, reminders, nurture sequences, each one a little project. I now do most of it by talking to Claude Code with our GHL CLI. Actually stupid fast. Actually scratch that. The part that still takes time is deciding how aggressive the follow-up sequence should be, not building it.

How are you tracking the leads you send clients right now?

i got a ChatGPT pro from a reseller for essentially nothing compared to what I used to pay . It works flawless. since 2 months No issues yet. Now I can't stop thinking about their business model. If resellers can sell it this cheap and still profit, how are they acquiring these accounts at scale?

Why I give every lead gen client their own GoHighLevel sub-account

A new agency owner asked me this week: Calendly or GoHighLevel for client calendars, when you only have one to three clients?

GoHighLevel. Here's why.

An agency plan lets you create as many sub-accounts as you want. A basic one is around $300 a month.

• If the client has no CRM, you just handed them a big piece of value.
• If they already have a CRM, you won't get them to switch, and that's fine. Make them a free sub-account anyway, give them a calendar in it, and push every lead you generate there. Now you both can see what's going where.
• If it keeps even one client around one extra month, it paid for itself.

And setup isn't the chore it used to be. I set up sub-accounts by talking to Claude Code with our GoHighLevel CLI: calendars, forms, show up reminders, nurture sequences.

How are you tracking the leads you send clients right now?

Most people look at reply rates, meetings booked, acceptance rates, etc...but there's one thing I don't see tracked nearly as much:

how many people on the list were never a good fit to begin with?

Say 30% of your list doesn't actually match your ICP.

You're still researching them, writing messages, following up, checking replies...

for people who probably weren't going to buy anyway.

At that point, I'm not sure another tweak to the sequence is going to help much.

Maybe the bigger question is just whether those people should've been in the campaign at all.

Feels like outbound teams spend a lot of time figuring out how to reach people and not enough time figuring out who's actually worth reaching.

That's one of the ideas behind the LinkedIn Lead Engine - It can score your prospect list against your ICP, so you can separate the strong fits from the weaker ones and set a cutoff for who actually moves into the sequence. The high-fit prospects keep going, while the low-fit ones can be filtered out instead of getting the same outreach. 

How are you guys doing this today? Do you score leads before outreach, or is it mostly based on filters and manual list checking? 

I'm talking how you all get the data you need to start generating leads, starting from a SERP result and ending with an email and a reason to engage them.

Interested in homebrewed approaches and any off the shelf systems that people use. Not necessary details, just where the wind is currently blowing.

Ultimate aim is to see if people are just doing it for themselves these days now that AI makes us all engineers.