Cold outreach to eCommerce brands

Be the cold email
they answer.

  • Get answered by founders who delete everything else.
  • Write like you know them, at any volume.
  • Choose who you work with instead of waiting for them.
  • Know where next month's revenue is coming from.
See why yours get deleted

By application only · 4 places a month
Run by someone who sells to these inboxes every week

An eCommerce founder's inbox · Tuesday
Growth Agency Ltd

Quick question about your website 👋

Scale Partners

Idea for [Company]

You

Your bundle page loads in 4.1s on mobile

Digital Solutions Inc

Re: Re: Re: Following up on my last email

Four cold pitches, one morning.
One of them got answered.

§ 01  ·  The autopsy

Five reasons
your emails die.

None of them are about your writing talent. All five are structural, which is the good news: you can fix every one of them before your next send, on the list you already paid for.

Sent here by someone who didn't reply to your email? This is the section they wanted you to read.

Received · 09:04
01
Quick question
alex@growthagencyltd.com
to: founders@yourstore.com
Hi there,
02
I hope this email finds you well. I came across your website and was really impressed by what you have built.
03
We are a full service growth agency specialising in paid social, email flows, CRO and retention. We work with over 40 brands and offer a complete suite of services tailored to your needs.
04
Would you be open to a quick 30 minute call this week to discuss how we can help you scale?
05
Best regards,
Alex
Growth Agency Ltd
  1. The subject line was about you

    “Quick question”. “Partnership opportunity”. “Idea for [Company]”. They've had every one of those already this morning, so yours arrives pre-ignored.

    What works instead Four words that prove this is about their business. If a competitor of yours could send the same subject line, it isn't one.
  2. The first sentence bought nothing

    “I hope this email finds you well.” “I came across your website and was really impressed.” Both are filler, and both announce that a template is coming.

    What works instead One checkable observation about their store that took you 60 seconds to find. That single line is what buys you the second one.
  3. You pitched features to a stranger

    You listed what you do. At that point they don't know you, so what you do isn't yet interesting. It reads as a brochure, and brochures get closed.

    What works instead Lead with what changes for them, in a number they recognise. Your capability comes second, as the reason to believe it.
  4. The ask was too expensive

    You asked a stranger for 30 minutes. That is the most expensive thing you can request in a first email, so the cheapest response is to ignore it.

    What works instead An ask that costs four seconds and still moves the deal forward. There are several, and they convert far better than a calendar link.
  5. Nothing made you safe to answer

    No proof, no shared context, no sign you'll still be around next quarter. Replying has a cost and no visible upside.

    What works instead One specific, verifiable piece of evidence placed where it lowers risk rather than where it looks like bragging.

§ 02  ·  The mechanics

It was never your subject line.

Everybody rewrites the subject line first, and it's the least broken part. Three things upstream settled your reply rate before you typed a word, which also means fixing them lifts every email you send from now on.

FAULT 01

Your list was junk

Scraped, bought, or guessed from a name pattern. Some of it bounced, some landed on an info@ nobody reads, and the rest reached the wrong person in the company.

So you judged your copy on a test that was rigged before you started.
FAULT 02

One email went to everybody

Personalising by hand doesn't scale and enrichment vendors charge per row, so you sent the generic version. A busy operator spots that in half a second.

Fix this one and the same list starts producing replies at the same send volume.
FAULT 03

You played the wrong rulebook

An American style cold email into the EU, or a cautious European one into the US. Different law, different tolerance, different tone, different follow up cadence.

Get this right and you can open a second market without a second learning curve.

§ 03  ·  What it's costing you

Every bad send burns
something you can't buy back.

A domain that lands in spam takes weeks to rehabilitate. A prospect who has already filed you under agency spam doesn't come back for attempt two. And while you rebuild, the competitor who learned this properly is booking calls with the accounts still sitting on your list.

§ 04  ·  Who teaches it

Severin Schweiger, who runs the program
Image 02

Save your photo as assets/portrait.jpg

It loads here automatically, no code change needed. A working shot beats a studio headshot: at the desk, sending dashboard visible but unreadable, window light from one side.

Severin Schweiger Founder, Funnel Signals Ltd

I don't teach cold email.
I live on it.

I run a software company that sells to eCommerce brands. Cold outreach isn't a product I teach on the side, it's how the company gets customers, every week, on my own domains, at my own risk, against the same inboxes you're trying to reach.

That's the whole difference. I'm not optimising a course, I'm optimising a pipeline. You get the version that is running right now, including the parts that stopped working last quarter and what replaced them.

§ 05  ·  What changes for you

Four things you can't do today.

  1. Build your own list, in any market you pick

    Stop buying somebody else's exhausted database. You choose a country, a platform, a category and a revenue band, and produce a clean list of the people who actually decide.

