[Journey] Cold Emailing - Going Manual - $10K MRR

[INCC]

Shoutout to @roydan as his journey motivated me to pick this up again.

Short intro:

I did manual cold emailing some 5 years ago with mediocre results.

Very simple setup: I had my Gmail in my phone and used mobile data and handpicked the businesses to email - A mundane and painstaking process, but it always worked.

The good thing: These companies that I managed to convert have been ordering from me and reaching out for the past 5 years... not many of them but there were clients who paid me $500-$1000 every 1-2 months and that adds up if you have just 10 companies in the line.

Current plan:

I will do everything using my Antidetect software + mobile proxies + Gmails.

I buy aged Gmails around $12 a pop - bad experiences with this seller before, but this is the best thing I got right now next to warming up the accounts myself, which I really don't want to bother with. The 2 test accounts I got for $25 seemed to work, fingers crossed they are all as good.

20 aged Gmails (around $250) so have to take a risk here.

Not going to push out more than 10 emails per day per Gmail account.

I am going to hire a Virtual Assistant for lead scouting, helps to save me a ton of time.

To minimize risks, I will still do some soft warmups to the accounts I get... Spamming via Gmail is getting really hard lately as I noticed that my main email account was blacklisted for backlink outreach requests a while ago and I didn't even send that many emails so hopefully 10 a day they let slip.

Recurring revenue milestones:

$2500
$5000
$10000

Anything over that is crazy as I am physically incapable of serving more customers than that, and that extra $10K goes a long way right now.

Should the seller deliver me a bad batch, the journey will be paused until I work on my own accounts.

I'll try to update this once a week... still a lot of work to do; Antidetect and profiles need to be set up and configured, and a VA needs to be hired too.

Will keep you updated.

Cheers!

 

[back2form]

Best wishes for your email marketing journey @INCC

 

[roydan]

I'm gonna take some of your setup into mine.
Best of luck!

 

[INCC]

Best wishes for your email marketing journey @INCC

Thanks mate.

I'm gonna take some of your setup into mine.
Best of luck!

You gonna hire a VA too?

It's a wise move.

 

[roydan]

You gonna hire a VA too?

It's a wise move.

I'm such a noob, I just emailed from my real email to people I got off Apollo.
I need to rethink the entire process.

 

[INCC]

I'm such a noob, I just emailed from my real email to people I got off Apollo.

A couple of years ago, Ninja Outreach and Apollo were used by everyone so I've always thought those leads are so used already.

Clutch might be a better place to find businesses, especially if you need them from Israel and want to approach them in Hebrew. Not sure if this is your strategy but those companies are easier to approach in their native languages, and they are also likely less spammed.

 

[roydan]

A couple of years ago, Ninja Outreach and Apollo were used by everyone so I've always thought those leads are so used already.

Clutch might be a better place to find businesses, especially if you need them from Israel and want to approach them in Hebrew. Not sure if this is your strategy but those companies are easier to approach in their native languages, and they are also likely less spammed.

Nah I'm not that interested in the Israeli market. Mostly focused on US, UK, AU, and CA.
Gonna need to do the leg work, I guess, and start over.

Didn't mean to hijack your thread.

 

[INCC]

Nah I'm not that interested in the Israeli market. Mostly focused on US, UK, AU, and CA.
Gonna need to do the leg work, I guess, and start over.

Didn't mean to hijack your thread.

It's all good.

 

[SuSocial]

Yooo @INCC, you are here
Good luck with your Journey.

 

[INCC]

Yooo @INCC, you are here
Good luck with your Journey.

I am yes... There are already 100 of us here.

Thanks mate!

 

[Champagne]

It sounds like you already have some good experience. I will follow this for sure. Good luck!

 

[UnusualSubstance]

I'm very interested in cold outreach.

Will be following this eagerly.

Good luck with the journey, Incc!

 

[INCC]

The milestone of $10k was crushed in May already without sending a single cold email.. I just messaged old customers with an offer:

A whole lot of work to do to complete all this.

What I figured is that I couldn't do more than 3 months like this to begin with... there is too much work to be done and I am physically not able to sustain this pace even if I wanted to.

