Tips for cold emailing for sales from experienced people

[growthbound]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post since reading Unscripted 1 and 2. My question is about cold emailing. I've been cold emailing for a while but started doing it consistently for the past three months. Even though I'm sending over 1000 emails a month to vetted prospects, no serious interests yet. So, from your experience, am I sending too little? How many emails should someone be sending monthly?

I'll also appreciate any tips that you've used with success.

Thanks in advance.

 

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[GPM]

How are you finding these people?

I cold email all the time. I started by building my LinkedIn account and adding tons of relevant people. I then search for someone of a sufficiently high rank (VP, general manager, operations manager, CEO, Director...) and try to get them interested and have them forward my information off to the person in the organization to handles the area that I am interested in.

 

[SEBASTlAN]

I've been using UpLead/LeadGibbon/Apollo with mixed results. I send way more than 1,000 a month so if you can afford it, more can be better if your message is still relevant.

 

[Bekit]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post since reading Unscripted 1 and 2. My question is about cold emailing. I've been cold emailing for a while but started doing it consistently for the past three months. Even though I'm sending over 1000 emails a month to vetted prospects, no serious interests yet. So, from your experience, am I sending too little? How many emails should someone be sending monthly?

I'll also appreciate any tips that you've used with success.

Thanks in advance.

Congrats on taking action.

I'd say before you look into whether you're sending too little, you should look into getting a better response rate.

1,000 emails a month for 3 months is 3,000 emails.

0 responses out of 3,000 is pretty low, even for cold email.

That leads me to believe the problem is in your messaging.

Without seeing your actual message, it's hard to help you troubleshoot whether this is it, but I'd guess that with a more compelling message, you'll see higher response rates.

 

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[growthbound]

How are you finding these people?

I cold email all the time. I started by building my LinkedIn account and adding tons of relevant people. I then search for someone of a sufficiently high rank (VP, general manager, operations manager, CEO, Director...) and try to get them interested and have them forward my information off to the person in the organization to handles the area that I am interested in.

I use LinkedIn too, but use software to find their email address and email them from my business email. Do you communicate with them directly via LinkedIn?

 

[GPM]

I use LinkedIn too, but use software to find their email address and email them from my business email. Do you communicate with them directly via LinkedIn?

I manually figure out their business email and email them. I've never had success emailing straight from LinkedIn. I will however add them as a contact, which in turn finds me more potential people in that industry.

 

[growthbound]

I manually figure out their business email and email them. I've never had success emailing straight from LinkedIn. I will however add them as a contact, which in turn finds me more potential people in that industry.

That's a great tip. Thank you.

 

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[Knowledgeskr]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post since reading Unscripted 1 and 2. My question is about cold emailing. I've been cold emailing for a while but started doing it consistently for the past three months. Even though I'm sending over 1000 emails a month to vetted prospects, no serious interests yet. So, from your experience, am I sending too little? How many emails should someone be sending monthly?

I'll also appreciate any tips that you've used with success.

Thanks in advance.

Are you cold emailing for B2B or B2C?

I have been doing sales for a number of years, mostly B2B. Getting no responses to your emails could be because of 2 things:

1- You are targeting the wrong persona (e.g going after someone in sales with an HR product)
2- Messaging: your messaging need to be less about what the features and benefits of what you or your company do, and more about how it will benefit the customer
(e.g We are the leader of HR solutions and our product improves the quality of candidates and reduces your time to hire...bla bla bla) no body cares about that.

Instead, you want to say (I'm reaching out because I saw you are hiring 10 new sales reps, and we worked with abc company and we helped them hire 7 sales reps in 90 days with 80% candidate to interview or offer rate, would you be open to learn more about that?)

This shows them you know their business and what's important to them and you have social proof that you did something similar.

Hope that helps!

 

[MHP368]

because of 2 things:

Summed it up succinctly.

Growthbound can you give us some examples?

I was at 1 booked demo per 118 (mix of email and linkedin outreach)

Swnding over a thousand with no bites indicates something other then the medium is amiss.

One thing i'll say is that all those automation tools are of limited use. Obviously you have to strike a balance between time expended and results but I think you might be surprised at how much better you'd do crafting completely customized emails.

If the person emailing me can't be bothered why should I bother?

 

[rocket99]

Are you using an email marketing platform like MailCheat(Chimp). If so, what is your open rate? Click through rate? This could tell you if your emails are being sent to spam if you or if your content is just not interesting enough or relevant enough. Are you doing a/b testing with email subject copy? Personalizing the emails with their name or just using a generic greeting? I only hear about quantity in your post and nothing about the quality of your content.

 

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[flowyak]

Let's start with the basics.

If your emails don't reach the other person's inbox, no matter how well-crafted they are. Considering that you have sent about 3000 mass emails, the likelihood that you reach other people's inbox is quite low.

Email providers have algorithms to protect their users and while their working isn't fully disclosed, they can be reverse engineered. When the number of your emails marked as spam is high compared to the total number of emails you send, then you become "spam material".

I guess that happened to you after 100-200 emails as you are too focused on quantity.

For this reason, I hope that you didn't use your own domain. Better use a domain that's closer or (as I do) a simple Gmail address. This way you will know when you are banned and you won't spend hundreds of dollars in domains.

While Gmail adressess look less professional, at least in my experience, they don't impact conversion rates which is the thing that matters.

Stop thinking about quantity. If your emails are automated and undifferentiated (using a tool to change name and company doesn't count as differentiation) you will get the same results with 1,000 or 1,000,000 emails: 0 sales.

Find out what the best approach in your industry, what the "gurus" suggest and then offer more.

For example, in web design, the experts suggest making a video where you show the website's problems and how solving them will benefit the business owner. This clearly shows that you have at least put in the time and, if you are skilled, that you can actually help.

