Building Smarter Funnels, Not Just Louder Ones

Back in mid-May we held Mastermind #11 but because our Head of Marketing was getting married, we never shared the recap.  The call was filled with so much value though that we decided to get it to you anyways!

I joined our community call from San Diego, where my wife, our three-year-old son, and I are living temporarily while resolving a mold situation at our home in Austin. As we kicked off our 11th official GrowthRise Mastermind, I appreciated how we’ve cultivated a truly brilliant room — founders and growth leaders working across SaaS, AI, B2B services, and enterprise sales — each of us building toward something meaningful.

While the tactical marketing and sales strategies we discuss are essential, what really excites me is seeing members courageously bring their real challenges to the table. That’s where growth happens.

If you're not already a member of GrowthRise, apply to join us here on the next mastermind call, held every Tuesday at 2pm ET / 1pm Central.

1. When Cold Email Collapses—And What to Do About It

This week, I listened as one member shared something that hit close to home for anyone running cold email at scale: their campaign completely flatlined. Out of the blue, every inbox running through Instantly went dark. No messages were sending. No replies were coming in. The entire engine came to a halt.

When they contacted support, the reply was almost comical—“Oopsie poopsie, send us new URLs.” It might have been funny if it weren’t so costly.

This wasn’t just a fluke. It was a symptom of a larger truth I’ve come to see over and over again in cold outreach:

Inbox degradation isn’t a bug—it’s a built-in feature of cold email.

It’s the price we pay for playing at scale. When you push thousands of emails across dozens of domains, the system is always one step away from triggering spam filters, rate limits, or delivery throttles.

But there’s a silver lining: we can build smarter systems that account for this fragility. In my view, there are three immediate responses that every growth leader should consider:

• Run 50% more inboxes than you think you need. If your current strategy uses 10 inboxes, you should have 15 to 20 inboxes warmed and ready to rotate in at a moment’s notice. That redundancy is your insurance policy.
• Monitor deliverability metrics daily. Don’t just look at opens and clicks—track bounces, domain reputation, reply rate, and volume consistency. A drop in opens from 40% to 15% might indicate a block, not just a slow week.
• Rotate and refresh. Just like crops in regenerative farming, inboxes can get “depleted.” Give them a rest. Refresh your sending domains. Clean your lists regularly.

We’ve seen this play out firsthand. At GrowthRise, our outbound strategy is built on multi-channel redundancy, not single-channel dependence. When cold email is paired with retargeting, newsletters, and thought leadership ads, it becomes one thread in a much stronger fabric.

To avoid disaster, you have to treat cold email with the delicacy it deserves. This isn’t brute force marketing—it’s more like fine-tuning an instrument. And the moment you stop listening for signs of friction, you’ll lose the signal.

2. Thought Leadership > Lead Magnets

One of the deeper strategic questions on the call was whether lead magnets still work in today’s landscape—and when it makes sense to use them.

A member described their plan to launch multiple lead magnets across different verticals—each whitepaper or case study custom-written for a particular ICP (ideal customer persona). Their logic made sense: if you’re selling to diverse personas, why not offer content tailored to each one?

And I get it. That’s classic funnel building. But here’s where I challenged the assumption:

The age of lead magnets is not over—but it’s evolved.

The biggest shift is this: mediocre content doesn’t work anymore. A generic checklist or lightly written eBook won’t compel anyone to trade their email address, especially if they’ve never heard of you.

Attention is scarce. Trust is scarcer.

That’s why I believe in a different approach: ungated, high-quality content amplified with precision. At GrowthRise, we’ve tested both strategies. We don’t run lead magnets. Instead, we run what I call thought leadership amplification.

Here’s how it works:

• We write insights that actually help our audience—like breakdowns of scaling strategies, fundraising templates, cold email frameworks, and attribution playbooks.
• We distribute that content where our ICP lives—LinkedIn, email, Slack groups.
• We make it completely free. No forms. No friction. Just pure signal.

And the results? We get better quality inbound. Because we’re not attracting email hoarders looking for a free download. We’re reaching decision-makers who resonate with our message and are ready to take the next step when the timing aligns.

That said, there’s one condition where gated content can still work: if the value is unmistakably high.

