Are you looking for a better way to get digital marketing clients? Do you feel limited by your comfort zone and stuck marketing to a small group of leads that you’ve already pitched to again and again?

If so, there’s an answer: Cold reach-outs. 

While cold reach-outs sound scary at first, they can work wonders if you develop a system. Done well, cold reach-outs are a great way to get results and build your business without leaving the coffee shop or your home office. Additionally, mastering them will make you a better salesperson, both now and in the future.

The catch is that you can’t go in blind – you need to know how to ensure your efforts produce results. Don’t worry, though – that’s what we’re here to teach you.

Let’s dive in. 

Table of Contents

First Things First – What is a Cold Email?

Before we start talking about how to create world-class results with cold reach-outs, let’s take some time to define a cold reach-out. Here’s how the Sales Handy blog explains cold emailing:

“A cold email is an initial email that is sent to a receiver to gain a benefit in terms of favor, sales, opportunity, or any other dual-sided gain.”

To put this another way, cold emailing is essentially the process of emailing someone you don’t know, to achieve a specific purpose. It’s a useful sales tool and is common across both startups and enterprise-level companies. 

Why Send Cold Emails?

While cold emails are an intimidating type of digital communication for many of us, they can work. In fact, people have built entire companies on little more than cold emails. Here are a few of the unique benefits of well-written cold emails:

  • They can help you create connections. Even though you don’t know the contact when you send the cold email, that doesn’t mean creating a connection is impossible. Many business relationships have started as a result of a cold email, so don’t sell them short.
  • Cold emails are a useful recruiting tool. Although that’s not how we are using them, cold emails can be an excellent tool for finding great candidates and networking. 
  • Cold emails provide additional marketing. There are dozens of ways to grow a business, but adding cold emailing to thee stack ensures you’re covering a critical base – reaching well outside of your comfort zone to pitch your product, good, service, or company. This, in turn, widens your network and creates broader relationships. 

How Effective are Cold Emails?

When done correctly, cold emails can be incredibly effective. Here are a few current stats to demonstrate what we mean:

  • Personalizing the subject line of the email (and including the recipient’s name) will increase the open rate by about 22.2%
  • Average cold email open rates vary from 15.22% to 28.46%, depending on industry
  • A/B testing subject lines can increase open rates by 49%
  • 25% of cold email recipients decide whether to open the email based on its subject line alone
  • Targeted cold emails result in a much higher open rate than average – 45.5% compared to about 23%
  • Short, attention-grabbing subject lines generate more replies (66.7% compared to 33.3% for longer subject lines)
  • Email personalization stands to increase reply rates by as much as 100%
  • Merely sending a follow-up email will triple your reply rate

Step #1: 10 Emails per Week Client System

Okay – we’ve covered the ins and outs of cold emails -now let’s talk about how you can start sending great ones. We begin with the “10 emails per week client system.”

Today, most people who struggle to grow their businesses do so because they’re not consistent. Instead, they follow this recipe for failure:

  • Learn a system from a successful professional
  • Try it on your own
  • Get less-than-excellent results
  • Stop entirely, or start putting way less effort into it
  • Move on to a new system
  • Repeat until they die

Why?

If you’ve done this yourself, you know how painful and frustrating it can be. You’ve learned from a successful person, so why aren’t you getting the same results?

The answer is experience. The professionals who taught you have spent thousands of hours honing their craft, and now you need to do the same. You won’t be great right out of the gate. They’ve done it 1,000 times, you’ve done it once. There’s no magic pill. Practice is everything. 

If you keep doing it, though, things start to change. In this program, for example, you’ll hit a breakthrough if you keep going through the motions every week. Once you breakthrough, you’ll build on that success for the next 30, 53, or 104 weeks. It’s simple: put in the reps, get results. 

With that in mind, here’s the system we recommend:

  • Each week, dedicate 1 hour to finding ten potential clients
  • Use the email campaign template we provide to write one email for each of those potential clients
  • Follow up via email or phone when people reply
  • Follow up via phone when people open your message or click on the links, but don’t respond.

This whole system takes 2-4 hours per week. Although 95% of people won’t do it, the 5%, who will see great results. Do this for the next 30 weeks to get past the on-ramp segment. Your closing percentage will go up, and you’ll see significant results, both in the way people reply to you and the way you interact with them. 

Step #2: The Show-and-Tell Email Writing Campaign

I want to be completely upfront with you on this: I learned this because I failed when I first started doing cold emails.

I failed hard.

Not because I wasn’t trying, but because I wasn’t polished and people picked up on it. Luckily, I was a quick learner. I tweaked, I picked up on different templates, and I paid attention to what people were sending me when they tried to sell me. 