I go beyond that.

First, I start with builwith, a tool that tells me what technology are the business owners using. Then I design and develop a full improved landing page and I show them my work.

The object is usually something along the lines of "I redesigned your website", the email continues with you can check it (link), I have built it using (business owner current technology) and I believe it will help (goal that can interest them). If you are interested, just reply at this email.

In this way:

1. you are showing your expertise
2. you are showing that you truly care. To do the process I described, I need 2-3 hours of solid work.
3. they don't have to imagine a result, they see it and it feels their new website as I usually insert their brand, copy, and images.
4. saying that it's built on their current technology, you remove the fear of the unknown
5. you show the product but also talk their language: you say what they should care from a business perspective.

As you can image, the number of email that I can send this way is low. I share the process with my brother who cofounded with me our design agency and we send in total about 120-150 emails per month.

But we have a 10% reply rate and a 3% conversion rate. 4-5 new customer per month, each one worth 5,000 to 100,000. And most of the time, those people become repeating customers, they share your company, the numbers compound and in less than five years you have a multi-million dollars business in your hands.

 

[growthbound]

Are you cold emailing for B2B or B2C?

I have been doing sales for a number of years, mostly B2B. Getting no responses to your emails could be because of 2 things:

1- You are targeting the wrong persona (e.g going after someone in sales with an HR product)
2- Messaging: your messaging need to be less about what the features and benefits of what you or your company do, and more about how it will benefit the customer
(e.g We are the leader of HR solutions and our product improves the quality of candidates and reduces your time to hire...bla bla bla) no body cares about that.

Instead, you want to say (I'm reaching out because I saw you are hiring 10 new sales reps, and we worked with abc company and we helped them hire 7 sales reps in 90 days with 80% candidate to interview or offer rate, would you be open to learn more about that?)

This shows them you know their business and what's important to them and you have social proof that you did something similar.

Hope that helps!

It does, thanks! I used your tips to tweak my messaging. I'm doing B2B. I'm currently investigating my personas further to see if I missed anything.

 

[growthbound]

Summed it up succinctly.

Growthbound can you give us some examples?

I was at 1 booked demo per 118 (mix of email and linkedin outreach)

Swnding over a thousand with no bites indicates something other then the medium is amiss.

One thing i'll say is that all those automation tools are of limited use. Obviously you have to strike a balance between time expended and results but I think you might be surprised at how much better you'd do crafting completely customized emails.

If the person emailing me can't be bothered why should I bother?

Thanks for the tip. I'm trying to strike a balance with automation. I think my issue is that I'm doing most of the work at the beginning since am bootstrapping, so time is a bit of an issue.

 

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[growthbound]

Are you using an email marketing platform like MailCheat(Chimp). If so, what is your open rate? Click through rate? This could tell you if your emails are being sent to spam if you or if your content is just not interesting enough or relevant enough. Are you doing a/b testing with email subject copy? Personalizing the emails with their name or just using a generic greeting? I only hear about quantity in your post and nothing about the quality of your content.

Content quality has gotten better since implementing some of the suggestions I got from here. My open rate is currently 13 percent and 0 replies, so I'm investigating my persona further as Knowledgeskr advised (also lots of emails bounced or were blocked). I'm using Snov, which is a tool for cold outreach.

 

[growthbound]

Let's start with the basics.

If your emails don't reach the other person's inbox, no matter how well-crafted they are. Considering that you have sent about 3000 mass emails, the likelihood that you reach other people's inbox is quite low.

Email providers have algorithms to protect their users and while their working isn't fully disclosed, they can be reverse engineered. When the number of your emails marked as spam is high compared to the total number of emails you send, then you become "spam material".

I guess that happened to you after 100-200 emails as you are too focused on quantity.

For this reason, I hope that you didn't use your own domain. Better use a domain that's closer or (as I do) a simple Gmail address. This way you will know when you are banned and you won't spend hundreds of dollars in domains.

While Gmail adressess look less professional, at least in my experience, they don't impact conversion rates which is the thing that matters.

Stop thinking about quantity. If your emails are automated and undifferentiated (using a tool to change name and company doesn't count as differentiation) you will get the same results with 1,000 or 1,000,000 emails: 0 sales.

Find out what the best approach in your industry, what the "gurus" suggest and then offer more.

For example, in web design, the experts suggest making a video where you show the website's problems and how solving them will benefit the business owner. This clearly shows that you have at least put in the time and, if you are skilled, that you can actually help.

I go beyond that.

First, I start with builwith, a tool that tells me what technology are the business owners using. Then I design and develop a full improved landing page and I show them my work.

The object is usually something along the lines of "I redesigned your website", the email continues with you can check it (link), I have built it using (business owner current technology) and I believe it will help (goal that can interest them). If you are interested, just reply at this email.

In this way:

1. you are showing your expertise
2. you are showing that you truly care. To do the process I described, I need 2-3 hours of solid work.
3. they don't have to imagine a result, they see it and it feels their new website as I usually insert their brand, copy, and images.
4. saying that it's built on their current technology, you remove the fear of the unknown
5. you show the product but also talk their language: you say what they should care from a business perspective.

As you can image, the number of email that I can send this way is low. I share the process with my brother who cofounded with me our design agency and we send in total about 120-150 emails per month.

But we have a 10% reply rate and a 3% conversion rate. 4-5 new customer per month, each one worth 5,000 to 100,000. And most of the time, those people become repeating customers, they share your company, the numbers compound and in less than five years you have a multi-million dollars business in your hands.

Thanks a lot for sharing. I need to be customizing my emails, but fear of wasting time kept me from doing it. Your experience has motivated me to try it for a month to see how things work out.