Instantly.ai

Instantly helped me sign my first cold email client (~$4.8K/mo)... even with my targeting completely off haha. I was emailing companies hiring salespeople. The guy misunderstood my pitch, we jumped on a call anyway & he signed. 50+ of our agency clients went on to run their cold email on it. Now it picks the leads for you too: Lead Finder recommends prospects from 550M+ contacts (local businesses & creators included) - before you even search. Here's how we'd get the most out of it: 1. Start from who already pays you - It analyzes your offer + your best customers - Then gives each prospect a match score: 61%, 82%, 98%... (The launch video turns it into a fighting game character select screen, love it) → Same logic as our lookalike play: target companies similar to your best clients. 2. Buying signals first - Live signals cover 85% of companies - Lead scoring pushes the best leads to the top → Target the people who actually have a reason to reply. 3. Tight lists > broad lists - Across the 1M+ emails we analyzed in Instantly, micro-lists of 500-1,000 greatly outperformed 100,000-contact blasts - Blasting everything it finds just teaches inboxes to ignore you 4. Open on the signal - You can enrich, research & write in the same place, no tool switching - So instead of "hope all's well at [Company]", lead with it (my go-to: "Noticed you recently added [tool]...") 5. Value-first > ask-first - Its AI agent can run outreach from the first email all the way to the booked call - Keep it to 3 emails & offer something before asking for 15 min ("want me to send over a quick example deck?")