Cold email for SaaS founders with no sales team: how I run it with AI agents

I run go-to-market alone for a product that helps teams run AI agents. There is no sales team. So cold email has to be small, and most of the work has to go to an agent.

This is how I run it.

Start with who, not what to write

Before any email, I set the target. For this product the first one is tech and agency companies with 15 to 50 people, in Europe without the DACH countries. The Baltics and the Nordics each get their own list.

A list is only useful if I can act on it. My bar: each list ties to one campaign goal. Every company has a named contact and an angle. And there are at least 200 well-defined targets, so the test has enough data to mean something.

I had a hand-picked list of 123 companies. I threw it out. It missed that bar. It was a set of companies that matched a filter. It had no named contacts and no angle for any of them. I couldn’t act on it. On October 13 I changed the targeting to a tighter profile.

The ideal customer was easier to name because we already ran a pilot with an agency like this. That gave me a real company to picture when I wrote the profile.

Principle: set the target first. Without one, an agent will build you a big list of the wrong people, quickly.

What the agent does

I send my assistant short instructions on WhatsApp. A campaign goal and who it is for.

It builds the list. It finds the contacts and verifies their emails. Then it visits each target’s live website and reads what the company does. It writes the sequence from that. It enrolls the contacts and leaves the campaign paused.

The agent works inside my tools and acts on my behalf. It does the prep, the research, the building and the enrolling. I do the approving. It uses APIs where it can, but mostly it works through the browser, using the tools the way a person would.

I spend nothing and send nothing without approving it. I approved each credit spend myself. Sending, or turning a campaign on, stays my decision. The Baltic and Nordic sequences were built this way: contacts enrolled, campaign paused, waiting for me.

Before anything goes live I read examples. I tell the agent what is wrong with the copy and it redoes it. We repeat until I would be fine receiving it.

Principle: the agent does the legwork, you make the calls that matter. Who to write to, and what to say.

The sequence

Every email is written for one company. The agent reads that company’s own site, so the copy refers to what they actually do, and it is tailored to the role of the person receiving it.

Principle: personalize from the company’s own site. A line about their business shows you looked. A generic line does not.

The sequence has four steps. Each email is short, under 300 characters. Each one opens with a value proposition. Each one uses a different use case, taken from the company’s own website. So step two is not a reminder of step one. It says something new.

The subject line is the same every time: “{{first_name}}, quick question?”

No links. A first email from a stranger with a link in it looks like a template.

The email list is verified emails only. I also leave out catch-all domains. A catch-all domain accepts any address, so you can’t tell if the person is real. Skipping them means a smaller list and fewer bounces.

Why this much care? Gmail asks all senders to keep their spam rate below 0.3% in Postmaster Tools, and recommends staying under 0.1% (Google’s sender guidelines). I send small volumes, so I am far from that line. But bad lists are how you end up near it.

The first examples the agent wrote were too long and too generic. I cut them down and asked for plainer wording. The agent redid them, and the second round was much closer to what I would want to receive. I keep doing this on every new campaign. The first draft is never the one I send.

Also, every commercial email to US recipients needs a working opt-out (FTC CAN-SPAM guide). Put it in.

Mailboxes, warm-up and volume

Good copy will not save you if the mail lands in spam. This part is plain setup, and it takes longer than the writing.

Use a separate domain. Don’t send cold email from your main company domain. Snov.io tells users to create separate domains for outreach, to protect the main domain (Snov.io). It also says to buy them at least 30 days before use, because new domains need time to build sender reputation, and to stick to .com, .org or .net.

Use a few mailboxes, not one. Snov.io says to put up to 5 mailboxes on one domain, and warns that more than 5 raises the risk of the whole domain being flagged. It also suggests a mix of Google and Microsoft mailboxes, 2 Google for every 1 Microsoft.