For example, a few members shared successful lead magnet strategies that included:

• An online summit that featured interviews with top thought leaders, later repurposed as an evergreen content series. This became a powerful long-term list-builder.
• A personal letter-style newsletter authored by a technical founder with academic and real-world credibility, positioned as “tapping into decades of wisdom.” That authenticity drove significant opt-ins.
• A live product demo that served as a gateway for lead capture, not through a form, but through value delivery.

So what’s the takeaway?

Don’t throw out the lead magnet playbook—rewrite it.

Treat your content like a product. Ask yourself:

• Would I pay for this?
• Would I share this?
• Would I subscribe to a newsletter that sends more of this?

If the answer isn’t yes to all three, go back to the drawing board. Content that blends substance, precision, and intent will always win—whether it’s gated or not.

3. Cold Email Without a Follow-Up System Is a Leaky Bucket

Another powerful insight emerged during a conversation about cold outreach and how to make it more personal—even when you’re sending hundreds or thousands of messages.

One member raised an incredibly smart question: “Is there a way to send a follow-up email that lands in the same Gmail thread so it feels like a reply rather than a blast?”

It’s a small nuance. But it matters.

In today’s inboxes, context is everything. A message that appears as part of an ongoing conversation is way more likely to get opened than a brand-new thread. It triggers a psychological signal: this is a real person continuing a dialogue.

But here’s the challenge: most CRM tools—like HubSpot—don’t make that easy to automate. You can reply manually, but doing so for 500 contacts is a non-starter.

So what did the community suggest?

• Use GMass or similar tools. These allow you to send at scale using Gmail’s native threading. Your follow-up emails appear as part of the same conversation, not new sends.
• Hack the subject line. If you can’t thread, simulate it. Use “Re:” in your subject, paste the original message at the bottom, and write your follow-up as if it’s a direct reply. This isn’t perfect, but it preserves the tone and sequence.
• Segment follow-ups based on actions. Tools like Instantly and Smartlead allow decision-tree logic: if they didn’t open, resend with a new subject. If they clicked, follow-up with more value. If they replied, drop them into a different nurture sequence.

But even with the best tech, the real lever here is tone.

Your follow-up should not feel like a marketing nudge. It should feel like a person circling back with sincerity.

Here’s an example we’ve used with great success:

“Hey [first name], just bumping this up in case it got buried. We’ve got something I think could help you with [insert pain point]. Worth a quick chat?”

Short. Respectful. Context-aware. That’s the formula.

The member who posed the question realized that while HubSpot didn’t offer perfect automation for threaded replies, their future campaigns could be restructured from the beginning with this kind of intelligent follow-up in mind.

And that’s the deeper lesson:

Cold email isn’t just about the first message. It’s about the second, the third, and the story you’re telling across all of them.

Follow-ups aren’t just reminders. They’re opportunities to reframe, re-engage, and re-earn trust.

And if you’re not building them into your system? You’re pouring water into a leaky bucket.

4. Segment Like a Scientist, Scale Like an Artist

During the call, another member posed a question that struck at the heart of every growth strategist’s dilemma: How do you balance precise segmentation with the need to scale cold email efficiently?

They explained how their team was sending campaigns to small, tightly defined audience segments, each housed in separate sequences. But when it came time to make a small update—tweaking subject lines, refining CTAs—they had to make the same change across four or five sequences. The workload was piling up.

I’ve been there. And I want to offer two perspectives.

First, precision matters. When you’re selling to multiple ICPs—say, SaaS CEOs, sales leaders, and VPs of marketing—you can’t blast them all with the same copy and expect conversions. Each persona has different pain points, priorities, and purchase timelines. Segmentation is how we honor that nuance.

But second, complexity can become the enemy of execution. If your segmentation strategy slows you down or creates versioning chaos, you’re likely losing momentum—and maybe even insight.

At GrowthRise, we’ve adopted a strategy I call the "linear segmentation funnel." Here’s how it works:

1. Step 1: Cold email for awareness. These are high-volume, highly personalized intros that drive traffic to our site.
2. Step 2: Warm email for education. Once someone clicks or replies, they enter a totally different nurture track with thought leadership, case studies, and insights.
3. Step 3: Omnipresent retargeting. While they're getting warm emails, they're also being retargeted on LinkedIn, Meta, and YouTube with short-form video content that reinforces key themes.

