What to Build Before You Blast Emails
If you’re like me, you’re sick of sales messages. Ironically, many of you will invest in sending them at a massive scale in 2026. But before you do, I encourage you to consider a different (or perhaps complementary investment).
Take just a fraction of what you’d spend on scaled outreach and put it toward something that actually improves your work and creates real value for your audience.
I call these assets tentpoles - value-driven initiatives that anchor your marketing and build credibility over time. Often, it’s primary research into your prospect’s market, sometimes it’s a significant event focused on knowledge sharing, and sometimes it’s actually building a product of some kind.
Here are real examples:
These might look like big investments. But relevance beats budget. You don’t scale, you just need specificity. If your target audience is innovative food brands, create a hyper-specific asset or experience that gives those brands something they don’t have now. It might be as simple as whitepaper or some survey results.
In practice, these tentpoles give you a reason to show up in a feed or an inbox. And they make those mass emails and LinkedIn DMs you’re automating a whole lot more effective. They actually add value to your audience.
But perhaps even more importantly, your team benefits. What could you do if you had that large dataset on consumer food behavior or were able to regularly speak with a panel of actual consumers? It’s learning and development meets marketing and sales.
Once you have this thing, don’t count on inbound lead magic to make it meaningful. Send it to people, invite people to it, announce what you’re doing and share it widely. It’s a wonder how much more interest and eyeballs you get from real work you did to add value to the space, rather than some contrived message or campaign.
Plus, if I know you (and if you’re an agency owner, I think I do), you’re going to enjoy creating this thing a whole lot more than another round of cold email templates.
