Solar Outbound That Opens With Their Roof
There is one cold email opener in commercial solar that nothing else touches: an aerial image of the prospect's own facility, with the usable roof area outlined and an estimated system size written across it. A facility owner can ignore a paragraph about energy savings; they cannot ignore a picture of their own building annotated with "~38,000 sq ft usable — roughly a 480 kW array." The email stops being marketing and becomes a site survey someone apparently already did for them.
The problem has never been the idea — it's doing it five hundred times without a designer in the loop. That's the specific thing Lemlist was built for: personalized images that merge per-prospect visuals and dynamic text at send time, liquid variables that carry facility-specific numbers through the copy, and per-prospect landing pages that host the full savings model behind the image. ColdRelay is the infrastructure underneath — the secondary domains, mailboxes, and dedicated IPs that Lemlist actually sends from. This guide covers how solar teams wire the two together into a facility-visual outreach machine, where every email looks hand-built and none of them are.
Why Run Lemlist on ColdRelay Infrastructure
Lemlist's distinctive feature set — personalized images with dynamic text layers, liquid syntax for conditional per-prospect copy, individual landing pages per lead, and multichannel sequences with LinkedIn steps — is exactly the toolkit a facility-visual motion needs. What Lemlist doesn't do is mint the sending infrastructure. Campaigns send from whatever email accounts you connect, and the reputation of those accounts is the infrastructure layer's job, not Lemlist's.
That's where ColdRelay fits. You provision dedicated mailboxes on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pre-configured, ready in about an hour, with no warmup waiting period before sending. Warmup runs continuously as part of each mailbox's 4 sends/day budget (2 outbound + 2 warmup), so the pool you stand up in the morning is sending annotated roof images that afternoon.
The two layers are complementary, not competing: ColdRelay is the infrastructure, Lemlist is the personalization and sending engine on top. And the pairing matters more for image-led outreach than for plain text, because the unit economics are different. Every facility-visual email carries real prep cost — someone pulled the aerial, traced the roof, estimated the array. At 95%+ inbox placement, that work reaches the facility owner it was built for. On commodity shared infrastructure, you're hand-annotating roofs for the spam folder.
Visit Lemlist →Building the Facility-Visual Pipeline in Lemlist
Provision a quality-sized pool on ColdRelay
Facility-visual outreach is a depth motion — every prospect costs prep time, so the list is curated and the pool stays lean. Most solar teams run 20-50 mailboxes on one secondary domain, kept separate from the domain used for proposals and interconnection paperwork. ColdRelay supports 100-150 mailboxes per domain, so there's headroom if the motion scales. Everything provisions on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs in about an hour, with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC already configured.
Connect the mailboxes in Lemlist and leave lemwarm off
In Lemlist, add each ColdRelay mailbox under Settings → Email accounts via SMTP/IMAP using the credentials exported from the ColdRelay dashboard, and set each account's daily sending limit to 2 outbound emails per day — matching ColdRelay's per-mailbox budget of 4 sends/day total, 2 outbound + 2 warmup. Lemlist offers lemwarm as its own warmup service; skip it for these accounts. ColdRelay runs warmup continuously as part of that 4/day budget, and layering lemwarm on top would double-warm the mailboxes and eat a fixed allowance.
Prepare the aerial assets and build the personalized image template
For each facility on the list, capture an aerial screenshot and mark the usable roof area — a polygon overlay and a square-footage estimate is enough; this is a 2-3 minute job per facility once the workflow is rehearsed. Upload each annotated aerial as a per-prospect custom image, then build a Lemlist personalized image template that layers dynamic text over it: company name, usable square footage, and estimated system size pulled from your lead file. At send time, Lemlist merges each prospect's image and numbers automatically — five hundred unique roof graphics from one template.
Carry the assumptions with liquid variables and host the model on a landing page
Use Lemlist's liquid syntax to merge each facility's specific assumptions into the copy — utility rate, roof square footage, estimated annual production — and to handle gaps gracefully: a liquid conditional swaps in a softer line like "based on buildings your size in the area" when a data point is missing, instead of sending a blank. Then attach a Lemlist landing page to the campaign so each prospect gets their own page hosting the fuller savings model — the annotated aerial again, the year-by-year payback math, and a booking link. The email shows the roof; the page shows the money.
Add LinkedIn steps and launch with campaign reports tracking the visual
Build the sequence multichannel: two image-led emails, then Lemlist's LinkedIn steps — a profile visit and a connection request — for prospects who clicked through to their landing page. The connect lands differently when the prospect has already seen their own roof in your email; you're not a stranger, you're "the company that mapped our building." Launch, then use Lemlist's campaign reports to track landing page clicks alongside replies — for this motion, a click on the savings model is the leading indicator a reply is coming.
The Facility-Visual Playbook for Lemlist
Lead with the roof, not the pitch
The annotated aerial is the entire first email. Subject line names the building, the image shows their roof with the usable area highlighted and the estimated array size, and the copy is three sentences that read like a surveyor's note: what you measured, what it would hold, what that typically offsets. No company boilerplate, no "hope this finds you well." Lemlist's personalized image template does the production at scale, but the discipline is editorial — the moment the email reads like marketing wrapped around a graphic, the graphic stops working.
