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My emails have brought my clients over $6 million in revenue.
Writing a cold email can be a daunting task, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the process. However, when done right, cold email can be an effective way to generate new leads and build relationships with potential customers, partners, investors, donors, and more.
In this article, I’ll outline the exact process my agency, Yellow Tree Marketing, uses to book sales calls or appointments with highly qualified prospects without spending money on ads or relying on referrals.
Related: 6-Step Plan to Convert Leads to Sales
1. Well researched niche
Choosing which niche you want to target is the start of the journey. The riches are in the niches. The smaller your TAM (Total Addressable Market), the more competitive it is to get people in that market to pay attention to you.
Our rule of thumb is that if your TAM is under 5,000 (e.g. 5,000 restaurant owners in Michigan), your emails will require far more personalization and lower send volume than a TAM of 30,000. You don’t want to burn through your market in 3 days! Some examples of highly interesting markets are apparel and fashion, cosmetics and consumer goods.
Also see: The step-by-step guide to finding your niche and target market
2. Straightforward offer
This is the most important part! Your offer has to be so good that people feel stupid for saying no. In Alex Hormozi’s $100M bid, Alex says, “Having a Grand Slam bid makes it almost impossible to lose.”
Examples of what is not an offer:
- Facebook Ads
- SEO
- PR
- wealth management
Examples of an uncomplicated offer:
- 4x return on ad spend in 29 days without you having to create any creatives, or we’ll refund our service fee + ad spend
- 15 booked calls with your ideally qualified customers in 30 days without your intervention or money-back guarantee.
Related: 3 Cold Email Strategies With High Response Rates
3. Case Study
Case studies are very popular in prospecting. Your case study should be concise and no longer than one page.
If you don’t have a case study, the easiest way to create one is to go to Facebook groups, pick a niche (e.g. electricians in London) and post about offering your service for free for a set period of time because You are trying to diversify your case study portfolio. You will get tons of answers.
Case studies can also be simple one-liners like, “We received our client Green Banana 6’s press releases in 30 days.”
4. Simple funnel
Each niche requires its own personalized landing page that further explains your no-fuss offering. The landing page should include an explainer video and enough social proof that your prospect has no choice but to say yes.
Elements your landing page should have: hook, intro, case study, old way > new way and CTA (Call To Action).
Your call to action must be very concise. I don’t like using CTAs with action verbs that require more work from prospects, e.g. B. fill out a form. Your CTA action verbs should always get your prospects to do less work, e.g. B. Request a Quote.
5. Tech Setup
Your outbound email prospecting system should be fully automated.
You should never send bulk cold email from your primary domain; ours is yellowtree.co. If your main domain gets blacklisted, you will face significant problems. Instead, you should purchase multiple domains with suffixes like pro, hq, go, etc. One of our alternative domains is yellowtreelabs.co.
You need to take the time to set up DNS (Domain Name Servers) settings correctly, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) for each of them the purchased domains. To do this, contact your email provider.
Each newly purchased domain requires at least a 21-day warm-up period during which each mailbox is warmed up by sending/receiving emails. On Day 22, you can send a maximum of 50 emails per mailbox per day with 5 minute intervals between each send.
6. Persuasive text
The subject line of the email accounts for 60% of the open rate. When writing subject lines, avoid being promotional or generic, e.g. B. “Hey Derek, want more leads?” Instead, you should write as if you know the prospect personally, e.g. B. “Derek, congratulations on the new round of funding!”
The first line of the email contributes 40% to the open rate. You should definitely not sell anything here. Instead, write as if you know the person: “Derek, I just checked your LinkedIn profile and saw that you recently got a promotion at Green Banana.”
Next, add a one-line description of a case study with a client you’ve recently worked with in the same industry, z months, and we’d love to help you do the same.”
Never ask for a meeting in the first email! That would deter them because their commitment is very low. They should have a soft CTA like “Interested?” or “Worth a quick chat?”
Related: How to Create a Compelling Call-to-Action
A recent example of a high-quality cold email
“Hey Peter, I loved your talk on the My First Billion podcast! Dear Lakers fan here haha.
I wanted to ask about Green Banana – do you use in-app guides to improve product adoption?
I ask because our tool at Yellow Tree recently helped a similar CRM software company increase product adoption, which reduced annual churn by 4%.
Would you like to find out more?
PS – if you try our solution, it could mean that the Lakers will retire Russel Westbrook this season.”