HowTheyGotUsersHowTheyGotUsers

Warm Up Before You Slide In

Warm Up Before You Slide In is a cold outreach tactic for getting your first users: Becoming a familiar face to a prospect through public engagement before any private message, so your eventual DM lands as semi-warm rather than ice cold.

It's a strong fit for B2B SaaS, Dev tools / technical, and Newsletters / media teams, and works especially well for B2B SaaS, dev tools, creator tools. As a cold outreach play, plan for medium effort and expect results to build gradually over time, all grounded in 3 linked primary sources.

Cold outreachMedium effortSlow

Why does cold outreach work for this?

Repeated friendly exposure builds trust and familiarity, so the cold message no longer feels like it's coming from a stranger. Public, helpful replies also get seen by everyone following the thread, multiplying each effort.

The exact steps (4)

The full step-by-step this founder ran, what they posted, where, and in what order, plus the watch-outs, is part of the library.

Unlock the steps · $29 oncePlus all 3,000+ tactics and the new ones we add weekly.

Sources

Works for
B2B SaaSDev tools / technicalNewsletters / media

Frequently asked

What kind of products does the "Warm Up Before You Slide In" tactic work for?
It is a good fit for B2B SaaS, Dev tools / technical, and Newsletters / media — pick it when your product looks like one of those, since the play is shaped around how those users find new tools.
How is the "Warm Up Before You Slide In" tactic verified?
It is drawn from 3 primary sources — real founder write-ups and interviews, not generic advice. They are linked in the Sources section above so you can read the original accounts yourself.
How much effort is it and how fast are results?
It is medium effort, and results tend to be slow.
Where can I see the exact step-by-step?
The full step-by-step a founder ran, documented via Best SaaS Marketing Strategy to get your first 100 Customers and SaaS Marketing for (Laravel) Developers, is in the paid library.

Related tactics

Cold outreachMedium effort· Medium

Scrape Competitor Upvoters Off Product Hunt With PhantomBuster

The founder found ~20 similar products on Product Hunt and used PhantomBuster's API to scrape every user who upvoted them (~11k profiles), most of which link to a Twitter account, giving him a ready list of warm prospects.

Read the steps →
Cold outreachLow effort· Fast

Turn Your First Deliverable Into an Anonymized Sales Demo

Takes the polished output built for client one, strips out all real data, and reuses that anonymized sample as the pitch artifact to win the next two or three clients.

Read the steps →
Cold outreachMedium effort· Medium

Cold Email Prospects Using Hunter.io and a Free CRM

Bootstrapped cold outreach: find decision-maker emails with hunter.io, then send through a free CRM that tracks opens and clicks and auto-sends follow-ups based on recipient behavior.

Read the steps →
Cold outreachMedium effort· Slow

Build the Sourcing-and-Sending Stack Right

The operational backbone of outreach: where you find good-fit leads, how you contact them across channels, and how you protect deliverability so your messages actually arrive.

Read the steps →
Cold outreachHigh effort· Slow

Scrape One Shared White-Label Platform to Harvest a Whole Vertical

Many organizations in the same niche often run on the identical white-labeled SaaS with public pages that share the exact same layout, so a single scraper can pull contacts from all of them at once.

Read the steps →
Cold outreachHigh effort· Slow

Scrape LinkedIn + Company Sites for a 300-Email Cold Push

Build a contact list by hand from LinkedIn and company websites, then send a few hundred cold emails off a base template with a personalized opening line, spread over several days.

Read the steps →

Get all 3,000+ tactics in one place

Filter by your product and channel, follow the exact steps, and get the new tactics we add every week. One payment, yours for good.

Unlock for $29 onceBrowse by channel