Set up authentication. Google says all senders must set up SPF or DKIM. Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail need SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and DMARC can be set to “none” (Google). Microsoft’s Outlook.com has the same 5,000-a-day rule for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, enforced since May 5, 2025 (Outlook.com postmaster). You will send far less than that, but set all three up anyway. I would, and Google recommends it.

Warm up before you send. A new mailbox has no sending history. Snov.io says to wait to send campaign emails until warm-up finishes. Its ramp-up: in week one, 15 campaign emails a day for a Gmail mailbox or 5 for Outlook, plus 40 warm-up emails. Each week after that, add 5 to the campaign limit and take 5 off the warm-up limit. After about a month you reach 40 campaign emails and 10 warm-up emails a day per mailbox (Snov.io).

Keep each mailbox low. The tools give different numbers.

• Instantly recommends 30 campaign emails per mailbox per day (Instantly). Its slow ramp option adds 2 emails a day until it reaches your limit.
• Snov.io recommends no more than 50 a day per mailbox, campaigns and warm-up together, and says to add mailboxes instead of sending more.
• Hunter starts each connected account at 15 emails a day and says to raise it by 5 to 10 a day (Hunter).

These are vendor recommendations. None of them is a rule from Google or Microsoft.

Know the provider limits, then stay far below them. Google Workspace allows 2,000 messages a day per user, 1,500 for mail merge, and 500 on trial accounts (Google Workspace limits). Consumer Gmail stops you sending for 1 to 24 hours after more than 500 emails in a day (Gmail). Exchange Online allows 10,000 recipients a day and 30 messages a minute (Microsoft). Hunter’s own maximum daily limit in its tool is 400 for Gmail and Google Workspace and 250 for Outlook and Microsoft 365. That is Hunter’s cap, not the provider’s. Google and Microsoft set hard limits but give no “safe” cold email volume. For that, use the tool recommendations above.

Do the math on mailboxes. At 30 emails a day per mailbox, 5 mailboxes send 150 a day. A four-step sequence to 200 contacts is 800 emails. Work out how many mailboxes you need before you start, and remember you won’t be at full volume during warm-up.

Keep the list clean. Verified emails only. Leave out catch-all domains. Put an unsubscribe or opt-out line in every email, and stop sending to anyone who opts out. Google requires one-click unsubscribe for marketing messages from bulk senders.

Tools

You need a way to find and verify emails, and a way to send and follow up. Some tools do both. I use a prospecting platform for search and a sequencing tool for sending.

These are other options worth a look. Prices change, so check before you buy.

Finding and verifying emails

• Hunter. Free plan: 50 credits a month. Starter: $49 a month, or $34 a month billed yearly, with 2,000 credits. One credit finds one email. Verifying one email costs half a credit. If no email is found you pay nothing. Pricing
• Skrapp. Free plan: 50 credits. Professional: $29 a month billed annually, with 2,000 credits a month. You are only charged for emails marked valid or catch-all. Pricing
• Prospeo. Free plan: 100 credits a month. Starter has 2,000 credits a month per user. A verified email costs 1 credit. Credits, plans

Skrapp charges for catch-all results. If you leave catch-alls out like I do, check how your tool counts them.

Sending and follow-ups

• Instantly. The Growth plan is $47 a month, or $37.6 a month on yearly billing. It includes 5,000 emails a month, 1,000 uploaded contacts, unlimited email accounts and warm-up. Pricing
• Snov.io. One tool that finds, verifies, warms up and sends. The Starter plan is $39 a month, or $29.25 a month on annual billing. It includes unlimited follow-ups and warm-up for 3 mailboxes at a time. It charges per new person you contact, and follow-ups to that person in the same billing period are free. Pricing

What I would do this week

1. Name one target. Write down one campaign goal.
2. Build a list of at least 200 with a named contact and an angle each. Have an agent do it.
3. Verify the emails. Drop the catch-alls.
4. Write four short emails, each with a different use case from the company’s site.
5. Read the examples. Fix the copy. Then decide whether to send.

The Baltic and Nordic campaigns are built and paused. I decide when they go.

If you want help setting this up, book a call.