What does IH think about cold emailing to gain early customers?

Here are a few learnings I had on cold emails:

1. People are not dumb, they realise when an email has been sent to many people and the first reaction (even before reading the content of the email) is to ignore it.

2. Delivering value is the first priority (but not only) : You have to think deeply of how your product / service is generating value to the customer you have in mind. People overestimate their value proposition most of the time or underestimate the obstacles that a business has to adopt your product / service.

3. ... It is mostly about how you communicate it: Keep it simple. Do not write a long email. Just a few lines suffice.

For Manypixels we just send a quick email, link to some case studies or blog articles with social proof and value ingrained in it (example of a case study could be: "How Uber hired us to manage their infographics and grew their followers by 2000 on Instagram")

Explain clearly your value proposition in 3-4 key points until it becomes a no brainer for them to hire you.

Here is how we do cold emailing rather successfully at Manypixels:

1. We build list of highly targeted customers and try to know which needs they may have and craft personalised messages for each of these lists.
2. We send one first email that is quite general to those segmented lists.
3. We send a second email three days after that goes along the line of "Hey xxx, I emailed you a few days ago about us. Seems you are not interested in it, too bad I won't be emailing you anymore" --> We get most of the responses from that email.

I think the best way to approach "cold emails" is to not sell anything. Your goal should be feedback.

I would find people who have some expertise in whatever field you are entering, and honestly ask them about their opinion of your idea/product. Something like "I've recently built a new product. I saw that you've done blank. What do you think about my solution? We would love to hear your feedback."

Most people still will not reply, but this approach does not feel like spam. It's more about building a relationship (although virtual) with someone you respect.

I think the reality is that in the beginning, when you are trying to figure out distribution, cold email is one of the most direct ways to get your product onto the radar of a potential customer.

My product (www.tribefive.me for reference) is B2C so this may be different, but on cold emails I've been sending, I go ahead and call out that it's a cold email to get that awkwardness out of the way. I also close out the email to let the person know if they aren't interested to just let me know so that I make sure not to bother them anymore.

So far, I've been getting ~30% response rate from both people who are interested and people who say "thanks but no thanks".

Good luck with your cold emails!

Cheers,
Jonathan

It's possible, but keep the following things in mind, before you send the email:

First of all, nobody cares about you, your product, or your business - really, they don't... not yet, anyway.

There is such thing as cold email fatigue. Every business is bombarded with irrelevant emails, daily. They are a source of frustration, so yours has to be relevant, and more than that - add value to them somehow.

You have to grip them in the subject line, because the default is to select and delete, without even opening.

Research the person a little. Check their tweets, blog posts and website. It's slower this way, but you'll be wasting your time, and if you manage to annoy someone with your email, it limits the chance to make it up at another stage.

I think it’s helpful to make sure both your recipient list and description of the value you provide are targeted. When receiving cold email, I'm usually annoyed if it’s clear that I was put on a general list, for a not very relevant email, and that the sender has made no effort to communicate the value of the offering for me individually.

ending cold email is legal and actually, it is not SPAM. You can send emails to business people that you do not know. And those send meils to one who is his nich or business is related to your ads, if not, i think it can not be so persuissive that get an email that you have not asked for and maybe you think that it is scam.

In my opinion cold (PERSONALIZED) e-mails are nothing wrong. Actually for me this is in many cases best way to start a niche B2B project.

I'm using Lemlist for this right now and it's really nice. ;)

Thanks @philipalexander for asking this question! It's super timely for me as I am currently working on a cold-email campaign for https://raaft.io

I have conflicting feelings about cold email. I can smell it a mile away and I recognize all the techniques used. On the other hand, I really do see it as one of the more powerful non-scalable ways we have to reach our target market early on.

The way I see it, even if I don't get replies, I at least have exposed some decision-makers to Raaft and what we do. Hopefully, down the line when they see the name again, they'll have some memory of what we do.

I think there are (at least) two ways to approach the text of these email and they have to do with what your goals are. Are you seeking to sell or are you seeking to hear from your target market?

Ultimately, we're always interested in selling our product, but early-on in a product lifecycle feedback/advice/research may be more valuable than a sale.

This is the approach I will be going with. I hope the fact that I'm not pushing for a sale will result in prospects being more interested in having a conversation.

What do you think?

Cold emails are fine as long as you don't email them every day with marketing emails. One is enough to let them know what you are offering.

For early stage startups, cold emailing is one of the fastest ways to get early customers. This is because other customer acquisition methods like SEO, Content Marketing, PR, etc. can require months to get results, whereas cold emails can take seconds (if you write really good cold emails!).

I recently wrote a blog post detailing how cold email is a great method for early stage startups to get their first customers: https://www.actionable.me/blog/startups/is-cold-emailing-better-than-content-marketing-for-early-stage-startups/

Some tips from the post include:

1. At the beginning stages of your startup, you will have to do things that don't scale to get results, like recruiting users manually via cold email (from Paul Graham @ Y Combinator - http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)
2. Cold emails shouldn't be used to sell, but rather to start a dialogue. Not every cold email has to be "this is my product, will you sign up for it?". Instead, start a dialogue by asking relevant questions about problems your prospects might have. If it turns out that they are actually having that problem, and that you and your product are able to provide value, then they will more than likely convert into customers.
3. Don't spam. Instead send personalised cold emails to people you have individually researched and have verified are a potential fit for your product.
4. Optimise your email subject line to boost your open rate. Optimise your email body to boost your reply rate.
5. Cold emails are a great way to refine the copy you use in your marketing efforts, sales, & product. A/B test different copy to see which gets better results in your cold email - and then use that copy in marketing/sales/product.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder at actionable.me which is a cold email automation platform, so my opinion of cold email will be biased.

I think the market will verify that.
If the email is personalized (sent one by one), then you should be good.
If the email is mass sent, then some people might flag it as spam and decrease the value of your email address (which will affect inbox rates as well).

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't cold emailing illegal since GDPR?

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