How to Run a Cold Email Campaign Targeting Heads of AI at Sport Fashion Ecommerce Brands (2026)

Quick Answer: You can find, enrich, and cold‑email Heads of AI at sport fashion e‑commerce brands entirely inside Origami. Its built‑in email sequencer lets you launch a multi‑touch campaign without ever leaving the platform. Below I’ll walk you through exactly how to refine your list, write a 3‑email sequence that fits this audience, and send it straight from Origami — all on a single screen.

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If you’ve already built a list of Heads of AI at brands like On, Gymshark, or Alo Yoga (if not, you can follow the parent guide to generate one in under a minute), you’re ready for the part most people fumble: the actual outreach.

I’ve run campaigns into this niche. The inboxes of AI leaders at sport fashion companies are saturated with generic “We can help with AI” pitches. This guide shows you how to break through using a simple 3‑touch sequence, how to launch it inside Origami, and what you can expect back.

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STEP 1 — BUILD THE LIST IN ORIGAMI (Recap, 30 Seconds)

Even if you already have your list, it’s worth knowing that Origami makes the initial build trivially fast. If you need to pull a fresh batch, here’s the exact prompt you type:

“Find Heads of AI, VP of AI, or Director of Machine Learning at sport fashion e‑commerce brands with at least 50 employees and an online store. Include contact details.”

Origami then searches the live web, chains together data sources, and returns:

• Full name and title
• Verified email address (work and sometimes personal)
• Phone number (when available)
• Company name, size, and tech stack hints (e.g., Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud)
• A lead score based on fit

You see all of this in a clean table. The free plan gives you 1,000 enrichment credits — no credit card needed — so you can test the waters before committing.

But here’s the critical part: the list that Origami hands you isn’t the campaign list yet. It’s the raw input. The next step is where most campaigns win or lose.

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STEP 2 — REFINE AND QUALIFY THE LIST

Heads of AI at sport fashion brands aren’t a monolith. A Director of AI at a DTC running backpacks has different priorities than a VP of Data Science at a multi‑brand conglomerate doing real‑time personalization across 12 storefronts. You want to slice the raw list into segments so your messaging lands.

How to review and segment

Inside Origami, after your search completes, you’ll have a list of, say, 120 leads. Before you email a single person:

1. Remove obvious misfits — anyone who’s actually a “Head of IT” but got tagged because they once mentioned AI on their LinkedIn, or agencies posing as brands.
2. Segment by company size — Sales‑led vs. product‑led vs. pure e‑commerce all need different openers. I create three columns:
   • Enterprise (1,000+ employees): Usually focused on infrastructure, production ML pipelines, and scaling personalization across regions.
   • Mid‑market (200‑999 employees): Often wrestling with how to embed AI into the marketing and merchandising workflow without a huge engineering team.
   • Growth‑stage (50‑199 employees): They might be the only AI person, wearing many hats — they want practical wins fast.
3. Segment by role scope — Some are “Head of AI” but report directly to the CPO or CTO; others sit under data engineering. Look at the title and company org (Origami often enriches with some org context). A Head of AI who owns the personalization engine vs. one who mainly builds internal tools needs different messages.
4. Filter by geography — Time zone matters for send times and also for legal cold‑email compliance.

What “qualified” looks like for this audience

A qualified lead for this campaign:

• Holds a title like Head of AI, VP of Artificial Intelligence, Director of Machine Learning, or sometimes VP of Data (if the brand is smaller, they may hold both hats).
• Works at a company with a direct‑to‑consumer e‑commerce operation that sells sports or fashion apparel, footwear, or accessories.
• Their LinkedIn or company blog shows they are actively working on initiatives like product recommendations, demand forecasting, virtual try‑on, or customer lifetime value models — i.e., things you can tie to your solution.

Once you’ve segmented, you can either create separate campaigns for each segment or, if the list is small, use the same base sequence with slightly different angle lines. I’ll show a sequence tailored for growth‑stage to mid‑market, which is the sweet spot for most B2B tools.

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STEP 3 — CREATE THE EMAIL SEQUENCE

Now for the part you actually came for: the messages. In Origami, you have two ways to build the sequence:

1. Paste your own templates — Write your own 3‑touch sequence directly in the editor. Set the delays (I use Day 1, Day 3, Day 7) and launch.
2. Let the AI agent write it for you — Ask Origami’s agent to generate a personalized 3‑day sequence for every lead based on profile data (title, company, industry, tech stack). The agent writes a different message for each recipient, so every email feels custom. This is perfect when you have a medium‑sized list and want to scale personalization without burning hours.

I’ll give you the manual templates you can steal and paste. These are written for a Head of AI at a mid‑market sport fashion brand — someone who likely manages a small team and is evaluated on both technical impact and revenue influence.

The 3‑Touch Sequence (Copy‑Paste Ready)

Touch 1 — The Insight (Send Day 1, Tuesday–Thursday, 8‑10 AM local time)

Subject: $first_company’s next AI lever Preview text: Something I’m seeing across sport fashion

Hi $first_name,

I’ve been studying how sport fashion brands are using AI to increase average order value — most are stuck on basic “you may also like” recs.

