How many cold emails should I send to know if a product sticks?
Hi Indie family!
I've been reading a lot about finding the first ten customers. I'm using tools to find emails of my target (Crunchbase + hunter.io + Linkedin sales navigator lite), I've edited a short video-demo and I'm ready to pitch!
My question is... if these people won't show interest in my product, when should I stop emailing?
For example, I have a list of 200 CEOs. Maybe after sending 200 emails, nobody shows interest. Will be these 200 rejections enough quantity to think about moving on and dismiss the idea? Maybe I should send 1000 emails to find insightful data because 200 are not enough? Where should I put the limit?
I will pitch 10.000 CEOs if it's necessary, that's not the problem. I only want to know when it's appropriate to reconsider the idea. When I can be certainly sure that the product hasn't stuck.
I would love to hear about your experiences! Thanks a lot!
First of all, sending cold emails might not be the right way to know if your product sticks. Every product will have a different acquisition channel, you just need to find yours. Maybe its cold emais, Ads or organis traffic.
I was doing B2B Sales for my startup, crafted every message, followed up and was still getting no response. I tried cold calling too and that just did not work.
What you need to get their attention and stand out!
So I came up with the idea to send a pigeon. I made this little video explaining what I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP1kOBi9X7I&
This might not be appropriate for your brand/startup. But just for a bit of fun, I then put this website together, you can now send cold emails via a pigeon as a service.
https://www.veed.io/pigeon/
Hahah dude, this is sweet. Really enjoyed the video (and obviously, well edited ;) ).
Just a quick few tips about your veed.io/pigeon
"message stuck to a plastic pigion" - pigeon
"All pigeons fly internationally, Our flock" - our flock
"video editing software, Check it out But" - check it out, but
You may have decided on this writing "style", but these typos immediately looked like no proofreading was done. Other than that, I think your website looks great and your idea is just awesome :D
HTH!
This is awesome. Are you familiar with Stu Heinecke’s book How to get a meeting with anyone?(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946885134)
He’d love that someone productized the carrier pigeon. In the book, he tells the story of how he sent a real carrier pigeon to get a reply from someone who hasn’t gotten back to him. 🐦🐣 It worked.
Persistence and creativity.... love it Sabba!
Holy shit! hahahaha 🤣🤣
Yeah, that's really thinking outside the cage
Thanks! If cold emailing doesn't work, I'll create something bold to get attention ;)
Don't pitch the product directly. You will probably not hear back from anyone or may be very very few folks specially if you are cold emailing C level people. The reason is that plenty of people try to sell "their" product to the same C level prospects. So they get immune to those types of emails and most likely never read them or just move to spam.
I am a business owner myself (of course an Indie one so relatively smaller but still have a profitable product) and as we are growing, I have started to get a lot of cold sales emails from vendors. I mostly ignore them the moment I see that the email is all about them and not about me.
You should first do a lot of research on your prospect . The research should include learning about their business and possibly any pain points that your product could solve for them. You don't know yet if they are looking for a solution but if you are able to identify or initiate a discussion about their current issues/pain points, it could lead to you getting a possible sale in the future if not immediately.
Here is what I usually do to send cold emails to our prospects:
Do research about their company using their website and see if there is any information that could be relevant for my cold email. We sell software product so I try and see if I am able to find out who they are using today (in house solution vs a competitor ?)
With this information, I draft an email with the subject "Question about your <need/issue/pain point> using current software <competitor>. If I am not able to determine their current solution, then the email can be a generic question about the relevant information. The key is "relevance".
All the best.
Hey, @codegeek1001 and @vimalgopal ! Just one doubt. Should I send the emails from the official product email domain? Or should I send them from another email account?
For example, let's say that the product is www.crammut.com. Should I send the email from jaime@crammut.com? I think it's weird trying to "hide" the product on the first email if they can watch the email signature (they can see the name, the logo, the website...). What do you recommend?
Thanks a lot! =D
I initially always used my personnel emails and i made sure each email content was a little different and i sent only around 15 emails per day .
I had cofounders so i used their email ids too .
I'm thinking to use my personal Gmail. But I'm afraid to look like an amateur.
Another idea I have is using the domain of another project (I have three professional email domains). But in this situation, I'm scared that they think I pretend to sell these other projects that aren't even related to my pitch 😂
You still want your emails to look professional. You can use a different domain just for outbound email if you're worried. Something similar like crammut dot co or net.
