Making Cold Emails Great Again: Solving SDRs Biggest Outreach Challenges

Cold emailing has been declared "dead" more times than we can count – yet here we are, still finding it one of the most effective ways to open doors. If you're an SDR (Sales Development Representative) reading this, you probably have a love-hate relationship with cold outreach. We’re on a mission to make cold emails great again, because we know from our 50+ years of combined sales experience that when done right, cold email is still one of the best outreach channels out there. In this inaugural blog post, we'll tackle the core problems in cold email outreach today – and how our approach aims to solve them in a casual, no-BS way.

Why Cold Email Still Matters (Yes, Even in 2025)

Caption: A recent survey found email is the most preferred way to be contacted by companies (38% of people chose email over phone or social media). This indicates that despite new channels, prospects still want to hear from you via email.

Despite the noise about social media DMs and flashy new tools, email continues to dominate business communication. In fact, roughly 80% of people prefer to be contacted by a sales rep via email rather than phone or other channels. It makes sense – a cold call can catch someone at a bad time, and unsolicited social messages feel intrusive. Email, on the other hand, lets prospects respond on their schedule and leaves room for thoughtful personalization. No wonder email outreach (as a channel) boasts an estimated $36 return for every $1 spent – one of the highest ROI of any outreach method.

When it's done right, cold emailing can spark conversations that lead to sales. 38% of people actually prefer email for communications above any other method. The problem isn't the channel itself – it's how we often use it. So before you write off cold emails as futile, let's examine what's going wrong and how we can fix it.

The Big Challenges SDRs Face with Cold Outreach

Over the decades, we've sent and analyzed thousands of cold emails. We’ve felt your pain: the grind of research, the frustration of silence after hitting "send," and the sting of wasted effort. Here are the three core problems in modern cold email outreach (and if you're an SDR, these will sound very familiar):

• Time-Consuming Research & Writing: Crafting a good cold email takes time. Finding the right prospects, researching personalized hooks, and writing sequence after sequence can eat up hours of your day. According to recent data, the average sales rep spends about 21% of their workday just writing emails, and another 17% prospecting and researching leads. That’s nearly 40% of your time spent before you even hit send! Add in data entry and admin, and suddenly less than one-third of your day is left for actual selling. It's easy to feel more like a researcher or data monkey than a salesperson. We knew there had to be a better way than burning entire afternoons tweaking email copy for each prospect.
• Low Reply Rates: Nothing deflates an SDR’s mood like sending 100 emails and getting crickets in return. Unfortunately, dismally low response rates have become the norm in cold outreach. Various studies show that only about 1–5% of cold emails get a reply on average. one analysis even found a mere 8.5% of cold emails ever get any response at all. Part of the problem is that prospects are inundated: people receive around 15 cold emails per week on average , and many get ignored or deleted on sight. In one survey, over 50% of people said they don’t engage with cold emails– 14% even delete them immediately. Poorly targeted, generic outreach is largely to blame here. When emails look like templates or spam,they get treated like spam. Low reply rates aren’t just bad for hitting quota; they’re demoralizing. It’s hard to stay motivated to send emails every day when so few seem to land. We get it, and we’ve been there too.
• Wasted Effort in Cold Outreach: Between the time sink and the low hit rate, a lot of cold email work feels like wasted effort. Think about it – all those hours researching a prospect, only for your carefully crafted email to go straight to spam or be ignored. A huge chunk of outreach never even gets opened (some estimates say only ~24% of cold sales emails are opened by recipients). And when there’s no reply, many reps simply give up. In fact, 70% of outreach reps stop after sending just one email if they don’t get a response. That first no-response often means all your upfront work yields zero results. It's a major lost opportunity if a potential customer might have engaged on a second or third touch. The lack of follow-up, or lack of effective follow-up, means leads slip through the cracks and your initial effort was for nothing. From bad data (wrong emails that bounce) to bland copy that doesn’t resonate, there are many ways outreach effort can go to waste. The result: SDRs end up burnt out and frustrated, and sales managers start questioning if cold email is worth it..

Sound familiar? These challenges are exactly why we started Leagency. After decades in the trenches, we’re saying “enough” – there’s a smarter way to do this. Let’s talk about our solution and how it tackles each of these pain points head-on.

