How to use cold email to grow your startup

Here's exactly how to grow your startup through cold emailing.

Cold email is the lifeblood for some early-stage startups.

We've sent thousands of emails on behalf of our clients like Segment and Microsoft.

Why cold email?

• Save cash: Trading time for early sales gives you the cash flow to get off the ground. All you need is to acquire someone's email, but once you have it, the process is repeatable and only costs your time.
• Targeting: Send personalized messages to the exact people you want to reach. Personalization is key. People want to read emails specifically addressed to them—show them you did your research and it'll pay dividends.
• Access: Most decision-makers still manage their own email inboxes. They can check your message on their own time, which means there are multiple opportunities to get their attention.

Who's cold email for?

Cold emailing is usually most profitable for B2B companies: They typically have a higher margin than consumer companies.

Say you run an online shoe company where you sell $100 pairs of shoes that cost you $25 to make. Cold outreach might not be worth your time: You’ll likely spend hours sending emails, setting up calls, and managing the funnel. Labor hours would exceed your $75 margin.

But for a B2B SaaS business selling $1,000/month contracts? 5 labor hours to close a deal might result in thousands of dollars of profit.

That doesn’t mean you should rule out cold outreach if you’re not at a B2B company with high margins. Cold email is often the best way for ALL startups to build early traction, not ads or hacks. If the right person reads it at the right time...boom.

The truth is that most cold emails sent from salespeople or eager founders aren't great or well written-they lack personalization and end up getting deleted.

The bar for a quality cold email is pretty low, which means it's easy to stand out if you put in the effort to demonstrate to the reader you treated them like a person-not a check.

Cold emailing could work for:

1. Agencies who charge $2000+/month per client.
2. B2B SaaS companies.
3. Expensive physical goods (like equipment).
4. Edtech companies that sell high-margin digital products.

Elements of a great cold email:

• Clearly indicate why you're reaching out and how you'll add value.
• Address major objections upfront
• Add a personal touch. Show your lead that the email isn't automated.
• End with one clear CTA, and explain the value of the CTA: “On the call we'll do X so you get Y.”

How to find leads:

The best leads are those who are using a competitor and are dissatisfied with them.

• You know they’re motivated to solve the problem that your business solves—they’re already paying for a solution.
• And since they're unhappy they'll likely be looking for better solutions.

How do you find them?

Look for:

• Negative comments from customers on their YouTube channels
• Unhappy users in their support forum posts
• Dissatisfied customers who tweet-mentions them
• News announcements (i.e merger & acquisiton, press releases)

More: Look at the logos on competitor landing pages or poach names from sales webinars.

The second best leads are those that have the right title and have the clout to make budget decisions within their organization.

• You know they can write the check, and they have the power to sign the contract.
• They can reduce the time of your buying cycle.

You can also use tools to find these leads:

• To find leads for ecom companies: Use ContactEcom
• To find leads for most other business types: Use KleanLeads

If you know the person but can't find their email? Use HunterIO

A note on cold email strategy:

• Write 2-3 high-level versions of your email ahead of time
• You'll A/B test them later to see what resonates with your audience

Here's how you can write cold emails that sell:

1. Provide a reason for reaching out.
2. Proactively handle the key objection.
3. Add a personal touch to prove it's not spam.
4. Only include one clear CTA per email.
5. Derisk it. This is important: Offer to provide value regardless of whether they buy.

Here’s an effective way to run your campaigns:

1. A/B test the 2-3 email versions you created (about 100 emails/version).
2. Analyze reply rate and booked meetings rate. Then send the winning email to the rest of your list.
3. Continuously iterate on your emails.

Here's how we approach follow ups:

Certain experts suggest following up with 5+ emails (some even have data to prove that this is the right approach for them).

But heres's what we do:

• Follow up once after 3 days. But make sure you add value in some way (i.e link to a piece of content you put out or reference another point of your research).
• Again after 7 days. Persistence can be a key aspect of your strategy, but after 3 unanswered emails, our take is that you go from being persistent to being a pest.

We believe the brand damage from spamming exceeds the benefit of a few more sales.

Here are a few options of tools that you can use to send emails:

PersistIQ: Well-rounded tool with a free trial

MixMax: Cheap with a Gmail integration

Mailshake: Best for email beginners

Lemlist: Similar to Mailshake with better personalization and email deliverability

Important measurements to track:

• Labor spent per purchase: Use this to calculate your ROI
• Open rate: Figure out if you're writing compelling subject lines
• Click-through rate: Determine how enticing your copy and CTAs are
• Response rate: Typically the most important metric to track on your first email to a cold contact
• Purchase rate: Use to determine how many emails you need to send per week

BTW if you found this valuable, we save our best email insights for our newsletter.

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And if you're looking to learn more about email marketing, check out this thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowthTactics/status/1341426684218753024