One approach that’s working across the board is dynamic bundling based on real‑time browsing signals and past purchase data.

We’re helping a few brands build this without replacing their existing stack. Would it be worth a 15‑minute call to show you how it plugs in?

Why this works: It’s not about “AI” in the abstract; it names a specific tactic that AI leaders are measured on — AOV lift. The short length respects their time.

Touch 2 — The Proof (Send Day 3, same time window)

Subject: How we lifted AOV 18% for a similar brand Preview text: & it took 2 weeks to integrate

Hi $first_name,

Quick follow‑up — I mentioned dynamic bundling last week. Since then, I remembered a recent example: we helped a $100M+ sport apparel brand move from static bundles to dynamic combos powered by their existing customer data.

They saw an 18% lift in AOV within the first month, and the ML model was live in 2 weeks because it sat on top of their CDP.

No obligation — but I’d be happy to walk you through the architecture. Worth a look?

Why this works: It addresses the two biggest fears: time to implement and disruption. By anchoring to “2 weeks” and “on top of CDP”, you’re pre‑empting the “we’re too busy to rip out our stack” objection.

Touch 3 — The Breakup (Send Day 7, same window)

Subject: Closing the loop, $first_name Preview text: Final thought on personalization

Hi $first_name,

I know you’re swamped — Heads of AI at sport fashion brands rarely have a quiet inbox. So I’ll keep this short.

I truly think the bundling angle could move the needle for $first_company without a heavy lift. If now isn’t the right time, no worries at all. If you change your mind, my calendar is open.

Good luck with the rest of Q3.

Why this works: It’s not needy. It reiterates the value prop and exits gracefully, leaving a positive impression. If they reply now or later, the sequence automatically stops.

Each message is between 50 and 100 words. You can obviously tweak the exact AOV stat or the integration details to match your product. The key is the structure: a specific, credible opener, a social‑proof follow‑up, and a clean breakup.

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STEP 4 — SEND THE SEQUENCE DIRECTLY FROM ORIGAMI

This is where Origami earns its keep. You don’t export a CSV, you don’t upload into a separate cold‑email tool, you don’t mess with SMTP settings. The email sequencer is built in.

Once your templates (or the AI‑generated messages) are set, you do three things:

1. Set delays — Day 1, Day 3, Day 7 (or whatever cadence you want). You can add more touches later.
2. Review the per‑lead message previews — Origami shows you exactly how each message will look when it’s sent.
3. Hit “Launch.”

What happens after you send

• Sending & tracking — Opens, clicks, and replies all appear in the same dashboard where you built the list. You can see at a glance which segment is performing best.
• Prospect context stays with you — When you click on a contact’s activity, you still see their enriched profile (title, company size, tech tools). So when a Head of AI from Gymshark replies, you immediately see that their site runs on Shopify Plus and they use Segment — no digging through separate tools.
• Automatic un‑enrollment — If someone replies (even “not interested”), they exit the sequence instantly. You’ll never send a breakup email two days after they’ve already booked a call. This is table stakes, but many sequencers miss it.
• One platform, end‑to‑end — You found the leads, enriched them, built the sequence, sent the emails, and now you’re tracking opens and replies — without a single export or Zap. That’s the big unlock.

What about credits and costs?

On all paid plans (starting at $29/month), the email sequencer itself is free to use — you only pay for the enrichment credits you used to build and qualify the list. Once the list is enriched, you can send unlimited sequences to those contacts at no extra cost. This flips the typical model where you pay per email sent.

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Results to Expect and How to Iterate

For a tightly segmented list of ~100 Heads of AI at sport fashion brands, here’s what I’ve seen (your mileage will vary, obviously):

• Open rates: 45‑60% if you followed a good sender setup (custom domain, proper warm‑up).
• Reply rates: 3‑5% on the first campaign isn’t unusual. With strong personalization (using Origami’s AI agent), 6‑8% is achievable.

Remember, a low reply rate doesn’t automatically mean your list is bad. I iterate in this order:

1. Messaging first — If after 100 emails you get below 3% replies, test a different angle. Instead of bundling, try subject lines about inventory forecasting or reducing return rates (both are painful for sport fashion AI heads). Keep the same list; change the copy.
2. List second — If you’re confident the messaging resonates with the market but replies are still cold, re‑examine your list. Are you accidentally emailing Heads of AI who are purely R&D and don’t own any product roll‑out? Are you targeting brands that have already built the thing you’re offering?

Every campaign teaches you something. Origami makes it easy to spin up a new segment and test different sequences in parallel — you can run 3 campaigns with different subject lines and see which wins without leaving the dashboard.

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Next steps

If you haven’t yet built your list of Heads of AI at sport fashion e‑commerce brands, start there: how to build that list in Origami.

Once the list is ready, the email sequencer inside Origami is waiting. Find, enrich, sequence, send — all from one screen. No export, no separate tool, no headaches.