Cold outreach — reaching out to people who have never heard of you — is the hardest, most competitive, and lowest-converting type of outreach. Yet it is the only type most teams run.
The highest reply rates and meeting conversion rates typically come from campaigns targeting people who already know you in some way: former prospects who went cold, contacts who expressed interest but never booked, or people you met at an event. GetReplies is built to help you run all five stages of the funnel — not just the top.
The full-funnel campaign map
Stage | Agent to use | List type | What success looks like |
Awareness | Lookalike, Pain point nurture, Competitor takeout | Cold prospects — never contacted before | 10–20% LinkedIn connection acceptance; 5–10% reply rate |
Meeting booking | Demo scheduling | Prospects who replied positively to awareness campaign | 30–50% meeting book rate from positive replies |
No-show recovery | No-show re-engagement | Contacts who booked a demo and didn’t attend | 20–40% rebook rate within 7 days |
Nurture | Stuck deal follow-up, High-value content | Prospects who went cold after initial interest | 5–15% re-engagement rate |
Win-back | Competitor-switch win-back, Lapsed customer win-back | Former customers or deals lost 3–6 months ago | 8–20% positive response rate |
Awareness first, then meeting booking
One of the most effective campaign structures for cold prospects is a two-stage approach:
Stage 1 — Awareness campaign. Run a 5–6 step multi-channel campaign to your target cohort. Do NOT ask for a meeting in the first email. Instead, share a case study, a relevant insight, or a question that creates curiosity. Goal: get a reply that shows genuine interest.
Stage 2 — Meeting booking campaign. Take everyone who replied positively in Stage 1 and add them to a new campaign using the Demo scheduling agent. This campaign is short (2–3 steps) and direct: “You replied — let’s get 15 minutes on the calendar.” Goal: convert interest into a booked meeting.
This approach consistently converts at 30–50% from positive reply to booked meeting — because the prospect has already signalled interest. You are not asking a cold contact to take a big step. You are asking a warm contact to take a small one.
Your CRM is your best campaign list
Before you spend any time or money building new cold prospect lists, export every contact in your CRM who is not currently a customer and has not been contacted in the last 3 months.
These people already know you. Run them through a re-engagement campaign first. The reply rates will be 2–3x higher than cold outreach, and the conversations will be more productive because there is already context.