What's worked for me with cold emailing to actually get a response 👀
Disclaimer: This approach is not scalable, and of course is not a guarantee, but it's worked for me so far!
Credit goes to my cousin who is an entrepreneur and taught me this 🎉
Formula:
- Figure out who you want to talk to.
- Research EVERYTHING you can find about that person
- Compose an email with the subject line of something you ran into about that person.
- Keep in mind: The secret sauceis that they should think: "This person knows a lot more about me or something I did than I feel like the normal cold email does."
Example
Find someone you want to talk to (Head of Title IX at a University) Next, you google them and find EVERYTHING of that's interesting (blog posts, youtube videos, research papers, facebook posts, ANYTHING that helps you know things about them that most people wouldn't)
Then pick one or two of them and read it! Let's say one of their things was a ted talk on youtube with 11,000 views.
Finally, compose your email.
Example Email
Subject line: Ted Talk - <Title of their Ted Talk>
Body: "Hi <name>, I recently stumbled upon your Ted Talk and thought it was really fascinating. I loved when you said "<Quote from what they said>" it made me think "<Whatever it made you think>__".
I'm actually a single founder of a business <that applies to your ted talk in these ways> and after watching this Ted Talk I just knew I had to talk to you. I'm sure you're a busy person, but would this next week be a bad time for me to hop on Zoom with you for 15 minutes and get your feedback on my idea? It would mean the world to me.
Regardless, I really enjoyed what you had to say on your Ted Talk.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Best,
Real Response
This example was a real example! The Title IX person emailed me back and said, "Nate, I receive 5-10 cold email pitches every week and ever since taking this job 5 years ago, I've never responded to a single one of them. However, your email was so nice I just had to write back. Yes, next week on Tuesday at 1pm Eastern is a good time for me to meet up. Let me know if that works for you." [I paraphrased this as I no longer have access to the email they responded to me on]
You got this 💪
Good luck on your outreaches! I'm interested to you hear what the Indie Hacker community thinks about all this and if there are any other tips for getting people to write back to cold outreaches!