AI-Powered, Human-Perfected: How We Make Cold Email Great Again

We know automating everything isn't the answer – we've all gotten those cringe-worthy AI-generated emails that miss the mark. But sticking to purely manual, old-school methods isn’t viable either (unless you enjoy working 80-hour weeks). The sweet spot is combining AI power with human expertise. Our approach at Leagency can be summed up simply: AI-powered, human-perfected, campaign-ready sequences, delivered on-demand – so you can focus on selling. Here’s what that means in practice:

• Save Time with AI-Driven Research: Remember that 40% of your day lost to research and writing? We give that time back. Our platform uses AI to handle the heavy lifting of prospect research and first-draft creation. It can analyze your target industry and pull in relevant insights about each prospect (like their role, company info, recent news, etc.) faster than a human ever could. Instead of you scouring LinkedIn and Googling for tidbits, you get an auto-generated foundation for a personalized email. This dramatically cuts down the grunt work and speeds up campaign prep. One fifth of your day writing emails? Nah, let the AI handle a chunk of that. You can spend that freed-up time calling warm leads or prepping for demos – the high-value activities that actually close deals.
• Boost Replies with Human-Tuned Personalization: We don’t trust the robots to do it all. Every AI-generated sequence is reviewed and perfected by our team of cold email experts (remember, we’ve got 50+ years of combined experience writing outreach that gets results). The AI might draft the email, but a human polishes it – tweaking the tone, making sure that personalization is truly personal, and injecting a bit of creative flair where needed. This human touch is what makes the difference between an email that feels like a bot and one that resonates with your prospect. By crafting highly relevant, witty, and concise messages (instead of boring cookie-cutter text), we aim to dramatically increase your chances of getting a reply. And we don’t stop at just one email – we create multi-step sequences with follow-ups that keep gently nudging the prospect. Since we know many reps give up after one attempt, we make sure you won’t lose out on interested leads just because they missed your first email. The result? Outreach campaigns that stand out in crowded inboxes and get prospects replying more often.
• No More Wasted Outreach – Every Campaign is Ready to Succeed: Because our sequences are built on data and refined by humans, they’re campaign-ready from day one. We validate everything – from verifying emails to A/B testing subject lines – to maximize deliverability and engagement. That means fewer emails landing in spam and no more shouting into the void. Every step of the sequence has a purpose, whether it’s sparking curiosity, addressing a pain point, or offering value to the prospect. By the time you hit send, you can be confident that your campaign is on-point and optimized to convert. No more sending 500 emails blindly hoping something sticks; we prefer a targeted approach where quality beats quantity. And since our service is on-demand, you get these sequences exactly when you need them – whether it’s prepping a new campaign for a product launch or helping out when your pipeline is running low. You won’t be stuck waiting weeks for content or scrambling to write last-minute emails. We handle the outreach prep, you focus on the follow-ups and closing the deal.

Focus on Selling, Leave the Cold Email to Us

At the end of the day, your job as an SDR is to start conversations and build pipeline – not to be a full-time content writer or data researcher. Our goal is to let you do what you do best (selling) while we take care of the time-consuming parts of cold outreach. By leveraging cutting-edge AI and seasoned human insight, we tackle the tedious and technical stuff: finding the right targets, crafting compelling messages, and ensuring deliverability.

We’re here to make cold emails great again. That means making cold outreach enjoyable and effective for you as a sender, and actually valuable for your prospects as readers. No more spray-and-pray, no more one-size-fits-all templates. It’s time for a new era of cold emailing – one where every message is thoughtful, relevant, and stands a real chance of turning into a meaningful conversation.

Ready to reinvent your cold email approach? We sure are. With our AI-powered, human-perfected sequences at your side, you can finally stop worrying about all those outreach hurdles (research, replies, deliverability) and get back to what matters: building relationships and closing deals. Cold email isn’t dead – it just needed a glow-up. Let’s make your outbound campaigns shine and remind everyone why email is king of the outreach hill.

Your future meetings and closed-won deals will thank you. 😉

– The Leagency Team (on a mission to transform cold outreach, one email at a time)