How to research prospects before cold emailing

March 24, 2026

I used to send cold emails with personalization like “I see you’re in the marketing space.” That’s not personalization. That’s reading a LinkedIn bio and pretending it counts.

My reply rate with that approach: 4%.

Then I started spending 10 minutes per prospect before writing the email. Reply rate jumped to 19%. Same template structure. Same offer. The only variable was the research.

Here’s the exact checklist.

The 10-minute research checklist

I spend roughly 10 minutes per prospect. Not 30 seconds (too shallow) and not 30 minutes (doesn’t scale). 10 minutes gives you enough to write a first line that sounds like a human wrote it – because a human did.

1. Recent content (3 minutes)

Check their Twitter, LinkedIn, and blog for anything published in the last 30 days.

You’re looking for:

• A take or opinion they shared publicly
• A problem they mentioned
• A project they announced
• A thread or post that got engagement

This is the highest-value research you can do. Referencing someone’s recent content proves you’re paying attention. It also gives you a natural reason to reach out – you’re responding to something they said, not cold-pitching from nowhere.

When I found a prospect who tweeted about struggling with creator outreach, I opened with: “Saw your thread about finding creators who actually convert – especially the part about engagement rate being misleading.” That email got a reply in 4 hours.

2. Job changes and company news (2 minutes)

Check for:

• New role in the last 6 months (people in new roles are 2x more likely to buy – they’re building fresh)
• Recent funding round (money unlocks budget)
• Product launches (signals growth mode)
• Hiring patterns (what roles they’re filling tells you their priorities)

A prospect who just raised a Series A and posted 3 marketing job listings is in a completely different headspace than someone who’s been in the same role for 4 years at a stable company. The same email won’t work for both.

LinkedIn job change notifications are free. Crunchbase alerts for funding rounds are free. There’s no excuse for missing this context.

3. Tech stack and tools (2 minutes)

For B2B prospects, knowing what tools they use tells you what problems they’ve already tried to solve.

Check:

• Their website (BuiltWith or Wappalyzer for tech stack)
• G2 reviews they’ve written
• Integrations or tools they mention in job listings
• Competitors they’ve publicly compared

If they’re using a competitor, your angle changes entirely. You’re not introducing a new category – you’re offering a switch. That’s a different email template and a different first line.

4. Mutual connections and shared context (2 minutes)

Check for:

• Shared communities (Slack groups, Discord servers, Twitter circles)
• Mutual follows or connections
• Events they’ve attended or spoken at
• Content they’ve engaged with that you also follow

Shared context is the most powerful opener in cold outreach. “I noticed we’re both in the [community]” converts at nearly double the rate of a pure cold open in my experience. 16% reply rate vs 9% for the same offer.

5. The “why now” signal (1 minute)

This is the question that ties everything together: why would this person care about your email today?

Not “why would they care generally.” Today. This week.

The signal might be:

• They just posted about the problem you solve
• They just started a role where your product matters
• Their company just launched something that creates the need
• A competitor of theirs just made a move

If you can’t find a “why now” signal, the prospect stays on the list but moves to the next batch. Timing matters more than most people think. An email that lands in the right week gets a reply. The same email 3 months later gets archived.

How research feeds personalization

The research isn’t a separate step from writing the email. It is the email.

Here’s how each checklist item maps to a part of your outreach sequence:

The first line is where most of the research payoff lives. It’s the difference between “I help companies like yours with creator discovery” and “Saw you’re hiring a partnerships lead – when we were at that stage with Scouter, finding the right creators to reach out to was the bottleneck.”

One sounds like a mail merge. The other sounds like a person. The recipient can tell the difference instantly.

What not to research

A few things that waste your 10 minutes:

• Their entire work history – You don’t need it. Last 2 roles max.
• Personal details – Where they went to college, their hobbies, their dog’s name. This isn’t personalization – it’s surveillance. It makes people uncomfortable.
• Company boilerplate – The “About” section of their website is useless for cold email. Everyone knows their own About page. Referencing it says “I did the bare minimum.”

Research should surface something they’d be impressed you noticed – not creeped out by.

The math on why this works

Say you send 25 emails per day.

Without research: 25 emails x 4% reply rate = 1 reply per day. Maybe.

With 10 minutes of research: 25 emails takes an extra 4 hours of research. But 25 emails x 19% reply rate = 4–5 replies per day.

That’s the difference between 1 booked call per week and 5. Same number of sends. Same templates. The research is the variable.

Is 4 hours a lot? Yes. But 4 hours spent researching 25 good prospects produces more pipeline than 4 hours spent sending 200 unresearched emails that get no replies.

Make it sustainable

The 10-minute checklist only works if you batch it. I do research in blocks:

• Monday morning: Research 25 prospects, fill in the prospect list spreadsheet
• Monday afternoon: Write and send all 25 emails
• Tuesday–Friday: Follow-ups from previous batches, plus 10 new researched prospects per day

This keeps the quality high without making research feel like a second job. The key is capturing your notes during research – the personal note column in your spreadsheet – so you’re not re-researching when it’s time to write.

Research before you write. Write what you found. Send fewer, better emails.

That’s the whole system.