The template I developed relies on two emails, sent 5-7 days apart. The goal of these emails is a reply, open, or link click.

Here’s a breakdown of each email:

Email 1:

  • This email introduces your services
  • Shows common ground
  • Explain briefly what you do
  • And provides a CTA (even though you don’t expect a response from the first email – client will likely open, read, and discard)

This won’t get a response, and that’s okay. Its purpose is psychological. You want to be able to say later, “We emailed you and didn’t get a response.”

Email 2:

  • Re-introduce
  • Re-demonstrate common ground
  • Explain what you do
  • Link to live examples
  • CTA (now you expect a response)

Send this from your biz email address and find examples to share – case studies, etc. Remember: how you interact with leads depends on what the clients do. You must interact, though – if you wait for them to reply, you’re leaving a fortune on the table. The same goes if you wait for only positive replies. If they reach out and tell you they’re not interested, you must respond. 

Step #3: The Single Page Sales Template

You can showcase any service you have. To do it, build a landing page that… 

  • Shows what you do (name of service, tagline, etc.)
  • Outlines three steps to entry (they sign up, this is what you’ll do for them)
  • Examples of your work
  • Sign-up link
  • FAQ

This landing page structure is pretty simple, but it serves one essential purpose: to demonstrate your expertise and build trust for your customers. When they can visit a well-built landing page and see proof of your excellent work history, they’re much more likely to buy what you’re selling. Remember – all the emails you write should link back to the landing page you build. 

Step #4: The Once-They-Open Follow Up System

For the process we’re laying out for you to work, you need to track everything. We use PipeDrive as a CRM. CRM stands for “Customer relationship management” tool. PipeDrive, specifically, is excellent for tracking emails, the deals they’re attached to, opens, and more.

This allows us to track replies to emails and open/clicks but no responses. It also allows you to tailor a system that’s custom while targeting lots of potential clients. If you do it 10x a week, you WILL get results. 

One mistake that many people make with cold emails is that they assume sending a single email is enough. That is not the case. If you want cold email to work for you, you’ve got to be vigilant. This means responding in a certain way when your customers respond. The sooner you establish this relationship with them, the more likely you are to gain ongoing clients and to build your business accordingly. 

Use this model to contact small or large companies. We know this process can be tough, and we want to help. Once you set up your CMS and have the template fit into your funnel, email it to us. We’ll review it and critique it if needed. 

Finally…The $400/Month Outsourcing Guide

Last but not least comes the phase where you can start to take a more hands-off approach. Your hard work has paid off, and it’s time to reap the benefits. While we recommend you spend at least the first 10-30 weeks doing this process yourself, feeling ready to outsource means you’ve laid a solid foundation. When you start searching for someone to outsource this task to, look for the following:

  • College students
  • Stay-at-home parents
  • Friends/family looking to earn money

You will pay them $100/week for 4 hours of their time. Their job is to send out emails and set up any phone calls you need to make. After they do this for a minimum of 10 weeks, you can teach them how to do the calls. 

This is easy because they’re operating in a CMS, and they have a defined path. Here’s a breakdown of what each week will look like for them:

Week One:

  • They watch the training
  • They study the emails you’ve created

Week Two:

  • Have them explain why you wrote the emails the way you did
  • Go over the CMS and how you use it
  • Have them write their first email
  • Review everything together

Week 3: 

  • They write 5 of the ten emails
  • You should go over those emails before you send them
  • Show them how to follow up with email 2

Week 4

  • 10/10 opening emails
  • All 10 of reply emails
  • Go through each with them before you send them

Week 5:

They do the entire process themselves, and you monitor everything closely but from a distance. Establish a way to provide feedback, so they know what to do and not to do. 

If you’ve never outsourced before, the concept can be intimidating. And it does take some time to get used to. If you follow the system, though, you’ll wind up with a skilled contractor who can help you grow your business. 

Now You’re Ready to Dominate Cold Emails

Although they are a critical part of the sales process, many people fear the cold emails. And for a good reason, they can be intimidating, and they take some time to get used to. Still, I wouldn’t be where I am without the help of cold emails. 

Although I failed spectacularly when I first started sending them, gaining mastery of the cold email system is one of the most useful things I’ve ever done for my business. In this course, my goal was to teach you how to do the same thing. Although you won’t become an expert right away, you will get results if you follow the system I’ve laid out here for you. 

Drop us a line in the comments and let us know how the cold email system has worked for you. We want to hear about your success, and we look forward to cheering you on in the future.

 

Ready to further your knowledge? Join our Digital Agency Insiders Mastermind course now! 

 

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