Definitely not dead.
⢠I recently built a highly scalable outbound marketing engine for a HRTech SaaS that sends ~50k+ outbound emails per month. Gets ~30 sales qualified leads through it. No personalization in emails. We do a lot of A/B testing of subject, copy and CTA here. This approach works like a spray and pray methodology, and works mostly for mid-senior managers. Your TAM also has to be large (~1 Mn prospective users).
⢠Again, built a really small outbound marketing engine (sends ~1k emails per week), generates ~10 quality conversations. Mix of personalized and non-personalized emails, targeting decision makers. The CTA usually is to get a āY/Nā to a question and get them on a call. Data collection and analysis helps improves number over the period of time. Also - email copy should be <100 words (3 paragraphs - opening lines about the prospect, second paragraph about yourself and the product, third paragraph about CTA). Quirky breakup emails also work.