Build Cold Offers From Real Market Pain

Cold email content teaches you to write better. These two videos teach you to research better first. That is a different conversation, and it is the right one.

What caught my attention this week: one creator built a custom tool to surface market pain points before writing a single word of copy. Another laid out an email framework built entirely around context and verifiable proof rather than clever phrasing. Both ended up at the same conclusion. The offer and the relevance you bring count for more than anything in the email body.

Video 1: 4,000 Calls Built on One Research Method

The central claim is straightforward: 4,000 or more sales calls booked, mostly by getting the offer right before the outreach even starts. The execution shown here is detailed enough to replicate.

The Core Framework: Research the Offer Before You Write It

The video walks through a live client case. A marketing agency selling to medical device and biotech companies. The obvious cold email would pitch a free brand audit or a quick call to discuss marketing strategy. That pitch is indistinguishable from dozens of other agency emails in the space. It gets no replies.

Instead, the process here starts with a question: what is this market complaining about right now? The answer came from searching Reddit and Hacker News for conversations from medical device companies, coders, and physicians. After reviewing 139 posts and about a dozen more threads, one theme dominated everything: procedure codes.

These are the billing codes that determine what insurance pays for. If a medical device company does not know which codes apply to their product, they cannot predict their reimbursement pathway. They are stuck between FDA clearance and getting paid. And they were asking strangers online for help figuring it out.

That pain point becomes the offer. The offer becomes specific: "We will go through the procedure codes that apply to your product, show you the clinicians already using those codes, and show you which major payers reimburse for them. Completely free."

The email built from that research:

• Three-word subject line, lowercase, written to look like an internal message
• No formality opener, straight to the first name
• One sentence value proposition: "If we could talk you through the applicable procedure codes for your technology at no charge, show you the clinicians that are already using those codes, and give you a picture of the major payers reimbursing for them, would that be worth hearing more?"
• PS line: "Our account executives average 25 years each, most of it inside Boston Scientific and Medtronic."

"Would that be worth hearing more?" is easier to say yes to than "book a call" or "schedule 15 minutes." The ask is a simple yes or no on interest. That changes how prospects respond at the top of a cold sequence.

The Demand Miner Tool

The creator built a Claude-based workflow stored in GitHub that automates the research process. You give it an ICP or industry. It searches social platforms for complaints, questions, and discussion threads, clusters the results by frequency and intensity, and surfaces the top pain points. It also suggests offer ideas scored against Hormozi's value equation and generates messaging angles using the buyer's own language, with links back to the original source threads as citations.

He walked through it live: pointed it at medical device companies, it returned the procedure code findings with links to Reddit and Hacker News threads backing each claim. The output is a ranked argument with citations.

My Take on This

I have been writing about this in The Cold Email Manifesto for years: the offer does the heavy lifting. What this video adds is a repeatable process for finding the offer rather than brainstorming your way to one. That is a better approach than guessing at offers.

The mistake the video correctly identifies: marketers building cold email offers approach the problem from an internal marketing perspective and miss the buyer's day-to-day reality. They pitch what sounds good internally rather than what the market is screaming about externally. A marketing strategist in a conference room will not brainstorm "let's offer free procedure code analysis." The medical device market was asking for exactly that, repeatedly, in public. The research finds the offer. The brainstorm rarely does.

The PS line using Boston Scientific and Medtronic is excellent use of social proof. Industry-specific authority immediately signals to a medical device prospect: these people have lived in my world. That is a completely different signal than "we have worked with Fortune 500 companies."

Where I would push back: the video undersells what it takes to move from finding the pain to building the offer. The tool surfaces what the market complains about. The human still has to answer a harder question: how does this pain connect to what we sell, without it feeling like a bait and switch? For this client, the connection was natural. A marketing agency with deep industry experience can legitimately analyze procedure codes because reimbursement knowledge directly informs which clinicians to market to. That bridge is not always obvious until you think it through carefully. The tool gives you the raw material. The strategic thinking is still on you.

Pay attention to the bait-and-switch warning in the video. If you give away something that feels completely disconnected from your core service, the follow-up call gets awkward fast. The free value has to be something you can deliver credibly AND that leads naturally toward a conversation about what you sell.

