---
title: Cold email outreach for a small B2B SaaS
slug: cold-email-outreach-for-saas
summary: Marc Lou's no-budget cold email system that grew a $199/month SaaS to ~$80k — find owner names in review replies, track stages in a Gmail CRM (Streak), send a three-sentence email that asks only for a reply, follow up twice; 50% open, 10% reply.
domain: marketing
tags: [cold-email, outreach, b2b, saas, indie-hacking]
related: [indie-marketing-channels-ranked, customer-discovery-calls-at-scale, finding-indie-product-ideas]
sources: [yt:6SdpwZzUk_w, yt:D1BjJB-n9lg]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Cold email outreach for a small B2B SaaS

## TL;DR
- Goal of the first email is a **reply**, not a sale — no link, no call booking.
- Three sentences: personalised subject (owner's name + benefit), a missed opportunity, a curiosity gap, then "reply if you want details".
- Find the owner's name and email where businesses reply to reviews — filter for bad reviews, owners answer those.
- Follow up 2–3 days later, then once more ~a week later, then move on.
- Marc's math: 20 emails/day → 2 replies → 1 customer/day at $199/month.

## Details
**Results.** Marc Lou grew a software product for local businesses (ViralyBot, gamified widgets for escape rooms and similar) to ~$80k in revenue from 2018 with zero ad spend, eventually reaching over $4k MRR, using only cold email — while still learning to code and not a native English speaker.[^1][^2]

**Step 1 — leads.** Go where the customers are listed (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Twitter). For each business, find the owner's name; review replies are a good source, and filtering for terrible reviews surfaces owner replies — sometimes with a direct email for the manager.[^3]

**Step 2 — pipeline.** Use a lightweight CRM inside Gmail (he used Streak) with stages: lead → email 1 → follow-up 1 → follow-up 2 → done.[^3]

**Step 3 — the email.** His template got ~50% opens and ~10% replies.[^3] Structure:[^4]
1. Subject line: owner's name + the benefit they get (not your product name).
2. Open with their name again.
3. Show a missed opportunity (customers they are losing).
4. A curiosity gap (in his case, shareable mini-game bots).
5. CTA: "reply to this email if you want details" — not "visit my site", not "book a call".

Bad example he shows: unpersonalised, "how are you", a feature list with ticks, unclear CTA — it tries to sell instead of opening a conversation.[^1]

**Step 4 — cadence.** No reply → follow up 2–3 days later → final follow-up about a week later → move on. At $199/month, 20 sends a day, 2 replies and 1 subscription a day was the whole growth engine.[^4]

## Disagreements / caveats
- Marc calls it "the fastest way to make money on the internet" but also the reason he burned out in 2018; he later moved to channels he enjoyed (free tools, pSEO, viral launch videos).[^5]
- Works best when the buyer is a findable owner and the price supports manual selling ($199/month here). For low-price consumer tools it does not pay back.
- Deliverability, sending limits and anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR in the EU) are not covered by the source — check them before sending at volume.

## See also
- [[indie-marketing-channels-ranked]]
- [[customer-discovery-calls-at-scale]] — the same outreach can book discovery calls
- [[people/marc-lou]]

[^1]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 00:00 — Marc Lou
[^2]: yt:D1BjJB-n9lg @ 21:17 — Marc Lou
[^3]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 01:30 — Marc Lou
[^4]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 03:01 — Marc Lou
[^5]: yt:D1BjJB-n9lg @ 22:52 — Marc Lou