Cold email isn't an end in itself. Before you launch a campaign, it's worth asking: does this even make sense for my situation? According to Daniel, there are really only two good reasons.
If you have a large market ahead of you, cold email helps you work through it quickly and find out which companies currently have demand. An example: out of 10,000 companies in a market, around 5% have often already engaged with the topic. That means roughly 5% of those 10,000 companies respond because they're interested or want to learn more, and some of them are positively inclined right away. That's how you generate new leads very quickly.
The second reason is uncertainty about individual components of your offering, whether that's messaging, positioning, or target audience. Cold email gives you fast, honest feedback straight from the market.
In small markets, this approach usually works worse, simply because the population is too small to deliver reliable signals. Here, a more targeted, more account-based approach is often worth more than broad cold outreach.