We Stopped Cold Emailing. Here's What We Send Instead.

If you've followed this series, you know I've been running our microtest framework on us.

Sprint 1 found the audience. Sprint 2 found the headline. Sprint 3 found the offer format.

Something unexpected came out of it: the research methodology itself became the product.

HOW MICROTESTING BECAME AN OUTREACH TOOL

Quick recap: one sprint, one variable, one answer.

Each costs ~$35 in ad spend and runs for 48 hours. Pain points first, then headlines, then offer format, then creative. Before any sprint runs, there's a research phase: dig into the prospect's market, find their customers' actual language, and write 13 "True or False?" ad variations. After five sprints on our own business, I realized that the research phase alone is more valuable than most agencies' entire pitch decks.

So we packaged it.

THE OFFER INTELLIGENCE REPORT

We call it an Offer Intelligence Report: a personalized document built from scratch for one business before we ever reach out.

Two-track research. We scrape their website: positioning, pricing, and CTAs. Then go wider: Google reviews, Reddit, G2, forums. Track A: what the internet says (unfiltered). Track B: what their website says (curated). When those contradict (and they often do), that's where the real insight is.

Sprint 1 copy. From the research, we write 13-15 "True or False?" ads: the exact copy we'd run on Meta. Each tests one pain point in the first person, in their customer's language.

"True or False? I've been told I need to 'build a funnel' but nobody can explain what that actually means for my business."

"True or False? Every agency I've hired showed me dashboards full of impressions but I still don't know where my last 5 clients came from."

These come from independent research: real language from Reddit, G2, and Google reviews.

The prospect reads them and thinks: "how did you know this about my market?"

The math. If Sprint 1 finds a 5%+ CTR winner at their industry's CPL with conservative close rates: here's their monthly pipeline. Each report costs ~$0.15 to generate.

A traditional agency charges $2K-$5K for the equivalent.

ONE THING WE BUILT

When Sprint 1 runs, data flows into a dashboard we built.

Every variant ranked: CTR, CPC, impressions, winner flag. Pain points clustered by theme.

The surprise: clients study the losers more than the winners. "I need a better funnel" at 1.8% CTR next to "I don't know where my last 5 clients came from" at 7.2%. Assumptions break apart in real time.

We're building more. Another week.

WHAT YOU CAN TAKE FROM THIS

Your first touch should be work, not a pitch. A 2-minute Loom tearing apart their landing page. A list of 5 headlines you'd test. Anything that shows you already thought about their specific problem.

Everyone is sending AI-generated cold emails. The founder who sends actual work wins by default.

Want to see what an OIR looks like for your business? Book a 48-hour microtest here.