Case study · Climate finance · Early results 12 funded climate-tech CEOs said yes to a cold email in five days
Edge helps energy and infrastructure developers raise project capital and use tax credits. Its partners had been writing to CEOs by hand. Fifty to a hundred careful emails had produced two responses. We built the system to send that same quality of email to thousands of the right people, and the first campaign aimed at funded CEOs answered in under a week.
Counts of distinct people from our send ledger and Smartlead, 5 to 22 October 2026 (ESG campaign through 20 October). Meetings are being held now.
A few senior buyers, written to by hand
Edge arranges financing for first-of-a-kind energy projects and structures tax-credit deals for the companies that build them. Its buyers are few, senior and busy: CEOs of funded climate-tech companies, family offices, and finance leads at companies with large tax bills.
Before working with us, outreach was partners writing personal emails one at a time. It worked when they had time, which was rarely, and it could not reach more than a few dozen people a month.
No room for a bad first email
Every audience is small
There are a few thousand funded climate-tech CEOs in the world, so a bad first email burns a market you cannot buy more of.
The offer is complex
"Project finance" in a subject line reads as a broker pitch.
Confidentiality is the product
Edge codenames its projects so investors cannot go around it, so the email has to be specific without naming anything.
The care of a hand-written email, sent to thousands
Edge's partners wrote good emails. The job was to keep that quality while reaching thousands of the right people instead of dozens.
Five audiences, five campaigns
Funded climate-tech CEOs, strategic partners and family-office investors for a confidential raise, and two tax-credit audiences. Each got its own list, its own copy and its own reply handling.
A line for each office, from a dated fact
For the family-office campaign we reviewed 563 offices one by one and wrote an opening line for each from a dated, sourced fact about that office. The kind of research a partner would do by hand, done for every name on the list.
An offer a CEO can say yes to
The ESG campaign did not ask for a meeting about financing. It offered a free financeability check of the CEO's next project, backed by one line of proof: Edge had recently closed $50M of funding for a first-of-a-kind battery and solar project.
Email and LinkedIn together
LinkedIn runs alongside email on a partner's profile. Going back through it, we found 17 old conversations where a prospect had said yes and never heard back, and picked them up again.
A shifted column, found in an audit
The first tax-credit campaign had no positive replies after about 2,500 first emails. When we audited it on 7 October we found a shifted column in the lead import, so some emails went out with the wrong details.
We fixed the data, rewrote the copy and relaunched it as a new campaign two days later. The relaunch has two positive replies so far.
The numbers are early. The replies are the story.
Without names, here is who wrote back in the first two weeks:
- A storage developer about to close a nine-figure government loan asked whether a wrap could improve its equity terms, and sent times for a call.
- A hydrogen developer with a £100M first phase replied, on performance terms.
- One of the largest US offshore vessel operators asked for the technical specs of a confidential project.
- A Gulf industrial group copied its chief business development officer and asked for the deck.
- A Finnish battery company asked for a call and "a brief non-confidential example of a recent similar engagement".
Every yes reaches a partner the same day
Every positive reply goes to Edge's partners the same day with the context they need for the call. Meetings from the first campaigns are being booked and held now.
We will update this page at 60 days with meetings held and any engagement signed.
Four lessons from a small, senior market
- 01
In a small market, research beats volume. One researched line per office is what a partner would write.
- 02
Make the first yes small. A free check is easier to accept than a financing conversation.
- 03
Audit early. A campaign with no positives after a few thousand sends is telling you something about the data, not only the copy.
- 04
Keep confidential things confidential. Specific beats named.
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