What to Implement

The research process transfers completely without building any tool. Take your ICP, go to Reddit, and search for "[buyer type] problems," "[your industry] questions," "[your niche] help me understand." Read 20 to 30 threads. The recurring themes you find are your offer candidates. This takes two hours manually and produces the same insight the tool generates. Do this before you write a single line of copy on your next campaign.

Test the CTA structure "would that be worth hearing more?" against whatever you are currently running. It removes the implied time commitment from the ask and gets a yes or no on interest first. Run a head-to-head test on your next 200 sends.

Keep the body copy pure value and use the PS for social proof. The PS reads differently, almost like an afterthought that happens to be compelling, which makes it more convincing than a credential list in paragraph two. This is a small structural decision that changes how the credibility reads.

What to Skip

Building the automated tool unless you are running 15 or more campaigns across different niches simultaneously. If you are focused on one or two verticals, manual research delivers the same output in a couple of hours. The automation pays off at scale. It does not pay off for a focused operator working one market.

Video 2: The Template and the Conference Trigger

This video runs as a Q&A format and covers several topics. Two sections stand out for practitioners: a framework for evaluating outreach channels over time, and a detailed walk-through of a cold email template built around context and social proof, including a specific conference variation.

The 80/20 Channel Framework

The exploration versus exploitation framing laid out in this video: spend 80 percent of your time and budget on what is already producing results, 20 percent on testing new channels. The example given is YouTube as a channel experiment. Set a defined resource budget, give it 90 days, measure against an existing channel, and make a data-based decision rather than a feeling-based one.

This framework addresses a specific failure mode. Premature abandonment kills more cold email campaigns than bad copy. Someone runs 200 emails, gets two replies, and declares the whole channel dead. Or they have been running the same sequence for two years without testing anything new, and the market has moved around them without their noticing. The 80/20 split forces both discipline and experimentation simultaneously. You are committing to run what works while always keeping one test active.

The Cold Email Template Structure

The framework laid out in the video:

• Open with a specific observation about something they have done, not generic praise
• Establish shared context, whether that is shared industry, shared platform, or shared event
• Specific result proof with a concrete number that the reader can verify or at least find plausible
• Connect their current situation to what you can offer
• Specific outcome promise with a number and a timeframe attached
• Low-friction CTA with an asset angle: "I have already started building a roadmap for you, reply if you want it"
• PS: additional credibility or independent proof point

The multichannel layer: once the email is written, send the same message with the relevant asset attached across LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. The argument is that view rates on social DMs are meaningfully higher because messages arrive as requests rather than competing in a crowded primary inbox, and file attachments face fewer restrictions on social platforms than they do in email.

The Conference Trigger

The most actionable specific from this video: if you attend industry conferences, you have a cold outreach hook that goes entirely unused.

The template for a past conference scenario: "Hey [name], I think we missed each other at [conference]. I have been following your work on [specific topic] and wanted to connect about [relevant subject]. Would a 20 to 30 minute conversation be worth it? PS: Our team attends every year and I know [social proof point]."

Conference attendees are pre-selected for networking. They have already opted in to building professional relationships by showing up. The cold-to-warm conversion rate is faster than purely blind outreach because the shared context bypasses the credibility question entirely. You shared the same physical space, even if you did not connect in person.

The forward-looking version is even stronger: if you are attending an upcoming conference, run a campaign to known attendees before you go. "I will be at [conference] in two weeks and I know you will be there. Would a quick meeting while we are both there make sense?" The upcoming shared experience is warmer than the retrospective one and creates a natural deadline without manufacturing urgency.

My Take on This

The 80/20 framework is sound. One refinement I would add: the exploration budget should come after you have something in the 80% that is already producing results. If nothing is working yet, you are in exploration-only mode. The priority in that case is finding one thing that works before splitting your attention across experiments. The 80/20 split assumes you already have a working 80%.

The cold email template is solid. The asset-based CTA is the most effective piece of it. "I have already started building a roadmap for you" creates forward momentum because you have made an investment in the relationship before the prospect has replied. That pre-commitment signals seriousness in a way that "I would love to share some ideas" does not. I have used variations of this in campaigns for years. It consistently outperforms generic CTAs on higher-ticket offers.

