Why it works
When you show that you put in effort for someone you don't know, it signals genuine interest rather than automated spamming. This validates the prospect's ego and encourages them to reciprocate the effort.
Example
I spent an hour analyzing your competitors to see where you can win.
An illustration of the mechanism, not a template. Copied verbatim it stops being persuasion and starts being the pattern everyone else is already sending.
Is your sequence pulling this one?
Paste it in and find out which levers are working, which are missing, and which single zero is capping the whole message.