lemlist CEO: Best Outbound Senders Send The Least Volume

lemlist's CEO Charles Tenot has reply-rate data on 25,000 cold email accounts. The top 10% send the LEAST volume of anyone. That's the opposite of every outbound playbook in the market right now. In this episode of GTM Rewired, Charles shares first-party data on what's actually working in outbound in 2026, why "cold email is dead" is the lazy take, and where AI agents stop being marketing fluff and start being real GTM infrastructure. What's inside: The volume vs. reply-rate correlation across lemlist's full base What actually counts as an AI agent (and what vendors mislabel) Why senior-only GTM teams are starting to outperform full ones How TAM size dictates outbound strategy (Ramp's $300M ARR vs. mid-market reality) Why Google's spam crackdown didn't move the numbers lemlist's view on Claude, MCP, and where the agent stack is going Guest: Charles Tenot, CEO at lemlist Host: Jérémy Grandillon, CEO at TC9 CHAPTERS 00:00 The data that breaks every outbound playbook 00:30 What actually counts as an AI agent 04:30 Claude as the new interface, MCP, the Tesco analogy 10:00 Sales is human, why junior GTM hires are a trap 13:00 lemlist's cold email data: reply rates flat for 2 years 15:30 The decile finding: top 10% send the LEAST volume 18:00 TAM-driven outbound, Ramp's $300M ARR vs mid-market 22:00 Google's spam crackdown didn't move the numbers 25:00 Trust as the moat, lemlist's anti-hype roadmap 28:30 Closing LINKS lemlist: https://www.lemlist.com Charles on LinkedIn:   / charlestenot   Jérémy on LinkedIn:   / jeremygrandillon   TC9: https://tc9.ai