Here is how can you reach your dream customers.
Email outreach is the first thing that came to my mind when i thought about acquiring users, i've done it for my freelance business and i've done it for Plainly (and i am still doing it). Yeah, it seems tedious and time-consuming but you have to get your product out to the people, right?
Throughout the years, i've developed a process to which i always go back to. It allowed me to reach my target customers, and i wanted to share it with you so you can do the same.
In the end, i share a bonus tip (with FREE STUFF) which can improve your chances greatly. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, just scroll down and look for the "Bonus Tip".
Research
You can't really outreach to anyone, right? It wouldn't make sense. That's why you need to do your research upfront, who do you want to target? Who is your target customer?
Don't worry if you can't pinpoint an exact buyer persona upfront, you will discover this throughout the process and you will discover who actually needs your services and product along the way.
Now when you got those people, it's time to find them and their companies. I'll work out of an example for Plainly.
One of our target customers are startup founders who are still doing the marketing themselves or have a single person dedicated to marketing. Our target customers are not big marketing teams or big startups who hire freelancers to do their marketing - nope.
So let's see where can we find these people.
Finding prospects
Finding these people is easy enough. You have two ways (one is a bit more time consuming than the other).
1. Going through Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a great tool for doing research on startups, it's a huge database that allows you to filter companies by various things and it's a really handy tool when it comes to prospecting. It's a paid service, but there is a free trial and you can use that free trial to its maximum potential.
To filter companies and find the ones that you need, go with the advance search.
After you've filtered the companies you want, you will get a huge list of companies that match those criteria.
The next step would be to go into each company profile, see what companies do you like and the most important - find their LinkedIn page.
Now i am not going to go through this step with you because you can figure it out on your own and i want to keep the privacy of the employees but you should go onto their LinkedIn page and find relevant people.
For example, when i am doing the research for Plainly prospects, we are targeting smaller startups so i can often contact one of the founders, OR if they have a dedicated marketing person then i would contact him or her.
One more tip i can share is that you should always do a bit of research on your prospects. What are they like on social media, do they share content, what is that content? Try and see if you can relate to them and make sure to include that in the email.
Here is an example of connecting to a prospect (this is from my freelance days)
I saw that she is a digital nomad and that she is traveling while working so i included that in the e-mail. It got a response and we started a conversation.
Remember - you are a human talking with humans, keep it casual and human-like.
2. Going directly through LinkedIn
This is a more time-consuming way of finding prospects but it's free and in some cases, it can work pretty well. It's pretty simple, search for relevant job titles in your LinkedIn search, adjust the filter, and see what comes out.
It's really important to adjust the "Industry" field or you will find all sorts of people. This is just an example for Plainly, i would search for founders, enter their company profiles, and see if Plainly can help them.
It's more time consuming because you will find all sorts of people, and with Crunchbase it's more precise and you have more control with the filters. But hey - this is free.
Connecting
Okay, we got a list of companies that we might approach. One more step you can do is really dig into the company, take a look at their website, at their social media and really see if you can connect and work with them.
It's not worth it if you are just sending mindless e-mails, it's bad for you and it's bad for them.
I already told you that you should find the decision-makers and relevant people in the companies, but what then?
You can do two things:
1. Connect with them on LinkedIn
If you found people and companies you really like this should come easy. Send them a connection on LinkedIn, give them a compliment and ask them a question. Spark a conversation with them.
DON'T PITCH THEM INSTANTLY.
I can't stress this enough, but don't do it. Don't be a spammer and start a real conversation with people, they will eventually ask you what do you do and you can see if they are interested.
Again, keep it casual and keep it human-like.
2. Send them a cold e-mail
This is a more traditional approach. The pros are that they give you instant results, your e-mail either gets responded or not...you don't wait for a while to build a connection with the prospect and another pro is that you can send more of these. The cons are that they are less effective and more boring (in my opinion).
Okay, you found the people you want to reach out to but you don't have their emails.
Well, there are A LOT of tools to help you with that. One of those is VoilaNorbert and another one is Hunter.IO. They are both awesome and i talked more in-depth about them in the previous blog post so read more about them there.
One more amazing tool that you can install (that i talked about in the previous blog post) is MailTrack. It will track your e-mails and allow you to
One book i always give to anybody who wants to write cold e-mails is THIS ONE. Neville boils it down to the simplest bits and it's one of the books that changed the way i write cold e-mails (Thanks Danijel).
Writing the e-mail
I am by no means an expert here, i consider myself a beginner at cold-emails so i won't go in-depth but here are a few tips.
- Remember who you are writing too - match the tone of that person.
- Make your e-mails personalized and sound human.
- Don't spam!!!!!
- If they didn't respond, follow up after 3 days.
- KEEP THE EMAILS SHORT!
- Make sure that you cut all of the fluff, and keep it to the point.
- Test your e-mail body.
- Test your e-mail subject.
There is a ton of resources for this on the Internet so just do your research and you will be able to write one yourself.
Don't sweat it too much, write a base version; send a few of them and iterate - your response and the open rate will tell you if you are going in the right direction.
Remember, sending cold e-mails is a long and time-consuming process, don't give up after a week. When i am doing these i strive to send 5-10 a day (this includes finding prospects, doing research, and writing e-mails.
Bonus tip - Video
Research says that using a video in your marketing e-mails can boost your open and response rate up to 80%. Now, these numbers may be a bit high, but it's definitely something that can boost up your cold e-mail game.
Here is a good way you can use video when doing outreach:
Create a short video explaining what your product does
I made a FREE VIDEO for you, that you can generate, for free and under 5 minutes. It's a short animated video that will explain what your business does, you can embed it into your e-mail and make sure that you stand out. Click here to generate your free video
If you like doing a bit more work, you can create a quick Loom recording for every e-mail. This is a great way to keep the e-mails personalized and to show that you really care about your prospects. Start recording, introduce yourself, and tell them how can you help their business grow.
Now i wouldn't say that one way is better than the other, you can try both of them and see which one works the best. Anyways video is a great tool and i read an article that even putting the word "Video" in the subject line improves your chances a lot.
Try both of these ways, combine them, test them - go crazy.
Recap
Finding those dream clients is hard, yes. But with a built system for direct outreach, it's just a matter of time until you get that response. These techniques are time-consuming, but they are tested and they work!
If you liked this long-form article, please let me know down in the comments!
And if you'd like to create more promo videos like above, you should definitely check out Plainly! It's a tool that helps you create amazing promo videos in 5 minutes!
