Sales · Outbound

Cold outbound (solo)

Solo founder: skip Clay, Smartlead, HubSpot.

When you're a one-person team sending under 500 emails a month, you don't need Clay enrichment or Smartlead infrastructure. Apollo basic for leads, Claude for the email, Gmail for delivery.

SALESBEGINNERBeginnerFrom $26/mo
ApolloClaudeGmail
The stack
Apollo
Lead source + light enrichment

Free tier or $49 Basic gives you the contacts plus what little enrichment you need at solo scale.

Free · $49/mo Basic · $79/mo Pro
Claude
Per-lead copy

Solo volume means you can hand-personalize. Claude drafts from a 1-line trigger you write yourself.

$20/mo Pro · API $3/M tokensAlts: ChatGPT
Gmail
Send

Use one secondary domain inbox, hand-send. Skip Smartlead until you exceed 500 sends/month.

Free · $6/mo Workspace
Real monthly cost
small
$26/mo
100 sends/mo, hand-sent
  • apolloFree
  • claude$20
  • gmail$6 Workspace
medium
$75/mo
300 sends/mo
  • apollo$49 Basic
  • claude$20
  • gmail$6 Workspace
heavy
$105/mo
500 sends/mo (max before Smartlead)
  • apollo$79 Pro
  • claude$20
  • gmail$6 Workspace
Workflow
  1. 1
    Build a tight listApollo

    Apollo: filter to your tightest ICP. Cap the export at 100 contacts. At solo scale, list quality beats list size.

  2. 2
    One trigger per lead

    For each contact, jot one specific trigger (recent post, funding, hire, product launch). 30 seconds per lead.

  3. 3
    Draft each emailClaude

    Paste the trigger + ICP into Claude. One email per lead.

    Prompt · Hand-personalized cold email
    Write a 4-line cold email.

Recipient: {{first_name}}, {{title}} at {{company}}.
Trigger I noticed: {{1 specific thing, e.g. "their post about hiring 3 SDRs in Berlin last week"}}.
Pain we solve: {{1 line}}.
Proof: {{1 specific outcome with a number}}.
CTA: open to a 12-min look next week?

Constraints:
- Subject: 3 to 5 words, lowercase. Output 2 options.
- Body: 4 lines (hook with the trigger, pain, proof, CTA).
- Under 80 words.
- No "I noticed", no "I hope this finds you well", no "quick question".

Output: subject options, then the email body.
  4. 4
    Send + follow up by handGmail

    Send from your secondary inbox. Two follow-ups: +3 days (1 line, sharper hook), +7 days (1 line, breakup). Stop there.

What it produced
Solo founder, ProServ B2B

300 sends over 6 weeks: 8.4% reply rate (high, because hand-personalized), 14 booked calls, 3 closed at $4k average. Total tooling cost in that window: $90.

Common pitfalls
Gmail send limits + spam triggers

Hard cap at 30 sends/day from a single inbox. Past 500/mo, deliverability collapses. That's when you graduate to the recommended stack.

Skipping the trigger

Without the per-lead trigger this stack falls apart. The whole reason it works at solo scale is that each email earns the open. Don't paste-and-blast.

Other ways to do Cold outbound
Cold outbound Recommended
Full motion: enrichment, deliverability, CRM
$120/mo
View stack
Curated by @alex-w
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