Volume + generic copy scaled fast because it felt like a cheat code. Everyone piled in. Reply rates tanked. The cheat code is now just the default, which means it's not a cheat code anymore, it's just noise.

Prospect research never got crowded because it takes real time. Checking what someone posted last week. Noticing they just hired three engineers or expanded into a new market. Finding the one line that makes the email feel like it was written specifically for that person and not pasted from a sequence template.

Nobody automated that part well enough to flood it. So it stayed open.

Shortcuts get you into a lot of inboxes. Research gets you a reply.

The funny thing is the research part is also the part that's actually gotten easier to automate recently, not the blasting part. Blasting a thousand emails was always easy. Finding the right signal for each person at scale was the bottleneck, and that bottleneck is mostly gone now if you're using the right setup.

The lane is still open. Most people are too busy blasting to notice.