Honest timeline. No magic.
A cold email campaign takes four to five weeks to produce its first meeting: one week to build sending infrastructure, two to three weeks of mailbox warm-up, then first sends in week three. Anyone promising meetings in week one is burning a domain to get them. Here's what actually happens, week by week.
Week 0
Kickoff
One 60-minute call. We nail down who you sell to, what your offer sounds like on cold traffic, and — in writing — what counts as a qualified meeting. If we think cold email won't work for your offer, we say so on this call.
- ✓ICP definition (Exhibit A of the contract)
- ✓Offer angle we'll lead with
- ✓Qualified-meeting definition
- ✓Calendar access + comms channel
Weeks 1–2
Build
Your sending system gets built on your accounts: 8–10 domain variants of your brand, 2–3 inboxes each, SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured, warmup running. Meanwhile we build and verify your prospect lists and write copy — 2–3 angles, plain text, specific.
- ✓Sending domains + inboxes (domains transfer to you on request)
- ✓Verified prospect list
- ✓Copy angles for your approval
- ✓Custom tracking domain
Weeks 2–3
Launch
Sends ramp carefully — 20–30 per inbox per day, scaling as reputation holds. We monitor bounces (kept under 2%) and replies daily. AI drafts each answer, a person reads every reply and approves what sends, usually within hours.
- ✓Live campaigns
- ✓Daily bounce + reply monitoring
- ✓Managed reply handling
- ✓First weekly report
Weeks 3–5
Meetings
Positive replies get booked straight onto your calendar with confirmation and reminder flows that protect show-rates. Each meeting comes with a short brief: who they are, what they said, why they took the call.
- ✓Meetings on your calendar
- ✓Pre-meeting briefs
- ✓Weekly reporting
- ✓Invoice only for meetings held
The old way, and this way.
Five differences that show up on an invoice, not in a deck.
A month with no meetings
- The usual agency
- The retainer bills anyway
- Here
- $249 of infrastructure, nothing else
A no-show
- The usual agency
- Usually billed as a meeting
- Here
- Never billed
Who runs your campaigns
- The usual agency
- A junior you have not met
- Here
- The founder
Your sending domains
- The usual agency
- Registered to the agency
- Here
- Registered to your brand, transfer free on request
A meeting you disagree with
- The usual agency
- No mechanism
- Here
- Three business days to dispute, against a bar you set
| The usual agency | Here | |
|---|---|---|
| A month with no meetings | The retainer bills anyway | $249 of infrastructure, nothing else |
| A no-show | Usually billed as a meeting | Never billed |
| Who runs your campaigns | A junior you have not met | The founder |
| Your sending domains | Registered to the agency | Registered to your brand, transfer free on request |
| A meeting you disagree with | No mechanism | Three business days to dispute, against a bar you set |
Deliverability is the whole game.
Meetings come from emails that land in the inbox. These are the non-negotiables that keep them landing.
Careful ramp
New domains never blast. 20–30 sends per inbox per day, scaled only as reputation holds.
Bounce control
Lists are verified before sending and bounces stay under 2% — the threshold where providers start distrusting you.
Plain-text email
No images, no links in the first touch, no HTML templates. The kind of email a founder actually sends.
Real replies
Automation books the meeting. AI drafts the answer, a person reads every reply and approves what sends, so nothing reaches your prospect unsupervised.
Your brand protected
Cold email never sends from your primary domain — only from variants we build, so your main domain's reputation is never at risk.
Want the honest read on your offer?
30 minutes. We'll tell you honestly whether your offer will work on cold email — even if the answer is no.