  2. Personalise every row without paying for it

    Enrichment is the line item that stops most senders from writing relevant email. You'll do it yourself at no cost per row, which means the version you send at volume reads like it was written for one person.

  3. Get answered by people who ignore everyone else

    The subject line, the opening, the ask and the follow up sequence, built for a reader who deletes a dozen of these before lunch. That's the whole difference between a list and a pipeline.

  4. Sell into Europe and the US without burning either

    Two rulebooks, two tones, two cadences. Knowing both doubles your addressable market, and it keeps you out of the complaint that costs you a domain.

§ 06  ·  What you learn

Eight modules.
No theory.

You bring your product and your market. Together we build the list, the enrichment workflow and the sequence, and you send while the program is still running. You finish with a system that's already producing replies, not a folder of notes.

  • Which sending tool for your volume, and what each one really costs per month
  • Domain and mailbox setup: how many, on which domains, warmed how
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC done once, correctly, so you never think about it again
  • The tools I pay for, the ones I dropped, and the ones you can skip entirely

What you get out of itA setup that lands in the inbox instead of the spam folder, built in an afternoon and left alone after that.

  • Public sources for eCommerce brands that most sellers never touch
  • Building a list by platform, category, revenue band and country
  • Finding the person who decides instead of the address on the contact page
  • Verification, so your bounce rate stays low enough that your domain survives

What you get out of itYou never buy a list again, and you can open a new segment in a day whenever you want one.

  • The workflow that turns a raw export into a researched list with no paid credits
  • What to pull per row: category, positioning, stack, and an angle you can use
  • Prompt structure and batching, so 2,000 rows take minutes instead of days
  • Quality control, so you catch the rows where the model guessed instead of knowing

What you get out of itThe single biggest cost line in outbound disappears, and relevance stops being something you ration.

  • What an eCommerce operator is measured on, in their own words
  • The three or four things that are genuinely urgent for them this quarter
  • How the answer changes between a founder, a head of growth and an agency
  • Reading a store in 60 seconds and finding the one observation worth sending

What you get out of itYou stop guessing what matters to them, which is what makes the personalised line land instead of look automated.

  • Turning what you do into what it changes for the person reading
  • Proof that survives a sceptical first read, and proof that reads as bragging
  • Pricing and risk language in a first touch email: what to say and what to hold
  • The positioning test: if a competitor could send the same sentence, rewrite it

What you get out of itA pitch that holds up in every channel you use, not just email.

  • What gets opened by someone who already deleted a dozen of these today
  • Length, casing and punctuation, including what marks you as bulk instantly
  • Personalisation tokens that help, and the ones that scream mail merge
  • Testing properly on small volume before you spend the whole list

What you get out of itOpen rates you can actually build on, tested cheaply instead of discovered after the list is gone.

  • Structure: opening line, relevance, offer, ask, and how short each part stays
  • Asks that cost the reader seconds instead of a calendar slot
  • The follow up sequence: how many, how far apart, what each one adds
  • Handling the four replies you'll actually get, including the rude one

What you get out of itReplies from people who ignored your last three attempts, and a sequence you can reuse for every campaign after this.

  • The legal frame on each side, and what it means for your first email
  • Tone, formality and directness: the same sentence lands differently
  • Volume, cadence and follow up expectations per market
  • Country level differences inside Europe that catch people out

What you get out of itA second market you can open safely, and one fewer way to lose a domain you spent months warming.

§ 07  ·  The unfair part

Enrich your whole list
for nothing.

Data vendors charge per row, so almost nobody enriches a cold list properly. You pay for a few hundred contacts, run out of budget, and send the rest generic. That single constraint is why your last campaign read like a template.

You won't be paying it. You get the exact workflow that turns a raw export into a researched list, with no enrichment credits at all. This is the module people apply for.

What you export
northwind-supply.com hello@northwind-supply.com no context
kesslerbrew.de info@kesslerbrew.de no context
lumenskincare.co.uk team@lumenskincare.co.uk no context
3 fields per row · one generic email for all of them
What you send from
northwind-supply.com hello@northwind-supply.com Shopify · Outdoor gear · 240 SKUs Bundle page has no upsell after add to cart
kesslerbrew.de info@kesslerbrew.de Shopware · Beverages · DE only Ships DE only, checkout blocks AT and CH
lumenskincare.co.uk team@lumenskincare.co.uk Shopify Plus · Skincare · subscription Subscription page loads in 4.1s on mobile
Every row researched · nothing paid per row

Runs on a standard Claude subscription · No code required

§ 08  ·  Two rulebooks

Europe and the US are
two different games.

Send the American version into Germany and you don't just get ignored, you get reported. Send the cautious European one into the US and you read as someone with nothing to say. Almost nobody teaches the difference, which is exactly why knowing it is worth money to you.

