Cold Outreach That Converts for Dev Tools and SaaS

Cold email to SaaS founders has a 1-3% positive reply rate when done well, 0.1% when generic. The difference is specificity: mentioning their actual product, a real problem you can see from the outside (public pricing page, G2 reviews, job postings), and offering something concrete rather than "hopping on a call." Templates that work: "I noticed [specific thing about their product] — we help companies like yours recover [X]% more failed payments. Here is what we'd do for [company name] specifically: [2-3 bullet points]."

Channel ranking by CAC for SMB SaaS tools: (1) Integration marketplaces (Stripe App Marketplace, Vercel Integrations) — near-zero CAC, buyers have intent. (2) Content/SEO targeting pain-point keywords ("reduce involuntary churn", "failed payment recovery stripe"). (3) Indie hacker communities (Twitter/X, Indie Hackers, Hacker News Show HN). (4) Cold email to Stripe-using SaaS companies (scrape from BuiltWith/Wappalyzer). (5) Paid ads — usually too expensive for <$100/mo products.

For RecoverStripe: the Stripe App Marketplace listing should be priority #1. Companies actively browsing that marketplace have Stripe, have payment problems, and are ready to install. Second priority: a Show HN post with real recovery data from a beta customer.