Any recommendations or best practices regarding email cold outreach?

[roydan]

I started doing some cold outreach recently, and I'm trying to find some reliable suggestions to apply to my email sequence.

So far I have a sequence of 4 emails that aim to send users to a case study, and later on to a meeting or a free audit/consultation about their Google Ads account.

Now, I'm not sure what would be the best practices regarding headlines and content, what is considered a good open rate, click rate, etc..

I'm so clueless I'm not even sure what to ask for.

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated, whether it's books to read, articles, or your own experience (preferred, of course)

 

[Spy]

Which tool are you using to automate the email sequence?

 

[roydan]

Which tool are you using to automate the email sequence?

SalesBlink. I'm not entirely sold on it, yet..

 

[Spy]

SalesBlink. I'm not entirely sold on it, yet..

I’ve done cold outreach before (back in 2017) where I manually sent emails. The biggest challenge I faced was that most of the emails I found were support email, not direct contacts of decision-makers. These usually get ignored ( speaking from personal experience )

One possible solution is to create your first email sequence in a way that states that you would like to connect with marketing team / decision-maker.

Another approach could be LinkedIn outreach. You can often find the founder or key team members there and connect with them directly. I haven't personally tried this, but it’s an idea I had in the past.

Also, you might want to check out Smartlead AI and Instantly AI. I haven’t used them myself, but I’ve heard some good things about both tools.

 

[roydan]

I’ve done cold outreach before (back in 2017) where I manually sent emails. The biggest challenge I faced was that most of the emails I found were support email, not direct contacts of decision-makers. These usually get ignored ( speaking from personal experience )

One possible solution is to create your first email sequence in a way that states that you would like to connect with marketing team / decision-maker.

Another approach could be LinkedIn outreach. You can often find the founder or key team members there and connect with them directly. I haven't personally tried this, but it’s an idea I had in the past.

Also, you might want to check out Smartlead AI and Instantly AI. I haven’t used them myself, but I’ve heard some good things about both tools.

Actually I don't have much of a problem so far reaching the decision makers, I think I'm pretty much on my target audience there.

I started with manual outreach but I burned down pretty quickly, decided to go toward a more automated way, using a very simple opening (hi what's up? Sort of email).

LinkedIn is very hard for me, not really sure why, but I consider just running an inmail campaign on LinkedIn ads to see how it goes.

I'll look into Smartlead and instantly AI. Thanks!

 

[polecat]

Lemlist works pretty well overall for doing that sort of stuff. Support great as well https://www.lemlist.com/?r=0

 

[polecat]

Maybe abit to basic but it can work as well plus pretty cheap https://yamm.com/

 

[t2van]

Linkedin is going to be a waste.

1. Your reaching out to companies where
- A they cant authorise the spend or a 3rd part without internal
- B they big enough an agency is in place

2. It's different if you want to target companies in the low 4 figure a month turn over, anything higher is a waste of space. BUT also the problem with this strategy is making sure they actually have the money available to cover your fee and still maintain a profit.

So personally for what you want to offer assume PPC services I think your fighting a loosing battle with LinkedIn.


I get 1000s of case studies and that daily I ignore them. I prefer the more formal / informal. Where it feels like they got to know a bit about me and not use copied my name and used a meta tag title in the email from the website which has nothing to do with the email in the first place.

I also hate the maybe you missed my email or this and that - no I just binned it.

I like it when people keep it more informal and actually want to help out, wants to give some value back to me and feels like you taken the time to get to know me. I know thats hard automated but those are the ones I reply back to. I mean I don't or hardly close with them after but I do reply back..

 

[roydan]

I actually don't think LinkedIn is a total waste of time, and I'll try to make my case.

1. Your reaching out to companies where
- A they cant authorise the spend or a 3rd part without internal
- B they big enough an agency is in place

A is a problem
B is not that big of a problem because my case study made waves in the industry I target, and lead to one of the biggest acquisitions in the last couple of years, so I believe it should open a door for me even if there's an agency in place. In 9/10 times I can kick their ass and in the other 1/10 I just improve upon them a bit.
There are tons of agencies in this space but very few that really know what they're doing rather than just copy/paste old strategies and cliches they learned a couple of years ago.

2. It's different if you want to target companies in the low 4 figure a month turn over, anything higher is a waste of space. BUT also the problem with this strategy is making sure they actually have the money available to cover your fee and still maintain a profit.

So personally for what you want to offer assume PPC services I think your fighting a loosing battle with LinkedIn.

This niche, in most cases, people don't look at Google Ads with less than $10K/mo, and if they do, they plan on growing fast because otherwise they can give up and save the money.

LinkedIn have been hard for me, but I don't think it's because of the audience, I honestly there's something wrong with how I approach this.
That being said, I don't really mind doing that in addition to to outreaching the same people through emails.

I get 1000s of case studies and that daily I ignore them. I prefer the more formal / informal. Where it feels like they got to know a bit about me and not use copied my name and used a meta tag title in the email from the website which has nothing to do with the email in the first place.

Would you not click the link to read a case study titled like this?
This is how we doubled [big company from the industry]'s revenue from Google Ads while cutting their ad spend by XX%?
In my head, it's like having a glimpse into one of the biggest campaigns in the industry.
Am I missing something or does this just sound like an over-promise?

I also hate the maybe you missed my email or this and that - no I just binned it.

Yeah, I'm thinking about playing on that.
"Hi again,
You may have missed my last email, and by 'missed' I mean 'threw it to the trash or ignored it', but..."
Probably a bit too annoying still. Need to figure that out.

I like it when people keep it more informal and actually want to help out, wants to give some value back to me and feels like you taken the time to get to know me. I know thats hard automated but those are the ones I reply back to. I mean I don't or hardly close with them after but I do reply back..

Yeah, I can't speak corporate either, even if I wanted to. I keep things casual but geeky, thinking that those this will resonate with will probably be a lot more fun to work with.

Thankfully, I can afford to be selective with clients and work with those I can really help, while having fun working with the person.

 

[t2van]

I disagree with most of the reply but I'll save that for another time.

It's only experience and obviously a % will convert but it will be low.

Anywhow..

Would you not click the link to read a case study titled like this?
This is how we doubled [big company from the industry]'s revenue from Google Ads while cutting their ad spend by XX%?
In my head, it's like having a glimpse into one of the biggest campaigns in the industry.
Am I missing something or does this just sound like an over-promise?


Yeah, I'm thinking about playing on that.
"Hi again,
You may have missed my last email, and by 'missed' I mean 'threw it to the trash or ignored it', but..."
Probably a bit too annoying still. Need to figure that out.

Nah I run no ppc.

I get almost 15-20 emails like this DAILY
If I ran ads I bet it would be 2x-3x that amount.

I read one report they all the same. Like I said I get loads of reports daily what's different to yours from the rest?

Sorry but it's nothing new.

It's an over promised over uses hype.

How you fix that I dunno.