Reasons why a cold email isn't converting?
I've recently started cold emailing prospects for StandupWizard and although it's being opened (and often re-opened) by prospects (~30%), as well as being clicked through at a decent rate (~8-10%), I haven't had much conversion and no actual replies to the emails as well. I have also followed up and the follow up emails have been getting a very similar open rate and CTR.
I was wondering if anyone else has had this experience and what they did to adjust in order to get actual conversion? My guess so far is:
- Potentially the email is not explaining the product well enough so they click through thinking it's something else?
- The website isn't converting well once they land (although it seems to convert inbound traffic fairly well so I'm not sure that's necessarily it)
- I am contacting the wrong type of prospects. I'm currently contacting CTOs at tech companies as most of our current customers are in similar positions and from experience they typically make the decision for this type of tool
Would love any suggestions or insight to ways I can hopefully tackle / tweak the approach!
Trending on Indie Hackers
Aimfox launched on Product Hunt today! 🤩
Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts
AI is Coming to Fuzen in January! 🚀
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
Without seeing the emails it's hard to say - but the point of that first email isn't to close the deal, it's to get them to the next stage (which is probably a call, or at the very least a reply).
What's the call-to-action at the end of the email?
Ah that may be part of the problem, the end piece of the email looks like (after explaining the product a sentence prior)
I think part of the problem is I'm not sure what the next stage should be since its a lower priced / simplistic product, does that still warrant a call?
If you've explained the product (or perhaps more importantly, why they should care), the goal should be to get them on a call. For your first customers it absolutely still warrants a call - even if it just helps you understand their problem more. Time spent speaking to customers is almost never wasted!
The time spent speaking to customers is not a waste at all, it builds your relationship with your customers and it's very important to your business.
Great way to look at it, I think I've discounted customer discussion during the cold email stage but there's probably a lot to learn from them
I put templates that gave me 16% reply rate into denisshatalin.com/10K
If you want me to help you create custom outreach messages, just drop a dm on Twitter.
Great point about pushing the tool in the first email, I think I've been trying to get a clickthrough and not a reply which seems a bit backwards now that I think about it.
Hi Ryan. I have a few suggestions to try - see attached. I wish you well. Cheers, Phil… https://abitgamey.substack.com/p/cold-emails-to-hot-leads
Figure out a way to demonstrate your tool's value for your prospect in your first email.
I've recently launched https://twitter.com/9_by_16
Where we're helping YouTubers grow by repurposing their content on TikTok and other short-form video platforms.
In our first email, we make a repurposed TikTok for them - (Demonstration)
We're currently closing at 4% without a single phone call.
Are you using personalization?
Is the benefit backed up by a 'metric' of some kind?
I got advice recently about cold emails and that was the number 1 thing that stood out t me. Having a case study type metric.
E.g.
"Hey name,
Saw your post about TOPIC recently. I liked your take on ABC, something I haven't seen that much myself.
Recently I released a new product that helps teams run effective async standups. One user found that consistency increased 63% which upped their production velocity 25%+, too.
Is improving async standups something you guys might be interested in?
If so, we could chat sometime early next week. Will send some time suggestions.
Name"
This is awesome, thank you! There may be a bit of a challenge finding a calculable metric in that sense based on the product but I think that would make a huge difference and something I plan to investigate. Really appreciate the idea.
Makes sense man. I hope it goes well.
Also, if you wanted, took down notes about the advice I was given here: https://benjaminboman.com/how-to-write-better-cold-email-alex-berman/ if you wanted to read them as well.
Adding 'case study' type metrics has been a game changer for me too. It's how I book most of my interviews these days (with a relatively unknown show), by using that framework.
Where do you get the email addresses from? Just business websites?
Do you use any software for sending and tracking the emails?
Most of them we're qualified using Apollo and then just Hubspot as far as sending / tracking goes
I get a similar result too. Not the most fruitful. What I've been doing recently is finding a suitable event on LinkedIn and targeting the attendees with relevant messages. I've experienced a higher message to call ratio doing this.
That's a great idea, it sounds like other channels may be more useful
Not entirely related, but I went to your site and found your landing page to be excellent. Almost tried it myself if it weren't for the fact that we are a team of 3 and actually enjoy the daily calls >.<
My 2 cents: it was a bit hard to realize that there's a free trial (only a light grey text below the title on the pricing page). I know the CTA on the home page is "Add to Slack", but I think I would add "free" somewhere.
I really appreciate that feedback and totally fair about the daily calls! It tends to be targeted towards larger teams where those daily calls start to become tedious haha.
Also great point about the trial, I will try and make that a bit more visible.
Can you give more stats an actual emails? How many have you sent? Possibly issue is your product is v low price point for cold email.
That's something I had considered as well since it seems like a demo / call doesn't necessarily make the most sense as the action item given the product itself. I sent 200 in the first batch and had a 25% open rate with a 8% CTR.
I have been experimenting over the last 8 weeks with cold emailing to B2B contacts.
I have emailed 200 contacts (and 300 emails in total) and received 2 video calls from them.
I have gotten 2 replies of not interested.
I am using mixmax to track opens, about 50% open (albeit this is hard to gauge fully).
I have set 4 campaigns so far - each with a different lightweight objectives.
...tbh from my reading, I should be aiming to have 7 emails before trying to get a click-through CTA. All my CTAs are weak. ie. my email signature has links to landing pages and the pdfs I attach are informative (at least a little bit).
So my goals are mostly to get repeat opens.
Emails 6-7 I am aiming to get onto an initial "chat about industry problems" video call and I am aiming for about 2-3 video calls over 4 weeks and guiding them to a trial before trying to get a close.
For my product, it would be a big deal to get people to trail - especially as I'm doing B2B.
Thanks for reading(I wrote this in a hurry, pls forgive any typoes or direct tone).
S
This is really helpful, thanks for writing that up. It sounds like I need to think a bit longer term with the cold emailing and beyond just a single email at a time. Right now I've primarily sent the first round + a follow up and left it at that, but it looks like I may need to put some thought into additional follow up.
Do you email a tech based audience?
Yeah, right now outreach has been focused on CTO roles at tech companies
Not sure this will be successful ever. This persona has the huge problem with email overload each day, unlike others. The email you send is NOT read.