Outbound Origination Programme · RFI response

Unit of value

The unit is one qualified opportunity: a prospect replying positively, either an information request or a meeting request. Volume is best read as a rate, because it depends on the size of the database and how many emails are sent.

The rates are a guaranteed floor of 0.125% positive replies per email (the low scenario, see Q9) and an expected 0.4125% on the weighted mean. How many opportunities that becomes depends entirely on the size of the database and the number of emails sent (one send over three months, up to four over twelve), so it scales with both. Not counted: opens, clicks, auto-replies, out-of-office, bounces, unsubscribes, negative replies, gatekeeper deflections.

Live worked example

Five pre-process targets for this month, each source-verified, each with a draft first email.

Each cleared the Q3 filter: on public evidence as of 24 July 2026, none is in a formal process or has a publicly appointed advisor. We re-confirm against the primary filing before the first send. The signal date is shown against each company. The draft emails are a suggestion only: we would shape them together in the workshop, and you would validate every sequence before anything is sent.

Timing filter

A target is included only if it is not in a formal process and has no publicly appointed restructuring advisor.

How  An AI scan of 12 months of filings, court registers and distressed-debt press flags any process or advisor language; a person signs off every name before inclusion.
Limit  We see only publicly disclosed appointments; a quiet retainer is invisible to any provider.
Fail rate  About 20 to 30% of surfaced names are already in a process or advised, and are dropped (an estimate; the actual figure is reported after the first build).
Offset  To make up for the names the filter removes, we can contact more than one decision-maker per company (for example the CFO and the treasurer), which raises the chance of a reply without widening the universe.

Software, data and AI

Named stack per stage; the AI drafts and detects, but never sends.

Template, sample and database are human-approved by you; every personalisation batch is human-reviewed before load. The specific model is chosen per task and updated over time, so we will not pin a version in a contract.

Benchmark provenance

Our rates come from every campaign we have run, for ourselves and for our clients, including the case studies cited; none is an advisory practice exactly like yours, so the guarantee is on opportunities, not mandates.

The rates draw on the full history of our campaigns, our own outbound and our clients’, alongside the three published cases (Agence OVB, Thomas Bennett Group, and “32 opportunities in 10 days”). Those references are agencies, e-commerce and B2B services, so the rates are sector-agnostic: the mechanics (reply rates, deliverability, personalisation) transfer well, while mandate conversion is your domain. One client in the UK is willing to share his details if you would like to speak to him directly.

Regulatory

GDPR legitimate interest, PECR corporate opt-out, and liability that by law sits with the firm in whose name the emails are sent.

On GDPR (a), we rely on legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f), since the outreach is B2B, to a named person in their professional capacity, about a situation their company has publicly disclosed, and a written LIA is documented before launch. Under PECR (b), these are corporate subscribers, and every send carries a clear opt-out that we honour immediately. On data provenance (c), contacts come from public registers plus enrichment with verified emails, and a suppression list is applied to every wave. On approval (d), you sign off the template and the full database before anything goes out. On liability and the financial-promotion regime (e), the company in whose name the emails are sent is always the party legally responsible for what is sent. So although Cold is Gold sets up and runs the campaign as your processor, the legal responsibility for the content, under GDPR and for any communication issued in your name, sits with Lantana as the sending firm. This is why your approval of the template and content is built into our sign-off process before anything goes out.

All-in twelve-month cost

£27,577 with guarantee; £20,377 without, all in GBP.

These figures depend on the size of the database. They assume contacting one person per company across an approximate number of reachable contacts; for the full price breakdown, please refer to the initial brief.

Fees ex VAT. Instantly and the sending addresses are billed by third parties in US dollars at cost, and are shown here in GBP converted at ~0.79 GBP/USD. Only variable line: sending addresses (send volume ÷ 630/mailbox, so 7 here). The setup and warm-up run before billing and are not charged, so the 12 months above are all sending months.

Trial

A three-month trial on a deliberately smaller database, though still with enough volume to give reliable data, sized so that on your average margin per client the downside is roughly break-even.

A three-month trial runs four months in total: one month of setup and warm-up, then three months of emails being sent. We would recommend running it on a smaller, carefully chosen slice of the database rather than the full universe, though it still needs enough volume to produce statistically reliable data, sized against your average margin per client so that even a weak outcome is roughly break-even. That lets us learn what lands and adapt the targeting, the signals and the copy before we scale, while keeping the large majority of the potential database untouched and fresh. The scope mirrors the full programme (setup, workshop, sequence, sample, database build), simply at a smaller contact volume. There is no separate trial fee and no set-up cost: you pay the standard monthly service plus the one-off database, with the first invoice due before the first emails go out and the remaining months billed monthly. Because of this, converting to the long-term partnership is treated as a new campaign, in which every trial contact who did not respond can be approached again at no extra cost.

