4,300 leads. Nine business days. 25 opportunities. That’s one opportunity for every 170 leads contacted, on a real client campaign (the client’s name stays private). Ali’s takeaway is about volume: cold email is still a numbers game, but the numbers change when four things are right.
Is cold email a numbers game?
Yes, but how big the numbers need to be depends on four things: the list, the offer, the lead magnet and the deliverability. We can all agree cold email is a volume game, as Ali puts it. When all four are right, it’s still a volume game, just profitable at a fraction of the volume.
What were the results?
25 opportunities from 4,300 leads in nine business days.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Leads contacted | 4,300 |
| Emails sent | 4,950 |
| Time | 9 business days (Oct 13 to 23) |
| Replies | 80 (a 1.84% reply rate) |
| Positive replies | 25 (31.25% of replies) |
| Opportunities | 25, valued at $97K in Instantly |
| Leads per opportunity | About 170 |
The numbers come straight from the campaign’s Instantly report, which the video shows.
What lets cold email work at lower volume?
Getting the four conditions right at the same time. These are Ali’s four, and where we go deeper on each:
- The list: the right companies and the right job titles at them. How to build a TAM list for free covers mapping the market, and what to prepare before hiring a cold email agency covers the ICP.
- The offer: whether it works through cold email at all is one of the five checks for whether cold email is right for your business.
- The lead magnet: value the reader can accept easily. Our lead magnet case study shows what happens when it asks too much.
- The deliverability: emails that reach the inbox. The Inbox Calculator shows how many inboxes and domains a sending volume needs.
How can you tell if cold email results are real?
Ask whoever is showing them to refresh the page. Anyone can change the numbers on a dashboard in their own browser with “inspect element”, for a screenshot or a screen recording. Those edits only exist in that tab, so they disappear on refresh and the real figures come back.
To see what cold email could look like for your business, book a strategy call. More campaigns with their numbers are in our case studies.
Questions
Is cold email a numbers game?
Partly. Cold email needs volume, but how much depends on the list, the offer, the lead magnet and deliverability. When all four are right it's still a volume game, just profitable at a fraction of the volume: this campaign turned 4,300 leads into 25 opportunities in nine business days.
How many leads does it take to get one cold email opportunity?
On this client campaign, about 170: 25 opportunities from 4,300 leads contacted in nine business days. It varies with the list, the offer, the lead magnet and deliverability; on another campaign, a lead magnet got zero positive replies until its angle changed.
How can you tell if cold email results are fake?
Ask the person showing them to refresh the page. Numbers changed with the browser's inspect element tool only exist in that browser tab, so they disappear when the page reloads and the dashboard shows its real figures again.
How quickly can a cold email campaign bring opportunities?
This one brought 25 opportunities in nine business days, from 4,300 leads. How quickly a campaign gets there depends on its volume and on the four things Ali names: the list, the offer, the lead magnet and deliverability.
What the video shows
The video has no narration. It's a screen recording of the campaign's report in Instantly, for Oct 13 to Oct 23, 2026.
Total sent: 5K (4,950 emails). Sequence started: 4.3K leads. Reply rate: 1.84%, 80 replies. Positive reply rate: 31.25%, 25 positive replies. Opportunities: 25, valued at $97K.
Total replies over the period: 82.
The video has no narration; this describes what's on screen.