Cold Email Sequence for B2B SaaS Outbound

This playbook is for B2B SaaS SDRs, AEs, and their managers running outbound campaigns. Use this multi-channel sequence when you need to break through the noise to land meetings with decision-makers at mid-market and enterprise tech companies.

This is a 6-step sequence that runs over approximately 18 days, combining automated emails with manual LinkedIn touches. The goal is to establish credibility and secure a discovery call, not just spam for a demo. It assumes you've already identified a well-targeted list of accounts.

1. Total Steps: 6
2. Duration: 18 Days
3. Channels: Email & LinkedIn

Each step is designed to build on the last without being repetitive or annoying. The cadence provides enough space to avoid overwhelming the prospect.

Step 1: The Personalized Hook

1. Timing: Day 1
2. Channel: Email
3. Objective: Open and establish relevance.
4. Example:
   Subject: Question about {{companyName}}
   Body: Noticed [Observation about their company's recent project or tech stack]. We help SaaS teams like [Relevant Peer Company] solve [Specific Problem]. Open to a brief chat?

Step 2: The Soft Touch

1. Timing: Day 3
2. Channel: LinkedIn
3. Objective: Build familiarity, not pitch.
4. Example:
   Action: View Profile + Send Connection Request
   Note: Saw your team's work on [Project/Initiative]. Connecting to follow along. No pitch.

Step 3: The Value Drop

1. Timing: Day 6
2. Channel: Email (Reply to Step 1)
3. Objective: Provide value and bump the original thread.
4. Example:
   Subject: Re: Question about {{companyName}}
   Body: Following up on my last note. Here's a short case study on how we helped [Similar Company] achieve [Metric-driven Result]. Might be relevant.

Step 4: The Channel Hop

1. Timing: Day 10
2. Channel: LinkedIn Message (if connected)
3. Objective: Re-engage on a different platform.
4. Example:
   Body: Just checking if my email landed okay. Most teams in your space are struggling with [Common Pain Point]. Curious if that's a priority for you at {{companyName}}.

Step 5: The Direct Ask

1. Timing: Day 14
2. Channel: Email (Reply to thread)
3. Objective: Final attempt with a clear, low-friction ask.
4. Example:
   Subject: Re: Question about {{companyName}}
   Body: Circling back one last time. If solving [Problem] isn't a priority, just let me know. Worth a 15-min chat next week if it is?

Step 6: The Professional Breakup

1. Timing: Day 18
2. Channel: Email (Reply to thread)
3. Objective: Close the loop and leave a positive impression.
4. Example:
   Subject: Closing the loop
   Body: Assuming this isn't the right time. I won't follow up again on this thread. Best of luck with [Their Stated Company Goal].

This sequence relies on account-level personalization, not hyper-individualized research for every contact. Focus your efforts on the first email's [Observation] and finding a relevant [Similar Company] as a case study.

The rest of the sequence is designed to run with minimal changes, allowing you to scale your outreach without sacrificing relevance. The key is a tightly defined ICP and a clean lead list. Garbage in, garbage out.

Running this sequence for 100 contacts is easy. Running it for 10,000 is an infrastructure problem.

To maintain high deliverability, limit each sending inbox to 30-50 new contacts per day. To achieve volume, you don't send more emails per inbox; you add more inboxes. This is the core principle of safe scaling.

SaaS companies often target other tech companies using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. These corporate filters are sophisticated. If your primary domain (yourcompany.com) gets flagged for aggressive outbound, it can disrupt your entire team's operational email (customer support, transactional emails, etc.). This is why mature SaaS teams isolate outbound operations on dedicated sending domains (getyourcompany.com, tryyourcompany.com) and rotate sends across dozens of inboxes to keep volume per inbox low and avoid tripping spam filters.

This level of infrastructure—managing 50+ inboxes, rotating domains, and warming them up—is complex. Tools like SuperSend are built to automate this infrastructure, allowing your sales team to focus on messaging, not managing DNS records.