My end-to-end cold email process for B2B

I've experimented with quite a few traction channels early on for my current startup. Today lets focus on cold emailing because its one of those channels where you can start seeing results within a week (unlike SEO or content marketing which are suited for sustaining long term growth).

This entire process is something I've trialed and honed over the past 2 months and targeted for the B2B market. Don't take this as the only way to do this but if you're just starting out, I will try and do a decent job to at least get you 80% of the way there.

For bootstrapped founders, cold-emailing is most likely the best way to be able to grow with enough mix of automation mixed in once you've setup your cadence.

Few prerequisites that might be useful to keep in mind:

• Selling to a market who actually uses email daily (might not be as useful if you're selling to restaurants, contractors, and other folks which likely are most phone-oriented)
• Your average contract value per customer is ideally greater than ~$400-500 MRR (although if you're just starting out, don't worry about it since getting customers through any means possible is more important than how you get them)
• You know the persona/industry/customer type you're selling to and have a good idea of their pain points (if you're selling a DevOps tool, you can understand the struggles of DevOps engineers and exactly what you help them achieve)

With that out of the way, let's get into the process. Here are the steps I follow to set up the emailing steps.

First thing we need to do is be able to identify our customers and get their emails.

• For this, I'm using Apollo but you can use any other prospecting tool that lets you identify and get fairly accurate work emails.
• They have a $0 plan that will work for this part. No need to pay if you're okay doing some manual work.
• Use the filters to target the department/title/location and number of employees within that company. Apollo will return a list of folks who match that criteria with their emails.
• Aim to get 200 people with their emails here. Try to keep it at 3 employees per company maximum so you get a good variety across more companies.

After you've gotten your list with folks with their emails, it's time set up a Google sheet with all of this information.

• I import my contacts from Apollo into a Google sheet that has following columns such as: First name, Last name, Email, Company, Role, Personalized intro, and anything else that might be useful for you to have.
• On the free Apollo plan, I usually just copy paste from their table into Sheets. If you're on a paid plan, you can just do 1-click CSV imports (which use up some credits).
• It's also important to note that the "Personalized Intro" column is where I write 1 line that is unique per contact. This is usually me doing a quick Linkedin search to see how long they've been in that position, if they've posted anything new, and even general google hits on their name to see if they've published a blog, podcast. If they have published something, please read/listen to some parts of it and use it in your intro. Be genuine, don't just copy paste something they wrote directly in here.
• You're looking for anything that is related to what you're trying to sell and solves their problem. Trust me, it's better to send 50 emails with some quality content versus 500 with exact approach

Now that we have our contacts ready in Google sheets, it's time to build email sequences to reach out.

• For this part, I'm using a tool called MixMax but you can use Apollo if you prefer or any other competitors. I'm paying $29/month on their Small Business plan. You can do a 14-day trail first to get a sense of what you'll get for that.
• Within your email sequencing tool, you'll import that google sheets file of your contacts.
• After your contacts are upload, create a 5 step email sequence with follow-ups spread out between 3 days on average.
• This means your first email should be ideally your best email that has the following structure:

Add the personalized line from your google sheets.

Wondering how you're solving X (being whatever your tool does really well).

Our customers (or beta users if you're new) are using us to solve X and achieve Y.

We're helping company ABC do this today and would love to share how we can help achieve something similar for your {{company}}.

Here is a demo that shows how: {{demo_link}}. Is there a merit in continuing this conversation?

• In my case, I'm building and selling a product that allows customers to actually create interactive product demos as part of their outbound effort. Putting that demo link directly drives up my reply rates and adds something valuable right from my first email.
• The goal here is simple, concise, and clear email that isn't too pushy, provides enough to get them thinking and if you've done a good job of identifying the right folks, the message should resonate. Don't expect anyone to buy in the first email. Just get them reply back to you in hopes of learning more!
• After this, create 4 more emails that are meant to be used as follow ups. Use those emails as a way to build on your first email. In my example my second email has the following structure:

I'm curious to know if you've considered what the impact of X can do to help you solve Y.

One of our earliest customers (name drop if you have permission) saw an Z result after using us to solve Y.

I'd love to share more if there is mutual interest here.

• Notice how I'm not just using these follow-up emails as a way to ask "oh its me again, just checking in" or anything low effort like that. Make each follow-up add some additional value on top of your other emails.
• Space the emails out so if someone hasn't replied, the next email will be sent 3 days after. Most sequencing tools have this easily configurable so just play with the settings.
• Have 5 emails in total and your last email can be a break-up email that tells the prospect that you won't follow up again seeing as there is no interest but you'd love to hear from them if they're in the market to explore further. Don't be petty. Keep it polite and move on!

Measuring success and parting words

• These tools also let you track opens, link clicks etc... When someone opens you email more than 3 times (even if they don't reply), just manual send them a follow-up with some customer proof on top of that first email. The point isn't to book a meeting here, just get them to reply back and share anything about their current situation or interest.
• Be consistent. Try to spend 1-1.5 hour every day just monitoring the stats, finding new contacts and adding them to your sequences. If you can send 20 new emails a day, you'll get a steady pipeline within the first 2 weeks of few prospects who are interested.
• Once you get comfortable, this becomes very quick thing to just set up because the rules are simple, you understand your customer type, and know exactly what type of emails perform better.
• Best part is even if you hire someone after to do this, they can literally follow your playbook and get started in very short amount of time (if you plan to outsource this to some VA) or even part-time employee.