Which ICP should you cold email first? What our campaigns said in September
The best ICP for B2B cold email is the segment where your offer is an easy yes, the list is reachable, and one conversation can turn into real money. For us in September that was general partners at funds of $100M to $200M. They were converting at a high rate. The harder question was what to try next, and how to avoid chasing every segment that sounded promising on a Monday call.
Here is the segment that worked, the ones we floated, and the test I use to decide which ones earn a campaign.
The segment that converted
On our team call on September 22 the investor ICP was the bright spot. GPs of $100M to $200M funds were converting at a high rate, and it was an easy sell: what we do resonates strongly with them.
It is worth asking why, because the reasons are what you copy, not the segment.
Fund managers at that size are raising, or about to raise, all the time. Their own business is relationships with LPs, and they know that cold outreach to allocators is hard. A system that turns cold contacts into warm conversations is not abstract to them. They feel the problem every quarter.
They are also senior enough to decide on their own. A GP at a fund that size does not need three internal approvals to try something new. And they are reachable: their names and titles are public, and they respond to an invitation to talk about how they invest.
Pain they feel often, authority to act, a reachable list, and an offer that matches. That is the shape of a good ICP.
The ICPs we floated
With the investor segment working, the conversation turned to what else to try. Charles asked everyone to drop ideas into our WhatsApp group. Here is the list that came out of that call:
- Oil and gas, and other cash-rich “boring” industries, where there is less competition for attention and budgets are high.
- Ex-FAANG people.
- Founders who have exited.
- CROs.
- AI companies.
- Family offices. Charles had a warm conversation with one the day before.
- Renewable energy, which Emiliano was interested in.
And the raw material was there. Charles had an Apollo account with 630K CEOs and founders already filtered. With a database that size, the bottleneck is not finding people. It is choosing which people.
Why the boring industries are tempting
The oil and gas idea is the one I find most interesting, and the one I trust least.
The appeal is real. Cash-rich, unglamorous industries get far less cold outreach than tech. Their inboxes are quieter. Their budgets are large. An invitation to talk about how they run their business might stand out more there than in a SaaS founder’s inbox, which is drowning.
The risk is also real. Does our offer solve a problem they feel? A founder who sells software understands immediately why a podcast that books buyers is valuable. An operations executive at an energy company may not sell that way at all. Low competition is only an advantage if there is a fit underneath it.
How to decide what earns a campaign
Here is the filter I use. A segment earns a campaign when you can answer yes to all four:
- Pain. Do they feel the problem you solve, often, and would they describe it in their own words?
- Authority. Can the person you reach say yes without three other approvals?
- Reach. Can you build a clean list of them, with real names and titles, at a size worth testing?
- Value. Is one closed deal worth enough to justify the campaign?
Run the floated list through it. Exited founders score well on pain if they are starting again, and well on authority. CROs score high on pain and authority, if your offer is about pipeline. AI companies are reachable and feel the pain, but the inboxes are crowded. Family offices are high value, but reach is hard, because most of them do not publish much. The boring industries score well on reach and value, and the pain question is open.
None of that is a verdict. It is a way to rank what to test first instead of testing everything at once.
Stay in your lane, test at the edges
When a segment is working, the temptation is to spread out immediately. Every new idea sounds like it could be the next one. The risk is that you spread your attention, your mailboxes and your follow-up across six half-tested segments and lose the one that was working.
The way I would run it: keep the winning segment fully fed. Then pick one new segment at a time, give it a clean list and a proper test, and judge it on replies and booked conversations before adding the next.
Every test also touches your sending reputation. A new segment with a poor list can push bounce rates up across the same mailboxes your best campaign depends on. Testing at the edges is how you find the next good segment. Testing everywhere at once is how you damage the one you have.
One segment, one clean test
A good test looks like a real campaign, just aimed at a new group. A day before that call, we were preparing a venture investor campaign for a client: about 17,000 contacts by title. Two details from that launch are worth copying.
First, Charles removed the contacts from the client’s previous campaign before loading the new list, so the test would not double-mail people already in a sequence. Clean separation is what makes the results readable.
Second, we scrubbed the copy. The earlier campaign had referenced a piece of legislation that did not pass, and every line mentioning it had to come out before launch. Copy that was true last month can be wrong this month. Read it again before every new segment.
A week before that, on September 15, we had settled on the simplest way to spin up new campaigns: keep the winning copy, change two words, and point it at a different person’s booking link. When the copy works, the variable you are testing should be the audience, not the writing.
The investor lesson works for customers too
What made fund GPs work was not that they are investors. It was the combination: the pain is constant, the decision is theirs, the list is reachable, and the invite format suits people who like talking about how they think.
Look for the same combination among your buyers. The segment that converts is rarely the biggest one on your list. It is the one where all four line up.
Want us to test the segments for you?
When you start a show with us, we build the lists, write the invites and run the segments for you, so you can see which ICP converts with replies and booked conversations instead of opinions on a call.
Frequently asked questions
How do I pick an ICP for outbound?
Look for four things together: they feel the pain often, the person you reach can decide, you can build a clean list of them, and one closed deal is worth the campaign. Rank segments on those and test the best first.
Should I test many industries at once?
No. Keep your winning segment fully fed and test one new segment at a time with a clean list. Testing everything at once spreads attention and can damage the sending reputation your best campaign depends on.
Do fund managers respond to cold email?
In September, GPs of $100M to $200M funds were converting at a high rate for us. They feel the fundraising pain constantly, can decide on their own, and respond well to an invitation to talk about how they invest.