Cold Email for Freight Brokers and 3PLs
We run cold email for freight brokers and 3PLs, and only the email. Your brokers stay on the phone, which is where they’re good. We give them a reason to be calling.
We set up sending domains and mailboxes in your name, separate from the domain your carriers and customers use. We build the list every day from shippers that just opened a DC, hired a logistics manager, pushed into a new region, won a retail account, or went into bid season. And we write each email about that specific thing, under your broker’s name. Route, a logistics company, got 117 opportunities in one month this way. Pricing starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. This page is about who reads the email, why brokerage email is usually bad, what a sequence says, and how the setup works.
Who reads it, and what they’ve already deleted today
A logistics manager at a manufacturer or a distributor. A transportation manager at a retailer. A supply chain lead at a brand that just started shipping to Target. They read email on a phone, on the dock or in a truck yard, and they get more of it from brokers than from anyone else.
Here’s what they’ve already deleted today. “Reliable capacity at competitive rates.” “Your trusted partner in logistics.” “Just checking in to see if you have any freight moving.” Ten of those a week, from ten brokerages, all working the same purchased list. The logistics manager can spot one in the first four words and does.
What he reads is an email about his freight. “Outbound lanes from the Reno DC” gets opened by the guy who just signed the Reno lease, because it’s the thing he’s been building a spreadsheet for. It doesn’t mention capacity or rates until the second sentence, and it doesn’t call him a partner.
Why brokerage email is worse than almost any other industry’s
Freight is a phone business, and the email culture shows it. Most brokerages treat email as a thing you do after the call: a rate confirmation, a carrier packet, a “per our conversation.” So when a brokerage decides to prospect by email, it uses the tools and habits it has, and those are wrong for cold outreach in three specific ways.
It goes out from the main domain. The same domain that sends rate cons to carriers, tracking updates to customers, and invoices. One purchased list and a bad week of complaints, and that domain’s reputation drops, and now the rate cons start landing in spam too. Prospecting has to run on separate domains, in your name, that never touch a carrier.
It goes out through the TMS or the CRM, in a template with the logo, the MC number, and a link to the load board. That’s marketing email to a filter, and it lands next to the newsletters.
It goes out at volume, because volume is how the phone side works. Eighty dials a day per rep is normal. Eighty emails a day per mailbox is how you get throttled at Gmail by Thursday.
The fix is the same in every trade, and it’s the opposite of how a brokerage usually operates. Low volume, plain text, from a named broker, on domains you own, to shippers where something just happened.
What the sequence says
Three emails over 12 business days, all about one signal. This one’s a mid-size manufacturer heading into its annual freight bid, six weeks out. This is also the template people search for, so here it is in full.
Email 1, day 1.
Subject: The Q4 freight bid
Hi Tom,
Saw the transportation analyst posting go up, which usually means the annual bid is coming. If the RFP for next year’s lanes goes out in the next couple of months, we’d like to be on the list, and we can put indicative rates on your top ten lanes now so you’ve got a benchmark before the incumbents send theirs.
We run dedicated capacity on the I-80 and I-5 corridors for two manufacturers your size, both through their last two bids.
Is the bid list still open, or has it gone out?
Marcus
Email 2, day 5, as a reply to email 1.
One thing from the last two bids worth passing on: both shippers found their incumbent’s rates on the top three lanes were 8 to 12 percent over market, because nobody had benchmarked them in two cycles. Happy to send the benchmark on your top lanes either way.
Email 3, day 12, as a reply to the thread.
Tom, should I close this out, or check back when the RFP goes out? If you tell me the month, I’ll set the reminder.
Marcus
Each one’s under 100 words. The subject line is about his bid. The first email asks to be on the list, which is a question a logistics manager has to answer, and offers a benchmark, which is a thing he wants. The second says something useful about bids whether or not he replies. The third asks for the month, and a lot of bid invitations come from exactly that, two months later.
The five signals, and how the email opens
The list gets rebuilt every day from these, and the first line comes from whichever one fired.