Show your math in the variables
A savings claim with no visible inputs is an ad; the same claim with its assumptions stated is an analysis. Use liquid variables to put the actual numbers in the sentence — "at your utility's current commercial rate, a roof your size typically supports a system in the 400-500 kW range" — so the prospect can audit the reasoning. Build liquid conditionals as honest fallbacks: when you couldn't verify a facility's rate schedule, the copy should say "based on typical commercial rates in your area," not fake precision. Facility owners forward emails that show work; they delete emails that make claims.
Make the landing page the deal room, not a brochure
The email's only CTA is "see the full model for your building" — and the Lemlist landing page each prospect gets has to pay that off. Put the annotated aerial at the top, the year-by-year savings and payback table under it, the assumptions listed plainly, and one booking link for a 20-minute walkthrough of the numbers. Because the page is per-prospect, a CFO can forward the URL to ownership and the model still says their building, their rate, their roof. That forwardability is the quiet advantage: the landing page sells in meetings you were never invited to.
Sequence the LinkedIn touch after the image, never before
Order matters in a visual motion. A cold LinkedIn connect from a solar company is wallpaper; the same connect three days after someone opened an email containing their own roof is a recognition event. Use Lemlist's multichannel steps to schedule a profile visit, then the connection request, only after the image email has been delivered — and gate the LinkedIn branch on engagement, prioritizing prospects who clicked their landing page. Your acceptance rate becomes a second read on which facilities the visual actually landed with, and the accepted connections are warm enough to carry the assessment ask.
Typical Facility-Visual Benchmarks (Lemlist + ColdRelay)
| Metric | Benchmark | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox placement rate | 95%+ | Dedicated IPs and isolated tenants outperform shared Google/Microsoft pools |
| Reply rate with annotated-roof openers | 5-9% | Facility-specific imagery sits well above text-only solar outreach; generic stock-photo emails fall back to 1-2% |
| Landing page click-through per send | 8-15% | "See the full model for your building" outpulls any text CTA; clicks are the leading indicator of replies |
| Image prep time per facility | 2-3 min | Aerial capture plus roof-area overlay, once the workflow is templated; Lemlist merges text layers automatically at send |
| Outbound capacity per mailbox | 2/day | 4 sends/day total per mailbox — 2 outbound + 2 warmup |
What It Costs: Lemlist + ColdRelay
You pay per mailbox per month for the infrastructure, with volume tiers that drop as you scale (see the table below). DNS, dedicated IPs, and isolated Azure tenants are included. Facility-visual motions run lean, curated pools, so the infrastructure line stays modest.
Lemlist is billed separately on its own subscription for personalized images, liquid variables, landing pages, multichannel sequences, and campaign reports — priced per its current plans, typically per seat.
Infrastructure cost scales with mailbox count; Lemlist's cost scales with seats. They stack cleanly — one bill for sending capacity, one for the personalization engine. Because the visual does the convincing, this motion books assessments from a smaller pool than any volume play, which keeps the combined spend low relative to the pipeline it produces.
| Mailboxes | ColdRelay price / mailbox / month |
|---|---|
| 1–199 | $1.00 |
| 200–999 | $0.85 |
| 1,000–4,999 | $0.70 |
| 5,000+ | $0.55 |
Each mailbox sends 4 emails per day — 2 outbound to prospects + 2 warmup. ColdRelay provisions mailboxes on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs; Lemlist handles the sending, sequencing, and inbox rotation on top.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ColdRelay replace Lemlist?
No — they're complementary layers doing different jobs. Lemlist handles the personalization and sending: personalized images, liquid variables, per-prospect landing pages, multichannel sequences with LinkedIn steps, and campaign reports. ColdRelay provides the underlying domains, mailboxes, and dedicated IPs that Lemlist sends from. You connect ColdRelay mailboxes in Lemlist via SMTP/IMAP and run both together.
Where do the aerial roof images come from, and is the prep effort worth it?
Standard mapping imagery is enough — capture an aerial of each facility, overlay the usable roof area, and note the square footage; with a rehearsed workflow it's 2-3 minutes per building. Lemlist's personalized image template then layers the dynamic text (company name, square footage, estimated system size) automatically at send time, so the manual work is the aerial markup, not the graphic design. On a curated list of a few hundred facilities, that prep typically pays for itself several times over in reply rate versus text-only outreach — their own roof is the one image a facility owner cannot scroll past.
Should we use lemwarm with ColdRelay mailboxes?
No — leave lemwarm off for ColdRelay accounts. Each ColdRelay mailbox already runs continuous warmup as 2 of its 4 sends/day, with the other 2 reserved for your outbound. Running lemwarm on top would double-warm the accounts and spend part of a fixed budget on redundant warmup traffic. Point Lemlist at outbound sending only, cap each account at 2 emails per day, and let ColdRelay handle reputation maintenance.
How many mailboxes does a facility-visual campaign need?
Fewer than you'd think — this is a depth motion, not a blast. At 2 outbound sends/day per mailbox (4/day total with 2 warmup sends), 25 mailboxes gives 50 sends/day, which works a curated 500-facility list through a multi-step image sequence in a few weeks — roughly the pace your aerial prep can sustain anyway. ColdRelay supports 100-150 mailboxes per domain, and new mailboxes provision in about an hour with no warmup waiting period, so scaling up for a second market is a same-day decision.