We ran intent-based outreach vs cold Apollo lists for 30 days. Here is what happened.

We had a hypothesis. People who had recently posted about outbound pain, engaged with competitor content, or announced a new sales hire would convert better than a cold filtered Apollo list with the same job title and company size.

So we tested it properly.

Same ICP. Same message template. Same sending volume. Only variable was the lead source.

Cold Apollo list: 2.1% reply rate. 1 demo per 200 emails.

Intent-sourced leads: 8.7% reply rate. 1 demo per 47 emails.

The intent group also closed faster. Average time from first reply to signed contract was 6 days vs 19 days for cold.

The thing that surprised us most was not the reply rate difference. It was the quality of the replies. Cold list replies were mostly objections. Intent replies were mostly curiosity. People said things like “funny you reached out — I was literally looking at this yesterday.”

That is not a coincidence. That is timing.

The lesson we took from this: your ICP filter tells you who could buy. Intent signals tell you who is thinking about buying right now. Those are completely different lists.

Happy to share the full breakdown of which signals converted best if anyone is interested. Drop a comment and I will DM you the data.