🎙️ Cold Email to Unicorn – Episode 1

What’s Actually Working in Cold Email (and Our First Experiments)

In the very first episode of Cold Email to Unicorn, Hans Dekker (Instantly.ai) and Ken Volk (AutoUp) kick off the series by looking at what’s been working so far in Instantly’s own outbound campaigns — and the first set of experiments they’re about to launch.

So far, Instantly.ai has used cold email to land customers like Lovable, Stripe, Jets.com, Sony, Ahrefs, and many more. Now, we’re pulling back the curtain to share the exact campaigns, frameworks, and data fueling that growth.

🔑 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why cold emails don’t always need to stay under 50 words — and when longer emails can perform better.

• How AI helps us research companies, map personas, and personalize sequences at scale.

• Why follow-up emails may be the most underrated part of your sequence (and how we make them outperform).

• The trade-off between easy CTAs vs. demo-focused CTAs — and what actually drives pipeline.

• Four experiments we’re testing over the next two weeks:
  1. Testing different email frameworks & templates
  2. Adding personalized PS lines
  3. Targeting newly hired sales leaders
  4. Scraping job listings for cold-email-related signals

📌 Why Listen?

If you run outbound campaigns, this episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what’s actually working today — based on hundreds of thousands of emails sent and real data.

👉 Follow along as we share results every two weeks.