Outreach is one of the hardest but most important parts of growing a business. Here’s how we’re doing it right now—and why.

Email Outreach in Germany
In Germany, you’re not legally allowed to do unsolicited email outreach (cold email) without permission. We tried it anyway in the past, just to see if it would work. After sending about 3,000 outbound emails, we got a legal notice and had to pay around €650.

That breaks down to roughly €0.22 per email. Not too bad on paper. So why did we stop? Because getting only one legal notice in 3,000 emails could have just been luck, and it doesn’t make it legal. Personally, I want to avoid anything illegal in principle.

That’s why we’ve decided to save email outreach for markets where it is legal (like the US and UK).

What We're Doing Now

1. LinkedIn Outreach
We’ve shifted most of our outreach to LinkedIn. Here’s our stack and costs:

  • LinkedIn Premium (2 accounts): ~€88/month
  • LinkedIn Sales Navigator (1 account): ~€120/month
  • Dripify (2 Pro Plans): ~€118/month
  • Total: ~€326/month

Our process:

  • Use Sales Navigator to build and export lead lists (.csv).
  • Import those lists into Dripify.
  • Each Dripify account is tied to one LinkedIn account.
  • Dripify automates sending connection requests (30–60 per account per day, so 60–120 total daily).
  • We add a short, custom message to spark interest.
  • If the person accepts but doesn’t reply, Dripify sends up to two automated follow-ups: one after an hour, one after a day.
  • If they reply, the sequence stops automatically.

This approach keeps things running even when we're busy with other work.

2. Cold Calling
Cold calling is tough—it’s emotionally demanding. Here are a few things that help us make more calls and feel better about doing them:

  • Call with your cofounder in the same room.
    It feels less like work and more like a team activity. Between calls, you can laugh, swap stories about weird responses, and help each other keep morale up.
  • Call while on a video call together.
    If you’re remote, you can do the same thing in a video meeting. We share the browser tab with our softphone (we use Close.com’s in-browser calling) via Google Meet and enable audio sharing. That way both sides can hear the calls and chat about them live. Our setup:
    • Google Meet (free)
    • Close.com Solo Plan (~€25/month)
    • Virtual phone number purchased inside Close.com.
  • Focus on local businesses.
    Cold calling can feel intrusive. We’ve found that calling local companies feels more natural, and they’re often more willing to talk when you’re “just around the corner.”
  • Use a power dialer.
    The Close.com Power Dialer is amazing. You select a list of leads, hit start, and it dials the numbers one after another automatically. No thinking, no hesitation between calls. It reduces the effort needed to keep going and massively increases the number of calls you can make in an hour.

That’s where our outbound strategy stands as of July 2025.

It’s not glamorous, but it works—and we’re sharing it in detail here so you can see the real costs, tools, and little tricks that help us keep going.

If you have questions or want to share how you do outreach, I’d love to hear about it!