Gifted Esther

Senior Cold Email Strategist

Marketing • Freelance

Jan 2022 - Present • 4 yrs 4 mos

Led end-to-end cold email outreach campaigns for over 35 B2B SaaS clients across North America and Europe, managing full-cycle prospecting from Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) definition and lead list building to copywriting, sequencing, and reply handling. Developed high-converting cold email frameworks using proven methodologies including AIDA, PAS, and the Spear Selling approach, consistently achieving open rates of 45–62% and reply rates of 12–18% — well above the industry average of 1–5%. Spearheaded a proprietary email personalization system using Clay, Apollo.io, and custom AI prompts to generate hyper-personalized first lines at scale, reducing manual writing time by 70% while improving conversion rates by 34%. Managed sender domain infrastructure, including DNS configuration (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), domain warm-up protocols, and mailbox rotation strategies to maintain inbox placement above 92% across all client campaigns. Collaborated directly with sales teams to align cold email sequences with CRM pipelines in HubSpot and Salesforce, enabling seamless handoffs and improving close rates by 22%. Trained and mentored a team of 4 junior copywriters in outbound email best practices, A/B testing methodology, and deliverability management. Authored internal SOPs for cold email campaign audits, list hygiene, and performance reporting that became the agency's gold standard.

Email Outreach Specialist

GrowthExpertz • Tiempo parcial

Mar 2020 - Dec 2021 • 1 yr 9 mos

Designed and executed multi-step cold email sequences for clients in e-commerce, fintech, and professional services sectors, generating an average of 120+ qualified sales meetings per month across all accounts. Utilized Instantly.ai, Lemlist, and Smartlead to build automated drip campaigns with intelligent follow-up logic, ensuring no lead fell through the cracks while maintaining a human, personalized tone. Conducted deep prospect research using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Hunter.io, and ZoomInfo to build GDPR-compliant lead lists with verified email addresses and accurate firmographic data. Developed custom subject line testing frameworks that identified top-performing variants — reducing time-to-optimize by 50% and consistently achieving subject line open rates above 50%. Implemented email list segmentation strategies based on industry, company size, job title, and pain point triggers, allowing for laser-targeted messaging that resonated with each prospect segment. Generated $420,000 in new pipeline revenue for clients in Q3 2021 alone through targeted outbound email campaigns. Maintained meticulous tracking of KPIs including open rate, click-through rate, reply rate, positive reply rate, and booked meeting rate using custom Looker Studio dashboards shared with clients in weekly reviews.

Outbound Sales Development Representative (SDR)

SALES • Freelance

Jun 2018 - Jan 2020 • 1 yr 7 mos

Served as a frontline outbound SDR responsible for cold prospecting and pipeline generation for a mid-market B2B SaaS product targeting HR and operations leaders at companies with 50–500 employees. Developed and refined cold email scripts and multi-channel outreach sequences (email + LinkedIn) that consistently outperformed team benchmarks, booking 30–40 qualified discovery calls per month compared to the team average of 18. Became the go-to resource for cold email copy review within the SDR team, informally mentoring 6 peers on persuasive writing, objection handling in follow-up sequences, and personalization techniques. Mastered Outreach.io and Salesloft for sequence management, tracking all prospect interactions and maintaining accurate activity logs in Salesforce CRM. Contributed to reducing the average sales cycle by 11 days through better-qualified leads entering the pipeline, as a result of precise targeting and pre-qualification messaging embedded in email copy. Achieved 142% of quota in Q4 2019, recognized as top-performing SDR of the quarter. Developed a cold email template library of 40+ templates segmented by persona, pain point, and industry that was adopted company-wide and credited with a 28% improvement in team reply rates over one quarter.