The specific result number works, but only if it is verifiable or at minimum plausible. Generic big numbers trigger skepticism. The template in the video includes a PS that tells the reader they can Google the claim to verify it. That is exactly the right instinct. If you have a result worth citing, you should be able to point someone to independent verification. If you cannot, the number is working against you.

On the multichannel approach: sending the same message across email, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram simultaneously scales well for a focused list of named accounts where deal size justifies the extra effort. For broader volume campaigns running through tools like Smartlead or Instantly, email-first with social as a follow-up lever for accounts that opened but did not reply is more practical. The simultaneous blast for every contact on a 2,000-person list is not a realistic workflow without dedicated tooling and meaningful overhead.

One infrastructure point mentioned briefly in the video that deserves more attention: Outlook filters aggressively. If your target market is enterprise buyers using Microsoft 365, sending from Google Workspace to Outlook inboxes will hurt deliverability in ways that are hard to diagnose because the emails appear to send successfully. Test your open rates specifically on outlook.com and microsoft.com domains before scaling any enterprise campaign. This is a quiet campaign killer that shows up as mysteriously low reply rates from certain company types. For list verification before you run, ScraperCity's email validator will flag which domains are likely to give you inbox placement issues.

What to Implement

The asset-based CTA first. Build a one-page analysis, audit, or roadmap specific to your prospect's situation. Reference it in the email, and send it on request. Having already started the work, the prospect responds to someone who has already invested in them. For scripts built around this pre-committed value structure, the new email scripts pack has frameworks that use this approach across different service categories.

If you attend industry events, build a conference outreach sequence now. Before the event: target known attendees with the 'I will be there, can we meet?' email. After the event, anyone you did not meet gets the 'I think we missed each other' email. Both versions outperform generic cold outreach because the shared context is verifiable. This works across any niche with regular industry conferences.

Adopt the 90-day channel evaluation structure as a standing process. Pick one new outreach channel to test right now. What success looks like in concrete numbers should be defined before you start. Set a time and resource limit. After 90 days, make a decision based on the data alone, with no extensions or gut feelings.

What to Skip

Simultaneous all-platform blasting for every prospect on every campaign. Reserve the multichannel approach for high-value named accounts where the deal size makes the resource investment pay off. For everything else, run email first and use social DMs as a targeted follow-up for warm non-responders.

The Pattern Across Both Videos

Both creators are making the same argument from different angles: the words you use in the email copy are almost secondary compared to what you bring to the conversation before you write it.

The first video builds the offer by researching what the market is already asking for in public. The email almost writes itself once you know the offer is exactly what buyers are complaining about on Reddit. You are answering a question they were already asking.

The second video builds context through shared experience and verifiable proof so the reader is evaluating a message from someone who appears to live in their world and has demonstrated results they can check.

Both approaches produce the same result: the email feels relevant instead of generic. And relevant beats clever, every single time.

When a campaign is underperforming, the fix is almost never "rewrite the copy." Change who you are sending to. Change the offer. The context you arrive with needs to change too. All three of those decisions happen before you open a document to write.

In The Cold Email Manifesto I talk about how customization beats volume for high-ticket selling. Both videos describe a systematic approach to making every email feel customized: offer relevance and contextual framing at the campaign design level. That is a much more scalable version of the same principle.

If you are building a system where the offer research process runs repeatedly across different niches and buyer types, the enterprise outreach system covers how to build that infrastructure so it scales beyond a single campaign. And if you want to see what high-performing scripts look like when the offer foundation is right, the top five cold email scripts shows the copy structure that gets replies. For the list building layer underneath all of this, Clay handles enrichment and segmentation before the emails go out.

The Specific Action to Take This Week

Before you send another cold email, do this one thing. Pick the niche you are currently targeting. Go to Reddit and search for three phrases: "[your buyer type] problems," "[your industry] frustrations," "[your niche] questions." The top 20 to 30 results are where the recurring complaints show up. Write down the two or three complaints that appear in multiple threads from multiple different people. Build an offer around giving away a free analysis, audit, or answer to one of those complaints, with no requirement except a reply to receive it. The email should deliver that offer in one sentence. Use "would that be worth hearing more?" as your CTA. Run it on 100 contacts before you change anything.

The research takes two hours. It will tell you more about your offer than six months of copy testing will. The offer is almost always the problem.