$4m in pipeline generated via cold emailing [quick takeaways]
🔝 In 2017, we generated just over $4m in SMB pipeline via Cold Emailing.
👥 We were a 2 people marketing team at a startup with very limited spending.
🤯 We were running many tests at scale and ended up sending out 19817 cold emails in a week.
🤏 Only about 2% of people replied to the emails.
✨ 6% of those who responded agreed to a demo call.
😲 Quite ordinary conversion rates.
🤔 But it was - 24 Demo Calls scheduled for 5 Sales Reps in a week. Not bad.
My three biggest takeaways are:
- Keep your message original. Cold emailing is often overcomplicated by people. Searching over the internet for top performing sales email templates is the first thing they do, and they put their trust in them.
In the world of the internet, once something is online, it's already old. Thousands of people have used those templates, and yours looks like a copy-pasted response.
Spend more time understanding your target personas and "living" in their shoes to create an effective and original outreach message.
🥴 And yes, I'm looking at all those people who still send break-up emails with 3 fictitious scenarios. Time to get over it. Please.
- Follow this simple structure to your cold emails. I have tested it at least half a million times. Pick a subject line that drives curiosity, but it should be relevant enough to connect to the body of the email. Otherwise, it's just vague and that's not going to lead to positive responses.
Structure your email body in three parts:
a. Context (In the first 1-2 sentences of your email, your email opener, explain why you are writing to this person.)
b. Pitch/Value (Second paragraph - 2 to 4 sentences. Present your pitch or the value you bring to the person concisely.)
c. Ask (Explain clearly what you need from them.)
- Use common sense. When it comes to cold emailing, there are many ways to succeed. Optimizing for your key success metric is crucial.
For instance, our conversion numbers were average, but we focused on scale to beat the targets, and that is fine if you keep common sense in mind. In other words, you don't want to aggressively contact the person 5 times a week. As a matter of fact, we sent out just 3 cold emails within a two-week period. Do not burn the bridge after one sequence.
Do not stop comparing results from each batch you sent out, and keep repeating what's working. Period.
Hope it was useful.
Last thing, if you like this type of content then you must subscribe to my free newsletter -> https://freshsalmon.substack.com/
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How on earth can one find ~19K emails?
To send out cold emails at a larger scale you need to make sure your infrastructure is setup the right way. I actually put all the details here -> https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
The question is about finding large number of emails. Where did you get those emails from?
Yes, that's an important question. I bought the list from a mix of 2 sources:
Could you recommend them? Would love to know.
This is a little tricky. What I have learned from my experience is - there are certain data vendors that work well in certain industries. For healthcare related lists, which I needed - I found Exact Data a good fit.
Woah.... This blew up. There are some good questions that I will be answering as soon as I could. Keep them coming :)
Man I loved when you said this "Keep your message original. "
This is so underrated advice. Great post, thanks for sharing your learnings
100% agree. That's the most underrated advice. Btw, thanks to all the comments here, I am writing a 2 part cold emailing playbook. Part 1 is ready, please feel to check out - https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
I just discovered a goldmine. You have some amazing articles on substack.
We have a newsletter to help our users to write high converting email https://coldemail.substack.com/
Great. I appreciate it.
Thats pretty incredible. How did you send out 19817 emails in a week?
Lol. I just was responding to another comment here. To send out cold emails at a larger scale you need to make sure your infrastructure is setup the right way. I actually put all the details here -> https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
thanks for sharing the numbers it gives us idea of what to expect so that we don't get disappointed by sending just 100 mails and getting no reply. In this case @vikxo had to send 20k mails to get 24 demos. We should be prepared to send that many mails too to get similar response ofcourse after applying his suggestions.
My pleasure.
I'm curious if now - with the benefit of hindsight - you would have changed this and tried something else. For example, going the opposite route and spending more time pre-qualifying leads and reaching out with more of a personal touch. Very little in terms of scale but potentially more responses.
Also, what'd you use to manage all this? Did you have a CRM platform to help keep track? Did you wait for a response before even adding them to such a platform?
Sorry for the delayed response. Our core KPI for optimization was always replies. The reason we scaled was due to a lack of cash, this being cheaper to quickly test out the market. We also didn't have a product-market fit, you know the first million for the company so you have to be creative.
We did use CRM: Salesforce, and Reply.io for outreach, it worked like a magic.
One thing nobody has mentioned so far is spam. How do you make sure you don't get flagged as spam, potentially ruining your email domain for future uses, even non-marketing ones? That's my main concern with outbound email.
Hey there. The deliverability actually covers the Spam topic. If you follow the configurations mentioned in deliverability section, you will have no or little spam problems.
what service were you marketing?
A software for privately owned medical practices.
Ok I will be that guy. When you say "ordinary conversion rates", what were those ? Out of the $4M generated in pipeline, how much actual revenue was converted/generated from this $4M pipeline ?
Asking because evne though it is tough to do that you do, it is easy to add arbitrary numbers for "possible" revenue. For example, my company sells our product starting at average 10-12K per year. If I cold called say 3 businesses and all 3 agreed to a meeting, I have technically generated 30-40K in pipeline but that doesn't mean if I don't understand the quality of those leads.
So what was the conversion rate and how much actual revenue got generated from this ? That would help a lot more.
Great question. Sure - $910K in revenue.
So, 22.75% conversion from Opportunity to Closed Won.
I would love to read your cold emails. I have always struggled with the subject line & sometimes with the content of the email. It would be great to see your cold emails.
This is coming soon. Thanks to all the comments here, I am writing a 2 part cold emailing playbook. Part 1 is ready, please feel to check out - https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
Thanks for sharing mate, but I got some questions. How do you send these mass cold-emails? do you use a service like ActiveCampaign?
I'm about to re-launch a project (ytpodcast) where I'll need first to outreach to a bunch of people to start getting the first sales, so any tip would help.
Cheers, mate.
Actually I used an email tool and integrated it with G-suit. I am going to write more details how that works soon, but here is the Part 1, please feel free to check out - https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
Thanks for the detailed info, very helpful. Is this for a SaaS product or service business?
Also did y’all have issues with email deliverability at that scale?
It was a SaaS product sold to medical practices in the US. And yes, we ran into deliverability issues, but learned to resolve them along the way. I wrote about how to setup for success here - https://freshsalmon.substack.com/p/cold-emailing-a-masterclass-part
thanks for sharing the numbers. that's quite refreshing to see real rates, rather than the ones from influencers and think that smth is wrong with your outreach :)
ha ha, not really. The cold emails were sent to a target market in regulated industry, so every email goes through a scan. Plus the buyer persona is super-busy, not on a desk job. Btw, this company got acquired :)
Also, the point I am making is - there are many ways to hit targets, and all industries aren't the same. Don't get blinded by the numbers for cold emails sent to a marketing decision maker who reads every single email vs your target segment.