Lesson 1: Cold email is NOT dead here is why

We’re adding new chapters to this cold email course as they’re released. Join the waitlist to get notified when a new chapter is available.

In this lesson, you’ll see real cold email campaigns run by Woodpecker clients that generated thousands of leads across industries.

Discover how tracking reply sentiment helps identify high-quality leads and learn what makes campaigns in tough markets, like the US, logistics and education, successful. These real-world examples show what’s possible with cold email and how you can replicate their success. Watch and get inspired to launch your own high-performing campaign!

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• How Woodpecker clients have collectively generated over 400,000 leads per year, with top performers reaching 400k+ leads on their own
• What high-performing campaigns look like across different industries – from logistics and SEO to education and influencer marketing
• Why certain niches (recruitment, influencer outreach) consistently achieve exceptional reply rates, sometimes above 70–95%
• That cold email works even in tough or saturated markets, with real examples showing 27-43% reply rates in competitive spaces like the US market and logistics

 

I promised you to show real campaigns from our customers – this lesson is all about that.

But, let’s first zoom out a bit and look at some global numbers.

Woodpecker is a SaaS business.

It relies on recurring monthly or yearly payments.

A customer will only buy a product again IF – positive return on THEIR investment.

Woodpecker has customers that:

• • have been with us over 8 years

• • These customers decided every month to trust Woodpecker again.

• • Have years of positive return on investment otherwise they wouldn’t be with us

Just since 2019:

• • all our customers – generated over 18 million replies using Woodpecker.

• • our biggest lead generation agencies – generated over 1 million replies

• • our non-agency clients: generated over 100k replies just for their own business.

Okay having that many replies is nice – but what counts are leads.

• • Let’s drill down a bit.

Woodpecker was one of the first companies to track the sentiment of a reply.

Is it positive, neutral, or negative?

In cold email a lead is defined as a – positive reply.

Means the prospect responded to your specific value proposition – positively.

So let’s look at just the positive replies

• • US market – some of our clients – generated over 100k leads

• • Our top customer – well over 400k leads

Think of it, 400k leads. This could be you.

If I look at our data since 2021

• • Woodpecker clients generated on average over 400k leads yearly

• • That is tens of thousands of leads every month

Now these are global numbers.

Let’s look at actual campaigns our clients ran in the last months.

The first campaign:

• • a great offer – BUT at the same time is asking for a budget from the prospect.

• • This means – it’s NOT just giving something for free.

• • It is focused on the US market – and yet – generated over one thousand leads

• • The US market is tough – yet the client has a 27% reply rate!

The second campaign:

• • from the SEO space.

• • typical cold email but offers a lot of value for the prospect

• • it lead to over 1.200 leads

• • Important to point out – it’s not a micro campaign but has over 4000 prospects

Okay, the next campaign is:

• • from the logistics space – German market

• • people in the logistic space get a lot of emails – it’s quite oversaturated

• • yet the customer got over 120 leads just with one campaign

This next campaign is an interesting one:

• • education space – hard to get through to people there via cold email

• • often your are stuck with trying to call people there

• • not this client – they got a 43% reply rate and over 450 leads

Some of our clients run micro campaigns:

• • campaign is about paid and unpaid collaboration opportunities

• • almost all prospects replied – 95% reply rate

• • what’s crazy is that over 65% replies were positive

Alright, let’s do just one last round of examples.

Since the beginning of Woodpecker we had clients:

• • In the recruitment space.

• • They typically have very high engagement rates – because they offer something of value

• • A job to an individual

• • OR a candidate to a company that is actively looking for such a person

So, you will often see campaigns like these:

• • a 49% reply rate and 17 people replying positively

Typically, recruitment campaigns are micro-campaigns, this one is relatively big:

• • 200 prospects

• • and generated 34 interested prospects and a 30% reply rate

Now my last example

• • the influencer marketing industry

• • quite new – but performs extremely well in cold email

• • it’s a WIN – WIN – WIN because…

• • 1. the influencer gets a potential partnership deal

• • 2. the brand can get exposure for their product

• • 3. you as the sender get great reply rates – meaning you won’t have to deal with deliverability

• • We have 2000 influencers here and 71% replied positively!

• • That’s over 400 leads in one campaign

Alright, that was a loooot of companies – but – you see cold email is very profitable

All examples were real campaigns run in Woodpecker – by our clients – over the last few months.

If you follow me along in this course… I would love to see you running such campaigns in Woodpecker.

Nevertheless, IF you are still NOT convinced… Join me on the next lesson where I:

• • cover the cost per lead for cold email

• • and show you how much ROI you can drive across three different scenarios

So, I hope to see you in the next lesson!