A new warehouse, DC, or plant. “Saw the lease on the Reno distribution center.” Then rates on the outbound lanes before the building ships.
A logistics, transportation, or supply chain manager hired. “Congratulations on the logistics role.” Then a lane review, which he was about to run anyway.
Expansion into a new region or channel. “Saw the Southeast expansion announcement.” Then a question about who’s covering the new lanes.
A product launch or a retail account win. “Saw the Target listing go up.” Then a question about whether the current capacity was set up for Target’s delivery windows.
Bid season. That’s the sequence above.
How the sending is set up
Three to six domains that look like yours, registered in your name, two to four mailboxes each. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on all of them from day one. Nothing goes out from the domain your rate cons and carrier packets go out on.
Two to three weeks of warmup before anything real goes out. Twenty to forty emails a day per mailbox, and it stays there. If a broker wants to send eighty, he can dial eighty.
The sender is a named broker. A logistics manager replies to a person who’ll answer the phone at 6am when a truck doesn’t show.
Plain text. No logo, no MC number in a signature block, no link to a load board, no attachment. Unsubscribe by reply, honored the same day.
Replies go to the broker’s real inbox the same day with the shipper and the signal attached. You see every reply, including the ones that say no.
When you leave, the domains and mailboxes are transferred to you with the logins.
How it runs
Week one we register the domains, set up the mailboxes, agree with you which modes, lanes, regions, and minimum freight spend, and turn on the five signals.
Weeks one to three the mailboxes warm. First real sends go out in week two.
From week three, replies land in your broker’s inbox with the shipper attached. Your brokers pick up the phone.
Every morning we look at yesterday’s quote requests and bid invitations against the target. If we hit it, we send more. If we missed it, it’s one of four things: wrong shippers, not enough of them, the email was off, or it didn’t land. We find which, fix it, and that’s what goes out today. You can follow it in the log.
What it costs
Starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. No setup fee, no minimum term.
That covers domains, mailboxes, warmup, the list, the signals, the copy, sending, replies, and the daily log.
It doesn’t cover calling or LinkedIn. If you want those run by our team, that’s the outbound program, linked below. Most brokerages have the phones covered and take the email from us.
Results
Route is a logistics company, and the case study has the detail on how the 117 were counted.
Book a 15-minute fit call
Tell us your modes, your lanes, and who'd be sending. We'll tell you whether we'd take the account, what email 1 would say for your lanes, and, if it shouldn't be us, who to call instead.
Other ways we work with Freight Brokers and 3PLs
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if you want the qualification line, the quote request count, and the daily reply log, not just the email.
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if you want email plus LinkedIn and calling with our team on the phones.
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if you want to retarget the same shipper list with paid social.
Cold Email for other industries
Questions people ask us
Freight is a phone business. Why would email work?
Because the email is what makes the phone work. A broker who calls a shipper cold gets “we’re all set.” A broker who calls a shipper two days after an email about his new DC gets “oh yeah, the Reno thing, what have you got.” Route’s 117 opportunities came from exactly that: email about what changed, phone to follow up.
Can we send from our main domain? Our brokers already email shippers all day.
No, and that’s the one thing we’ll push on. Your main domain carries rate confirmations, carrier packets, and invoices. One purchased list and a bad week of complaints and those start landing in spam. Prospecting runs on separate domains in your name that never touch a carrier.
Do you write the emails or do we?
We write them from the signals, and you approve the first set before anything goes out. The one above is the shape. After that, changes go through the daily log. Your brokers’ job is answering the replies and picking up the phone.
Can you send under each broker’s name for their own lanes?
Yes, and that’s the standard setup. A shipper on I-80 gets an email from the broker who runs I-80, and the reply comes back to him. The log breaks out by broker so you can see who’s producing.
How many emails go out?
A few hundred a week across your lanes. The list is shippers where something changed this month, not every transportation manager in a database, so the volume is low and the replies are quote requests. If a broker wants more volume, that’s what the phone is for.
Do you email carriers?
No. Shippers only. Carriers reply to broker emails looking for loads, and we filter them out before they reach your brokers.