Results guarantee

At least the low-scenario reply rate of 0.125% positive replies per email; miss a month and billing freezes; miss three in a row and you exit at no cost.

We commit to at least the low scenario, a positive-reply rate of 0.125% per email (the outcome in the weakest ~10% of campaigns), recalculated to the parameters agreed at kickoff, with the unit as defined in Q1. If any month closes below target, billing freezes immediately and stays frozen until we have caught up the cumulative shortfall, so you never pay for a month we miss. If the shortfall runs three consecutive months, you may terminate at no cost, and we keep working at our own expense in the meantime. The target is dynamic to the agreed market size and contactability, client-side delays pause the clock, and the guarantee is on opportunities rather than mandates. A detailed breakdown of the scenarios and the guarantee mechanics is in the initial brief.

Exit terms

No notice period beyond the mission and no exit cost; you keep the database, the copy, the learnings, your CRM records and the sending domains, while the method stays ours.

There is no notice period beyond the mission itself, and no exit cost. You keep the database for life, the copy and sequences, the campaign learnings, and every reply and contact in your Pipedrive. You also keep the sending domains and mailboxes, for as long as you maintain the Instantly subscription they run on. The method and targeting logic stay proprietary to us, but the outputs are yours.

Our time

About 2 to 4 hours at onboarding, then under an hour a week.

Onboarding is a 1-hour workshop plus sequence and database approvals. This excludes the actual sales follow-up with the CFOs who reply, which is Lantana’s own resource and the larger commitment.

Team

Thibault, our CEO based in Villefranche-sur-Saône, will be your single point of contact.

All campaigns are created and supervised by Thibault. Some small parts may be outsourced, but never without his supervision and approval.

Kill criteria

At 90 days, after two iterations if needed, we advise stopping if results sit at the floor with no fixable cause.

Concretely, we would advise stopping if the positive-reply rate is below about 0.125% per email with no fixable cause, or if deliverability cannot be recovered (bounces persistently above ~5% or spam complaints above ~0.3%), or if opportunities are tracking under about fifteen for the first wave for reasons that are market-driven rather than fixable copy or targeting. A fixable miss is iteration, not a kill.

Delivery into Pipedrive

Confirmed, via Instantly’s native integration or API.

A positive reply creates or updates the person, the organisation and a deal, and pushes the reply. Fields: name, title, company, verified email, campaign, signal (as a note), reply and positive-reply flag, and timestamps. Exact mapping is set at setup against your pipeline stages (Make or Zapier if a mapping needs it).

Specific to Cold is Gold

1 · Early stress vs an announced restructuring

Yes. We classify each target by stage and drop anything already in a process or with an announced advisor.

The filter has four moves: our AI model reads twelve months of filings, court registers and distressed-debt press for each name; every name is then tagged as early stress, announced process, or advisor announced; anything past early stress is dropped; and a person signs off every survivor before it enters the list. The brief’s 10-sample was not screened for this, which is why Waldorf, Atlas and Air Industries appeared, whereas the Q2 five are the same method with the filter on. Your input is to approve the pre-process definition and the stage ladder at kickoff, then to sign off the sample and the database. The one honest limit is that we can only see a publicly disclosed advisor. In practice, almost anything can be found provided the underlying fact is tangible and publicly available online, so the targeting can be shaped to whatever you need within that premise, with the precise filters and criteria agreed together in the workshop and searched for accordingly.

2 · Pre-process definition, guarantee, trial

Yes to all three.

We will accept the definition contractually: “an opportunity counts only where the target, at the time of outreach, had no insolvency appointee, no filed or sanctioned plan, and no publicly announced advisor or running sale process.” The guarantee survives in full, because we build the entire base from pre-process companies, so the guaranteed rate does not change. And it applies at the trial: the guarantee is an optional priced tier, higher for the shorter term and stepping down to the twelve-month rate.

3 · Sends in your name

Approval is at template and batch level, and sends go out in your name at a controlled daily volume.

You approve the template and the full sequence, each personalised opening line comes from a sourced fact and the batch is human-checked before load, and sending then runs automatically against the approved pattern. The daily volume in your name depends on the chosen size of the trial database and scales with the number of mailboxes we run; the detail is set out in the brief.

4 · Database and one trial figure

You keep the enriched database for life. The 12,500-contact figure in the brief is an example that depends on you and assumes only one person per company; at that size the all-in three-month trial is about £10,438 with guarantee. As Q8 of your fourteen questions sets out, we recommend starting with a smaller batch first.

Instantly and the sending addresses are billed in USD and converted at ~0.79 GBP/USD. Only the database line moves with contact count.