This strategy doesn’t require 10 different cold email campaigns for 10 personas. Instead, we lead with one core message per persona cluster—then segment dynamically based on behavior.

Another great suggestion from the community was to move toward modular sequencing—meaning your main campaign stays consistent, but you insert dynamic content blocks (like AI-personalized first lines or ICP-specific pain points) based on contact properties. That’s the best of both worlds: scalable infrastructure with personalized nuance.

So if you’re overwhelmed by your segmentation map, here’s what I recommend:

• Collapse your personas into 2–3 clusters, not 8–10 micro-niches.
• Use dynamic tags and AI tools to personalize within sequences.
• Build a clear update workflow that lets you tweak campaigns efficiently without introducing inconsistency.

Don’t segment yourself into paralysis. Segment like a scientist. Scale like an artist.

5. Attribution Is Art, Not Science

As we neared the end of the call, one of the richest conversations revolved around the elusive challenge of attribution—the holy grail of modern marketing.

A member asked how we track campaign performance across platforms like email, LinkedIn, Meta, and Smartlead. They shared that their team was doing cold outreach, running warm ads, publishing content… but they didn’t have a clear picture of what was working. And more importantly, what wasn’t.

I smiled when I heard the question because I’ve been there. Honestly? I’m still there.

Attribution is not a formula. It’s a fingerprint.

Every customer journey is unique. Some prospects click a cold email on day one and buy within 48 hours. Others see your name in an email, ignore it, then get hit by a retargeting ad, read a LinkedIn post, join your newsletter two months later, and finally book a call six months after that.

So how do we track that?

Here’s what’s worked for us at GrowthRise:

• We use Cometly, a relatively affordable attribution tool (~$500/month) that gives us cross-channel insights without the steep learning curve of heavier tools like HockeyStack. Cometly helps us understand how someone first discovered us, what touchpoints they engaged with, and what finally tipped them into becoming a customer.
• We analyze click-through rates, not just replies. This came up during the cold email discussion too. We’re more interested in who clicked (because it adds them to our retargeting audience) than who replied. Why? Because once someone hits our site, we can reach them again with precision for 180 days.
• We build weekly and monthly analytics dashboards. While some of this data lives in Cometly or Smartlead, we also track macro trends in spreadsheets: ad spend, lead quality, MQL-to-SQL conversion rates, and deal velocity.

But here’s the nuance I want to drive home:

Most customers don’t buy because of one message. They buy because of many.

It’s tempting to look for “the email that worked” or “the ad that converted.” But in reality, it’s the whole symphony that creates trust.

We’ve seen this firsthand: someone sees a cold email → reads a blog post → watches a video on LinkedIn → joins our newsletter → gets value from 4–5 educational emails → and then finally books a call.

Which one gets credit?

Answer: All of them.

So instead of obsessing over perfect attribution, I encourage you to ask better questions:

• Are we moving the right people through the right sequence of touchpoints?
• Are we building trust with each interaction?
• Are we seeing net lift in engagement, even if attribution is fuzzy?

When in doubt, zoom out. Attribution isn’t a science to be mastered. It’s an art to be expressed with strategic discipline.

6. Your Best Lead Magnet Might Be a Moment, Not a PDF

There was one moment on the call that offered a beautifully simple insight—a shift in thinking that I believe more of us should adopt.

One member shared how a SaaS company, HockeyStack, had turned its product demo into a kind of lead magnet. Not a downloadable PDF. Not a whitepaper. A demo.

It was crisp, compelling, and converted like crazy.

That’s when it clicked for me: we’ve been trained to think of lead magnets as static files. But what if your most powerful lead magnet is an experience?

Here’s what I mean:

• A live, interactive product demo.
• A self-guided sandbox experience.
• A founder-led video breakdown of your system or framework.

These aren’t just value-delivery mechanisms. They’re trust accelerators.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

People don’t want information. They want transformation.

They want to see your product or offer in motion. They want to picture themselves using it. They want clarity—not just persuasion.

