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How I booked a meeting with Drift and made $120k

Hey IH👋,

So I've been consulting agencies and startups on how to book more sales calls for over 2 years and helped them generate $1.5M in pipeline.

Today, I'll share a story on how I booked a meeting with VP Marketing at Drift.com by cold emailing David Cancel (CEO.) I'm going to show how I did it, why it worked, and how you can get started.

My client that I worked with here was a PPC marketing agency for SaaS companies. I decide to go after the CEO as she/he will always refer you down to the right person (and this won't work the other way around!!).

I'm not going to get in details how to get contact info. I used a ton of tools for this and my go-to right now is Apollo.io.

Here is a script that I used:


SUBJECT: behaviour science

(here you mention one item that is personalized to this specific person. In this case, it was an item from his last podcast episode)

BODY:

Hi David- big fan of your podcast. Love the result of your partnership with RapidMiner - especially how you influenced 25% of their open pipeline.

Thought you might find it interesting how we brought $60,787.87 in profit with only $7,717.12 ad spend for a similar company to Drift.

I help SaaS companies (such as Hootsuite and Leadfeeder) get more free trials, demo requests, and customers by building paid acquisitions campaigns.

Sounds interesting?
Thanks,
Stan


Now let me break it down for you.

Subject line is personalized (PRO TIP: write with lowercase letters only as it makes it look more human).

First line is also personalized with a huge compliment. I mentioned his podcast and then a detailed case study from their website.

Then you move to ultra-specific and targeted pitch (see how I showed exact profit numbers? and not just 60k). The more specific you are the higher the chances of getting a reply.

The last sentence needs to boost your credibility and trustworthiness with brand names and relatable companies.

And that's it.!

If this will get lots of upvotes I will share how the story ended.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stanrym

  1. 5

    Cool stuff.

    The email breakdown reminds me of how Jeremy Chatelaine of Quickmail.io reached out to a list of 900 SaaS owners with a 20% reply rate where he didn't use a personalized intro, and a 70% reply rate where he used a similar opener like yours.

    Goes to show how:

    1. Adding personalization ({First_Name} is not enough, need to go a couple of layers deeper)

    2. Writing to-the-point copy

    3. Talking about their self interest

    is the way to go to make cold emailing work.

    Very impressed with your approach @stanrym!

    Thanks for sharing

    1. 3

      Do you have a link to Jeremy's findings?

      1. 2

        @bookercodes - Here you go, mate:

        https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/mu64xshoc9?videoFoam=true

        He reads out and explains the entire email from around the 28th minute mark onward.

        1. 2

          haha holy cow, that was some time ago :)

          1. 1

            @Nobs - The man himself!

            How did you even come across this thread? XD

            Also, I remember in the interview with Andy Drish you said your goal was $10M... Would love to learn about your journey from then till now!

            1. 1

              Learned some great lessons lately, and I'm operating a massive change (for the better). Ask me again in 6 months, I should be much closer (I'm probably half-way through)

    2. 2

      Thanks for the summary

  2. 2

    Awesome breakdown! Thanks for sharing.

  3. 1

    Nice work Stan. What is your company?

  4. 1

    @stanrym Dude, this is awesome. Can't believe I haven't come across Apollo yet - thanks for sharing!

    1. 1

      happy to help!

  5. 1

    Hey man I loved this. Im genreally interested in the whole idea of consultancy, any tips?

    1. 1

      If you're talking to outbound sales, you can gain experience by working for someone. I'm actually hiring sales reps - shoot me an email [email protected]

  6. 1

    Love it! Can't wait to see how it ends

    1. 1

      thanks! Will post the rest of the story next week

  7. 1

    Like the lower case subject pro tip. Thanks for sharing!

    1. 3

      added about 15% to open rate!

  8. 1

    This is so good, its almost social engineering.

  9. 1

    Loving the simplicity. Thanks for sharing

    1. 1

      No worries. Do you know someone that could also benefit from this post?

      1. 1

        Sure! I’ll share it with them :)

  10. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      mention companies that they worked with or news outlets that they have been mentioned in

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

  11. 1

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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