Do cold emails work for you when trying to get SaaS sign-ups?
If things proceed as they should within a couple of weeks I should have Beta of my SaaS ready, and will be in a position to test it myself and get other people to do so too. Plan is that any bug that appears and changes that need to be done won't need more than a month to get fixed/adjusted.
Assuming this is the case, the next step will be to start getting sign ups for the free trial, and of course paying customers. My tool can actually be used by a lot of people (bloggers and content writers/agencies who take SEO writing seriously) and being in the industry I have quite a large network of potential users (a few thousands), but I'm also thinking about reaching out to copywriting agencies via email, see if the app is of interest.
Have you tried sending cold emails? Did it work for you? I constantly see IH members speaking about producthunt, or being featured in certain websites, but nobody really speaks about sending emails. Yes, it's slower, but it is also more personal.
Thoughts? Any experiences to share?
Thanks
I've been cold emailing for years now having started digital marketing for a sales training company I basically had it soaked into my skin. It works and it doesn't work. The trick is that you need to be clear about your intentions. Rather than pitching the whole feature list, reach out to your target audience with a LinkedIn connection request and a note that reads along the lines of 'Hey X, I am currently doing some product research for my beta project that does [insert short description]. Would you be interested in testing the platform out?'.
No pressure, no sleazy sales so it's all positive. As a side note I have literally just published a blog post on this: https://pixlpanels.com/3-things-founder-can-market-startup/ - scroll down to the 3rd tip for outreach ideas.
I just listened to this podcast episode last night and it mirrors a lot of what you're saying:
https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/157-baird-hall-of-wavve
What I remember is:
That's it, no one wants to be met by a wall of text. I used to do this as well, basically have a conversation with myself in the email and assume I know what the response will be.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree, long email will put people off.
Your Linkedin suggestion is also something different, do you find it works better than normal email? For example I rarely check Linkedin.
Mi idea is to outreach to people I don't know once I'm over Beta. I'll get some potential users I know to test Beta in case glitches come up and what not, and then once anything of that sort is fixed then do the email outreach to potential clients.
I'm off to read your post now! Thanks
Personally, LinkedIn gets really good responses but again it's really down to just making sure it's not pushy sales. The biggest pain point for everyone is that people connect randomly, as soon as the connection is accepted, BAM you get a sales pitch.
Being upfront in the connection note gives someone the chance to accept or not. If they do not then you know they are not interested and you are not going to Wolf of Wall Street them into buying. Move on to the next one, it's a big database of key audience contacts.
Cheers!
Thanks for sharing! Yup, once again time is money...
Do you find being mysterious works well on your cold emails as well. Haha
Great post. Thanks
I would not send 1000s of emails promoting a beta. Get some of your connections using the product, get out of beta and then think about mass emailing. Its not your fault but the rush for Lean Startup feedback has made people sour on beta and you will get better ROI out of the few thousand once you can point to satisfied customers.
I agree, and that's the plan! :)
Cold email works when you personlized extremely but not mass mail. Make sure you validate the email address, background check your prospect before hitting the send button.
This procedure works for both my daytime role and also side hustle. I've been selecting people and growing my newsletter lately. Keen to hear your feedback tho! @keycad
Hi Felix, what you say makes sense: one has to create some empathy with the prospect before pitching. And if this is followed by some kind of sweet deal later in the conversation I'd think the odds are probably good? Unfortunately it's a slow process, but if money comes...
Cold emails always work, given that focus on what value you can provide to them rather than what they can do for you.
There are several benefits of cold emails, but it is important to make it short, to-the-point, personalized and actionable. The thing is, you may only get a small percentage of responses, but those relationships that grow from them will be valuable enough to justify the effort. One of the most important things to do is research and identify your recipients as the more targeted & customized the message, the better.
Definitely makes sense
People do talk about cold e-mails here. But I think a lot of us (maybe fewer than in years past) hope that we can build something, post it on product hunt, and we magically get the results we want :)
I've done some cold e-mailing, Twitter/forum/social DMing, etc. It hasn't worked for me, but not because it's not a great strategy.
Why didn't it work for me? I think I've sent out about 20 cold e-mails/DMs, and the results reflect that low number. I'll go through phases of being helpful, promoting, and asking, and then I'll let it fall off into nothing. But I have gotten interest and signups from doing it, just not at the rate I'd hoped.
Enough of my rambling. There are great posts on this topic:
https://www.indiehackers.com/article/how-to-achieve-a-40-response-rate-on-cold-emails-cd5458cf44
https://www.indiehackers.com/article/how-to-craft-a-compelling-b2b-sales-email-template-d6a6b6aefc
https://genius.com/Jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-focus-on-sales-not-marketing-annotated
Thanks Andrew for the thorough reply. As you mention early in your answer it seemed to me that many were/are focusing pretty much only on the magic you mention, which I found odd.
I also think that building a SaaS -or pretty much anything- is the easy part. Getting people to use it AND pay for it is the hard part.
I appreciate those links too, will check the posts now :)
The results I've seen really hammer home a somewhat unrelated point to me:
"Make sure you're working on a product that helps them with a critical problem in their business."
If you're building something that doesn't save or make them money, they're less inclined to read/respond.
If it's not immediately clear why/how your product helps them, they're less likely to read/respond.
Good point about this. The main draw of my product saves time (up to 75% when compared with doing it manually if someone is optimizing an existing post), so your point in the second paragraph is very valid. I have to make sure they understand they could write/edit 3 posts or more vs just one in the same amount of time, and time=money.
That's great!
Imagine that they pay someone $50 for each article. If you can save 50% of the time, that's $25 for each article! (Using 50% as an example since I assume there's some additional overhead :)
Exactly!