Keep your regular signature. You want them to have a way to contact you or find your website. Your signature does that work not the body of the email.
Yeah, I think I'll keep the email signature. Even without the signature, if they really want to find out more about me or my product they just can google my name.
Thanks again, Vanessa! =D
good point man. I'v been thinking of this. sending from personal GMAIL definetly looks less commercial i would say
Yeah, I agree. But maybe it looks more amateur too.
Damn! This is pure gold. Thanks! I was ready to pitch everything on the first email. I would waste a lot of bullets there.
So I'm gonna rethink all my email strategy, and the first email will be an attempt to start a real conversation with my researched info. It's less scalable but It'll be worth it. Thanks again! :)
if 200 email and nobody interest,doesn't mean your idea bad. Maybe you need using better pitch,or make sure they are right target for your product..
Yeah, I know. Maybe is the way I'm approaching people. But anyways, I need some kind of tool to say "enough, rethink the situation". Thanks! :)
Hi Jaime , this is what I usually do , try getting email addresses of people from different places (forums, fb, GitHub etc) 10 emails from 20 places .
So thats 200 emails, try very personalised emails asking if they have the specific problem and never tell them about the solution .
If at-least 10 people reply back saying they are really facing the problem tell them about the solution .
less than 10 emails i think its time to pivot.
Cool! So 200 emails are okay, but they should be from diverse fonts. I got it! Thanks a lot :)
Hello Fellow IndieHackers,
I browsed through the responses and no body seems to point out the obvious!
Isn't sending cold emails against the law. Is it worth the risk to you ? How'd you deal with possible fines, or even with ruining your reputation?
It depends on whom you are emailing and how you get their info.
Take a look at this guide for country specific details: https://prospect.io/blog/cold-email-illegal/
Thanks Vanessa, very informative!
Jaime,
A few things to consider in your initial email is being in the perspective of the person you're trying to reach.
Since you don't have an existing relationship you will face a short attention span. In that time you have to show you're someone who knows what's going on in their world, you solve a problem they have and you want to find out if there's a way you can help them.
Your goal is not to pitch how great your product is but to say 'I recognize you, the problem you have and we should connect.' That's it.
I've got more on the topic of what to include in the initial email, but on the question of how will you know if a campaign is successful you'll look at certain metrics. Are you reaching out to the right kind of company and role. Are you sure the CEOs are the right people to email? If so, you'll look at open rate, then reply rate.
Open rate is based on subject line and a preview the first sentence. Doesn't matter what's in the email if they don't open it.
For reply rate, there are things you can adjust in the body of the email to affect the reply rate like a single clear next step -- whether that's a reply email, click one link, set up one call.
In the meantime, figure out what's going on in the world of each of those 200 people, identify a problem they face and relate to how you (as an individual) can help. The emails need to be short but still professional.
If you'd like, I can take a look at your emails privately and give you feedback.
This is great advice, thanks! If I hadn't talked about this on IndieHackers before pitching, my pitch would be like a "home shopping" commercial haha
So I'm going to install a tool to track the email open rate too. Maybe emailtrack.io. Do you know a better option?
Thanks again! 😃
Hi Jaime,
my 2 cents are to not waste any time in cold emails. Who likes cold emails? Nobody. Who ignores cold emails? Everybody.
What has worked in our case was contacting people writing about such products. They need content and they are always open and happy to try out new things.
In every sector there are people having blogs, magazines, podcasts etc. that are passioned about the topic or the type of product or the area.
Try to research the most relevant people for you and reach genuinely out to them, telling them about what you do and why you do it.
If they like it they will write about it. And the people reading their content, are people that are your potential customers.
Good luck!
I totally see your point. In fact, working content with sector influencers is included in our plans. But we thought this strategy is better when the product is almost validated. We're afraid of building a brand when the product isn't validated yet. Our time and resources are limited so we need a more direct way of validation, like cold emails. Can I get 10 interested people on my product? Cool, let's do it. Can't I get it? Cool, let's pivot. Just that.
Anyways, I appreciate your advice, and we're going to try pitching some influencers and journalist too. It's a cool experiment :)
Thanks a lot!
One thing to consider is that perhaps it is the email / video's problem. Maybe describe the problem in a different way or highlight a different feature of your product. I'd change up the contents of the email / video before giving up on the idea.
I totally agree. I was talking about pivoting on the email, but it also applies to rethink the way I approach people on the email. Thanks! :)