Cold email outreach with your own mailbox
Leads sourced every week, written to from your own inbox, followed up until they answer, then handed to you.
Cold email has a bad name because most of it is sent by people who never read the list they bought. Done properly it is still the most direct way for a founder with no audience to reach the people who can put a product in front of buyers.
The job to be done
Outbound email is four jobs stacked together. Work out who actually reaches your buyers. Find those specific people and a working address. Write something short enough to read and specific enough to answer. Follow up, more than once, without becoming annoying.
The first two are research and the last two are discipline. Founders usually do a burst of all four, get a couple of replies, then stop because the follow-up sequence is the least interesting part of the week.
How it works, step by step
- You enter your website. It reads your product and works out who it is for.
- It sources leads for you every week: the people who actually reach your buyers rather than a generic list.
- It writes to them from your own accounts, by email and, on the right plan, on LinkedIn.
- It follows up until they answer.
- When someone replies, the conversation is handed to you.
On the Solo plan the mailbox is one you already own. You connect it, and sending goes out from the address your recipients would expect. From Starter upward a mailbox is set up for you instead, which is the better option if you would rather not send cold mail from the address your customers use for support.
What you approve versus what runs
| Step | Who |
|---|---|
| Deciding who reaches your buyers | Runs without you |
| Sourcing the leads each week | Runs without you |
| Writing the email | Runs without you |
| What sends from your name | You approve |
| Follow-ups | Runs until they answer |
| The reply | You, always |
The last row is the one that matters. AutoTraction stops at the reply. A real buyer answering a cold email is the moment a founder should be in the conversation, and a bot in that seat loses the deal.
Safety
- Your own accounts. Email goes from your mailbox on Solo, or from one set up for you on the higher plans. Nothing sends from a shared pool.
- One campaign at a time on the smaller plans. Solo and Starter run a single campaign. That is a limit, and it is also a sensible pace for a first mailbox.
- Follow-ups stop when someone answers. Nobody gets a sequence running underneath a live conversation.
- No fake engagement anywhere in the platform. Posting goes through official APIs at human pace, and replies on Reddit and X are drafted for you to paste rather than auto-posted.
AutoTraction versus doing it by hand
The by-hand column is the rough shape of running one outbound campaign yourself. It is an estimate of the job, not a measurement.
| Task | By hand, per week | With AutoTraction |
|---|---|---|
| Working out who to target | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Building the list and finding addresses | 3 to 5 hours | None |
| Writing and personalising each email | 2 to 4 hours | None |
| Sending and tracking follow-ups | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Approving what goes out | Not applicable | Part of four minutes a day |
| Replying to interested people | Yours | Yours |
The daily shape this fits into is described in the four-minute marketing routine.
Which plan includes it
Email outreach is on every plan, and how it is set up is the main thing that separates them.
| Plan | Price | Outreach | Mailbox | Campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $19 a month | Email outreach | Bring your own mailbox | One at a time |
| Starter | $39 a month | Email or LinkedIn | Set up for you | One at a time |
| Pro | $99 a month | Email and LinkedIn | Set up for you | Three at a time |
| Scale | $249 a month | Email and LinkedIn | Three LinkedIn senders, three mailboxes | Unlimited |
Leads draw on credits at 2 credits for a verified lead, against 250 credits a month on Solo and 4,000 on Scale. Unused credits roll over a month. The rest of the detail is on the pricing page. For the other outbound channel, see LinkedIn outreach for founders, and check where your traffic lands with the free site grader.
Can I use the mailbox I already have?
Yes. That is how the Solo plan works: you bring your own mailbox and run one campaign at a time. From Starter upward a mailbox is set up for you instead.
Does it reply to people for me?
No. It writes the first email and the follow-ups, and stops when someone answers. The reply is handed to you.
How many campaigns can I run at once?
One on Solo and Starter, three on Pro, and an unlimited number on Scale. Scale also includes three mailboxes and three LinkedIn senders for teams where more than one person sends.
Where do the leads come from?
They are sourced for you every week, aimed at the people who actually reach your buyers. A verified lead costs 2 credits from your monthly balance.