Cold outreach to SaaS companies
The buyer is a SaaS product manager, primarily measured on user engagement metrics. They respond positively to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of their current feature gaps and user feedback. Highlighting how your solution can streamline user onboarding or enhance retention will capture their attention effectively.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 559 saas company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- high user churn rates
- ineffective onboarding processes
- unmet feature requests
- low user engagement scores
The playbook
- 01
Identify churn triggers
Use customer feedback data to pinpoint common reasons for user churn in your target SaaS companies. Filter for companies with a recent spike in churn rates, which can often be found in their public reports or customer reviews. This information will allow you to tailor your outreach directly to their pain points.
- 02
Highlight onboarding issues
Research your target's onboarding process through user experience reviews or demo videos. Look for specific complaints about the complexity or length of onboarding. Craft your outreach to emphasize how your solution simplifies this process, making it more appealing to the product manager.
- 03
Focus on feature requests
Scan forums, social media, or community boards for frequent feature requests related to user engagement. Identify companies that have received consistent feedback on these features. In your outreach, reference these requests and position your solution as a way to address them.
- 04
Mention industry benchmarks
Keep an eye on industry reports that highlight user engagement benchmarks within SaaS. If a target company is underperforming compared to industry standards, use this data in your outreach to create urgency. Discuss how your solution can help them meet or exceed these benchmarks.
- 05
Leverage case studies
Identify similar SaaS companies that have successfully improved user engagement metrics using strategies akin to yours. In your outreach, mention these case studies to build credibility and show tangible results. Ensure the examples are relevant and recent to maximize impact.
Can saas companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 559 saas companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 16.7% of 1–10-person companies against 80.9% of the largest — 64 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Improve your user retention
- Addressing onboarding challenges
- Boost user engagement today
Questions
- Why do SaaS product managers ignore outreach about user engagement tools?
- SaaS product managers often receive numerous outreach emails and may perceive them as generic or irrelevant. If the outreach does not specifically address their unique challenges or current initiatives, it can easily be overlooked. Personalization and a clear value proposition based on their pain points are crucial.
- What common objections do SaaS product managers have to new solutions?
- SaaS product managers frequently cite budget constraints, potential disruption to existing workflows, and the need for proven results as common objections. They may be hesitant to adopt new tools without clear evidence of ROI or case studies demonstrating success in similar contexts.
- How can outreach be tailored to SaaS product managers?
- Outreach to SaaS product managers should focus on their specific challenges, such as improving user engagement or reducing churn. Highlighting relevant industry insights, addressing their pain points directly, and offering solutions that align with their current objectives will make your outreach more compelling.
- What role does user feedback play in SaaS product management?
- User feedback is critical for SaaS product managers as it informs product development and feature prioritization. They rely on this feedback to enhance user experience, address pain points, and ensure that the product aligns with customer needs. Ignoring feedback can lead to higher churn rates and lower satisfaction.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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