What made this HockeyStack example so powerful was that it combined high production value, clear use-case examples, and a frictionless opt-in. It wasn’t an “ask.” It was an invitation.

And you don’t need to be a software company to do this. If you’re a service provider, coach, or consultant, your “demo” could be:

• A behind-the-scenes look at how you work with clients.
• A walkthrough of a signature tool or template.
• A 10-minute teardown of a real case study.

One of the best-performing videos we’ve created at GrowthRise was a breakdown of our growth stack—how we build funnels, segment audiences, automate follow-ups, and layer in AI personalization. It wasn’t flashy. But it was real. That’s what converted.

So here’s my challenge to you:

• Replace one of your gated PDFs with a moment.
• Film a loom walkthrough.
• Record a high-value lesson and share it freely.

Don’t be afraid to give away the goods. The more you show, the more they trust.

Your best lead magnet might not be a document at all.

7. LinkedIn Ads: How to Think Like a Media Company

At one point in the conversation, someone asked a tactical question I hear all the time: “What’s a good click-through rate on LinkedIn ads?”

Now, the answer is helpful on its own—0.5% is considered baseline, 0.7% is solid, and 1% or above is excellent for image-based or standard ads. But what matters more than the benchmarks is the frame of mind behind the ad strategy.

For us at GrowthRise, LinkedIn isn’t just a lead gen channel. It’s our digital town square. Our entire approach centers around thought leadership ads, sometimes called sponsored posts—content-first, high-value, brand-aligned media assets designed to inform, not interrupt.

Roughly 80% of our LinkedIn budget goes toward this. No lead magnets. No clickbait CTAs. Just showing up with quality insights consistently.

The question that followed was sharp: “But if you’re not capturing names and emails, how do you retarget?”

Here’s the beauty of modern ad platforms: you can retarget based on engagement, especially video views and site visits. So even if someone doesn’t fill out a form, we can still re-engage them on Meta, YouTube, or LinkedIn based on how they interact with our content.

When they finally do click through to our site? That’s when we shift into direct retargeting mode.

This creates a full-circle loop:

• Cold email drives curiosity.
• Thought leadership ads reinforce credibility.
• Retargeting amplifies familiarity.
• Newsletter opt-ins convert warm interest into community.

So yes, CTR benchmarks are helpful (aim for 0.7% or higher). But the deeper question is this:

Are you acting like a media company or just running ads?

Because the former builds a movement. The latter burns cash.

8. The Power of Omnipresence: Why Timing Is Everything

As the call unfolded, the topic shifted toward one of the most important yet overlooked principles in modern marketing: omnipresence.

One of the members asked how we manage to connect cold outreach, email sequences, ads, and newsletters into a coherent journey. Their challenge was familiar—they were doing a lot of things separately, but they weren’t sure how the pieces were working together.

Here’s how I think about it:

Every channel is a doorway. The job of your strategy is to make sure all the doors lead to the same room.

When someone sees a cold email, they shouldn’t be surprised to see a similar message in a LinkedIn ad the next week. If they click through to your site, the content should reinforce what they already believe. If they join your list, the newsletter should continue the conversation.

At GrowthRise, we orchestrate this across:

• Cold emails (personalized with AI)
• Thought leadership ads on LinkedIn and Meta
• Educational weekly newsletters
• Video content for remarketing

It’s not about hammering the same message—it’s about layering touchpoints so that by the time someone is ready to engage, they already feel like they know you.

One member asked how we track all this. Do we use Cometly? Do we rely on spreadsheets? The answer is both. We have a “master spreadsheet” that tracks weekly and monthly trends. And yes, I still bust out the occasional color-coded monster Excel doc. Because sometimes, you need to see the system to understand it.

But don’t get stuck in the weeds of attribution. We’ve had people click an ad in January, disappear, and then sign up in October after engaging with a newsletter.

That’s not an outlier—that’s the norm.

So the next time you’re wondering why someone didn’t convert from your cold outreach, ask yourself:

• Have they seen my face more than once?
• Have they encountered my ideas across platforms?
• Am I building familiarity or just asking for attention?

Omnipresence isn’t about being everywhere at once. It’s about showing up just enough to be remembered—when it matters most.

