The hack
Build a list of qualified leads and send them cold email.
Why it works
Everyone checks their email.
Slack might have taken over some internal communication in companies. But everything else from forgotten passwords to conference invites still goes through email.
Yes, there are new apps like Hey or Superhuman that try to block cold email and spam. But don’t worry, Gmail has been trying to do this for the last 20 years, and it’s still an unsolved problem. Email is here to stay in its flawed way of existence — remaining one of the best channels to sell through.
The best part about cold email is that you can get in front of anyone in the world.
Now famous Harry Stebbings cold emailed CEO of Salesforce and got him as a guest on his podcast. It took 53 emails, but he got there eventually.
If you are worth connecting and have a killer offer, you’ll get a reply. Think about it this way. Would you answer a cold email from Tim Cook asking you to come work at Apple?
How to do it
There are two pillars of a successful cold email outreach:
- Write to the right people
- Have a killer offer
Building a lead list
The goal of building your first lead list is getting the people who are most likely to convert first. Don’t try to over-optimize or make your list complete.
The goal is not to email everyone in the world who could want what you’re selling. The goal is to email a hundred people who are ready to buy now.
You can think of this using Roger’s innovation adoption curve. The audience you want are the innovators and early adopters. The early majority and late majority are also potential customers but are much less likely to buy right now.
Imagine you’re selling an analytics tool for YouTubers. The innovators are somewhat established creators who can have around 10k subscribers. They are still checking all emails themselves and have money to spend.
Mr. Beats would be a laggard in this example. Not because he is, but because you can’t get to him easily. Your email would either get lost in the volume of cold outreach his company gets, or the assistant checking the emails wouldn’t pass it forward.
The manual sourcing method
Don’t over-optimize for scale when getting started. Taking a shortcut and buying Apollo or another lead tool just because it is “scalable” is a bad approach. It will get you a lead list in seconds, but won’t perform as well as a custom-build manual list.
Just building the list and personalizing the offer for each lead will teach you a lot about your potential customers.
Start with → Reach out to your network. Once you’ve covered that go into the 2nd easiest audience you can think of. Building for indie makers →Email people who commented on launches on Product Hunt. Building for PMs → Find people in Slack communities. Building for YouTubers, use the example above.
Target people who are relevant, but don’t get much cold email. Nail this mix and you can get response rates of 30% and more.
Writing copy
Start by reading the Cold Email Copywriting Framework from Instantly. It’s one of the best resources on cold email out there and covers all the basic rules and best practices.
Once you read it, come back here. It’s time to see what rules you can break.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” - Pablo Picasso
The problem with the “good sales email”
Here is what the average good sales email usually looks like. It’s not bad, and it will work for some people, but it won’t make people stop their morning email sweep and immediately start typing a response.
Marketers are getting better with their cold emails, so we need to stand out.
The email should have such a no-brainer offer that people should feel stupid not replying to it. Here are some of the unfair hacks that you can use.
Offer compensation
This is a hack from Jason Cohen of Smartbear. He bluntly offered money in return for a response and time for a meeting. It’s from this wonderful talk that’s more than ten years old. I have received thousands of cold emails, but don’t remember the last one that would offer compensation.
The best part about it — people almost never asked him to actually pay them. They did the call for free.
The one-liner
One of the most anti-patter cold emails I have seen is the one-liner method.
Targeting a mom-and-pop shop with this isn’t a good idea, but busy execs writing SMS-like emails — perfect.
Don’t ask for a call
A bold alternative to try is not asking for a call or reply. Just pitch your product and let them have a look themselves. If you have a smooth self-serve onboarding experience you can give this a try.
Mention your LinkedIn
Once you → Make a killer LinkedIn profile you can add it to your email and instantly be more trustworthy. It can be as simple as adding “My name is Jenda (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jantovarys/)” to the top of your email or in the PS.
It’s bold, but if you’re worth connecting, it can boost your reply rate significantly, because suddenly you’re not a faceless cold spammer anymore.
Golden Rule: Create a slippery slope
Sam Parr’s rule for copywriting is that the goal of a sentence is to make you read the next one.
It’s a great rule, that you can apply to any cold email, whatever the approach you choose. It forces you to look at each sentence individually and decide whether it’s strong enough. Use it to review your drafts.
Overrated approaches
There are some ways that have been used too many times and people just don’t believe them anymore. The classic one is adding “sent from iPhone”.
Here are some others I don’t recommend:
- Research angle → Might work in specific niches, but overall it’s the opposite of giving. You’re just taking time from someone, with nothing good in return.
- Trying to be funny → Being funny in an email vs. in real life are completely different things. Pulling this off is incredibly hard and most people are better off not trying.
- Acknowledging that it is a sales email → If your first line is: “this is a sales email”, I’ll just archive it and mark it as spam. The first line needs to make me read the second one. This might be an honest line, but also incredibly lazy.
- Including memes and gifs → First, many email clients don’t play gifs. Second, it’s not 2010 anymore.
Follow up strategy
- Initial Cold Email
- Quick Bump (2 days later)
- Value (2 days later)
- Break-up / Something funny (3 days later)
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