Europe
  • The legal frame first. What makes a B2B cold email defensible here, and the documentation you want in place before you send.
  • Formality is a signal. Where the informal opener helps you, and where it quietly disqualifies you.
  • Lower volume, higher precision. Why the European list is smaller, and why that works in your favour.
  • Country by country. The markets that are tighter than the rest, and how to adjust instead of avoiding them.
United States
  • A different rulebook. What compliance actually requires of you, and what it doesn't.
  • Directness pays. The opener that reads as confident there and pushy in Europe.
  • Volume tolerance. How far you can push send rate before it costs you deliverability.
  • Cadence. Follow up spacing that reads as persistent rather than desperate.

§ 09  ·  Access criteria

Most applications
get turned down.

Not to be difficult. The list building and enrichment methods work exactly as well for someone sending badly at high volume, and I'm not going to be the reason there's more of that. It also keeps the group at a level where the sessions stay useful to you.

You'll get a place if

  • + You already sell something real: a service, a product, or software with paying customers.
  • + You're already sending cold email and it isn't working, so you have data to fix.
  • + You can act on what you learn within the same week, not next quarter.
  • + You sell to eCommerce brands, or you want to start.
  • + The investment is one you can make without it hurting.

You won't if

  • You want it done for you. This is coaching, and you send the emails.
  • You're looking for a template to copy and paste. Those don't work, which is why you're here.
  • You want maximum volume at minimum effort. That's the thing that broke your last campaign.
  • You have nothing to sell yet. Come back when you do.
  • The investment is a stretch. It'll be a bad experience for both of us.

§ 10  ·  How you get in

By application · 4 places a month

There is no buy button
on this page.

Four questions, about two minutes. If your answers say you'll use this properly, you get the details, the price and a session slot. If not, you get a reply telling you why, and usually one specific thing to fix first. Either way you hear back within 2 business days.


Worth saying up front so nobody wastes an afternoon: this is a four figure investment, paid once. If that's already the wrong number for you, the teardown further up is genuinely the useful part and it's free.

No call required to apply · Your answers go to one inbox

§ 11  ·  Before you ask

Questions I get every week.

Is cold email even legal?

B2B cold email is legal in both the EU and the US when it's done within the rules, and the rules are genuinely different on each side. That's module 08, and it's the reason the module exists. What I teach is compliant outbound to businesses, documented properly.

What I don't teach: consumer lists, scraped personal addresses, or anything that survives only because nobody checked.

What does it cost?

A four figure investment, once. You get the exact number with your acceptance, along with the format and the available slots.

The reason it isn't on the page: the number only means something next to what you currently spend on lists, enrichment and wasted sends, and that's a conversation, not a price tag.

I don't have a list yet. Is that a problem?

No. Module 02 is where your list comes from, and we build it together rather than starting from something you bought. Starting clean is usually faster than repairing a bad list.

What will I have to pay for on top?

A sending tool and domains, which is unavoidable. Budget roughly $60 to $200 a month depending on volume.

Enrichment is the line item you'd normally expect, and it's the one you won't be paying. You'll want a Claude subscription for that workflow. No coding.

How much time does this take?

Six sessions over eight weeks, plus the work between them. Budget around three hours a week for that work. It is the part that produces the result, so if you can't give it real hours right now, wait until you can.

Is it live, or recorded?

Live and one to one, over video. Every session is recorded and the recording stays yours.

Between sessions you send me what you've built, the list, the enrichment output, the sequence, and you get written notes back. That review loop is where most of the progress happens.

Why an application instead of a checkout?

Because the list building and enrichment methods work just as well for someone sending badly at high volume. I don't want to be the reason there's more of the email this whole page is about.

It also means everyone in the room is at a level where the sessions stay useful to you rather than being slowed down.

Do you refund?

Before the first session, yes. Full refund on request, no reason needed.

After it, no. The list sources and the enrichment workflow are handed over in that first session, and I can't take them back out of your head. That's also why the application exists, so we both know before we start.

What happens if the answer is no?

You get a reply that tells you why, and usually one specific thing to fix. You can apply again once it's fixed. Nothing gets added to a mailing list, which would be a strange way to end this particular page.

Do I need to be technical for the Claude module?

No. It's a prompt and a spreadsheet. If you can run a mail merge, you can run this.

I don't sell to eCommerce. Does it still apply?

The mechanics carry over: lists, enrichment, subject lines, jurisdiction. The market research in module 04 is eCommerce specific, so you'd translate that part yourself. Say so in your application and you'll get an honest answer on whether it's worth your money.

Be the one they answer.

The list you already own doesn't need replacing. It needs a sender who knows what to put in front of it.

Two minutes · 4 places a month · Answer within 2 business days

By application · 4 places a month