9. AI Personalization: The New Frontier of Cold Outreach

The final topic I want to reflect on is one that’s both exciting and increasingly essential: AI-driven personalization in cold email.

One of our members shared that their team had experimented with sending up to a thousand cold emails a day using AI-personalized first lines. The feedback was incredible. People replied to say things like, “I’m not interested, but this is the best cold email I’ve ever received.”

That’s the power of personalization done right.

At GrowthRise, we’ve been working with an agency (shoutout to GetKen) that’s developed a hybrid system using multiple AI models—ChatGPT, Claude, and others—to dynamically generate context-rich opening lines based on the recipient’s profile, company, or content.

Here’s what we’ve found:

• Personalized cold emails get higher engagement. Our campaigns often exceed 9–10% click-through rates, far above the old industry standard of 1–2%.
• We optimize based on link clicks, not just replies. Because once someone lands on our site, they’re in our ecosystem for up to 180 days via retargeting.
• We A/B test different language models. For example, we’ll compare email opens and CTRs from copy generated by ChatGPT vs Claude to identify the best-performing model for a specific audience.

This isn’t just “better marketing.” It’s a whole new paradigm.

One member asked whether they were doing enough—if maybe their results weren’t popping because they hadn’t doubled down on what was working. And I appreciated their honesty. The truth is, a single channel rarely carries the weight alone. Cold email is the spark. But it needs dry kindling—ads, content, newsletters—to ignite.

AI personalization isn’t a magic bullet. It’s a force multiplier.

It turns “just another email” into “Whoa, this person actually gets me.” And in a crowded inbox, that can mean everything.

But here’s the real secret: what makes AI personalization effective isn’t the tool. It’s the strategy behind the tool.

You need:

• Clear ICP definitions
• Accurate, enriched data
• Strong value propositions
• Smart sequencing logic
• A system for measuring outcomes

Then you let the AI do its work. And then? You tweak. You refine. You scale.

Welcome to the frontier. It’s not who sends the most emails—it’s who makes every email matter.

🚀 Ready to Scale? Here Are Two Ways We Can Support.

If you've made it this far, you're clearly committed to scaling your B2B SaaS company with precision, performance, and purpose.

And we’re here to help you do exactly that.

Below are the two ways we can support you:

🎓 Option 1: Apply to Join the GrowthRise Membership

The GrowthRise Membership is built for Marketing Leaders across any industry who are scaling their organization from $1M to $100M in ARR — and want to surround themselves with a growth-minded community of professionals.

Inside the membership, you’ll get:

💬 Private Slack + WhatsApp groups with access to 130+ CMOs & Marketing Leaders
🔁 Weekly Mastermind Calls to solve real-time growth challenges
📚 Access to our B2B Growth Course Slides
🎯 Member Directory to connect by industry and revenue stage
🎁 Perks and discounts on vetted tools and vendors
🧠 Weekly support from Ryan Allis and the GrowthRise coaching team

👉 Apply here to join the GrowthRise community and start your free 14-day trial.

🎯 Option 2: Apply for the Upcoming B2B SaaS Growth Program Cohort

If you’re looking for deeper implementation support to actually build and launch your growth engine step-by-step — the B2B SaaS Growth Program is your next move.

This 16-week, done-with-you accelerator helps you:

✅ Build a laser-targeted ABM lead list using Clay, Apollo, ListKit & Instantly
🚀 Launch digital ads across Meta, LinkedIn, Google, Bing & AdRoll
🧪 Optimize funnel conversion rates with proven CRO frameworks
✉️ Deploy AI-powered outbound campaigns that generate real results
📈 Track CAC, CPL, ROI, and KPIs across the full funnel
🔄 Scale your system using real-time data and weekly feedback

You’ll get live coaching, funnel reviews, campaign builds, and Slack/email support — all directly from the SaasRise and GrowthRise team (Ryan, David, Salman).

🧠 If you represent a $1M–$100M ARR B2B company ready to build a repeatable revenue engine, this is your moment.

👉 Apply here to join the next B2B SaaS Growth Program starting soon.

The future of growth is here — and it's human-first, AI-powered, and founder-led.

All the best,

Ryan Allis, CEO & Founder
GrowthRise | The Community for B2B Marketing Leaders