Will have to train a VA to do things for me, as it is too much work for a single person to do... but even that seems a whole lot of work right now... burnout is near.

 

[t2van]

The milestone of $10k was crushed in May already without sending a single cold email.. I just messaged old customers with an offer:

View attachment 2520


A whole lot of work to do to complete all this.

What I figured is that I couldn't do more than 3 months like this to begin with... there is too much work to be done and I am physically not able to sustain this pace even if I wanted to.

Will have to train a VA to do things for me, as it is too much work for a single person to do... but even that seems a whole lot of work right now... burnout is near.

Have you not tapped up older customers before or "previous" customers then?

You should craft up some service or offering you can rotate on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

Even if you got just a small % to regularly pay every month or two similar figures even half what you generated above you would more than cover some staff member and some over heads. That leaves the new staff member to manage the old or deliver what ever is offered.

You can focus on new customer acquisition and once you have that dialled in bring someone in to do that side of it and shift your focus elsewhere to keep the growth growing..

 

[UnusualSubstance]

The milestone of $10k was crushed in May already without sending a single cold email.. I just messaged old customers with an offer:

View attachment 2520

Nice warm outreach there.

Makes sense to start with old customers aka people who know and trust you already.

I mean most people have a friend's list on Facebook of a few hundred, email contacts over the years and social media followers where you can DM them.

Imagine not being able to convert old customers and then jumping into cold outreach.

Good update and great work.

 

[INCC]

Have you not tapped up older customers before or "previous" customers then?

I did it with little to no success because I use a service panel for my customers and I reached out to my customers through that panel.

I sent the same copy-paste message to hundreds of customers and it went to spam I think because I got no responses... back in the day the service panel didn't have any authority either and its a whole different thing today what it was back then so reaching out to them is made conveniently easier now.

Even if you got just a small % to regularly pay every month or two similar figures even half what you generated above you would more than cover some staff member and some over heads. That leaves the new staff member to manage the old or deliver what ever is offered.

I know it needs to be done that way eventually because I have hit my max capacity.

But taking a VA on board isn't as easy as it sounds.

You need to train them, monitor them, and you risk losing them once they master your craft and want to work for themselves instead so the VA needs to be someone off from the general IM/SEO space... and from where do you find people like that? It becomes another HUGE hassle... cheap, reliable people don't grow on trees.

Good update and great work.

Thanks mate!!!

 

[t2van]

You need to train them, monitor them, and you risk losing them once they master your craft and want to work for themselves instead so the VA needs to be someone off from the general IM/SEO space... and from where do you find people like that? It becomes another HUGE hassle... cheap, reliable people don't grow on trees.

This is a super hard one to answer really. It does come down to trust.

The biggest question I got really is:

1. Are you trying to train them to replace you?

2. Train them do deal with a specific section?

I think most people with the first hire go in and make the mistake with trying to train them to do everything you do and you in effect giving them to tools to go and compete against you, and to be honest. Why wouldn't they? If your paying someone to do your job for you and your giving them 10% of whats on offer.

They will just cut and run and go get the other 90% doing exactly what they doing now.

This is where the fear of them cutting and running comes in if you ask me. I've been there and done this.

I think you would be better off doing number 2.

Just train someone to do a small section of what your doing now. This is why you need to figure out where your time is going. To train them up id start basic and just record your screen now with voice overs.

Break these videos down into 10min short bursts they can open back up and watch over later. It's better to do it like this because someone will get stuck in the same are ALL the time and if there is a video say 3. XYZ they can just repeat that rather than trying to find it in a 60min long video.

As your confidence in them grows and the trust (it's two ways also!) trust them and expose them to another side to continue developing them. Then when they are doing two lots. You go back and bring in a new person to do task 1 and the first hire is doing job 1 and 2.

And so on. It's so tricky to get right.

But id not get hung up on finding the perfect person, you want a clone of your self. It's not out there sorry, and it sucks to hear that because Id love 20 of me in the office.

Welcome to DM me exactly what your doing and I'll try and help break that down into a job.

 

[Aristocratic]

This is a super hard one to answer really. It does come down to trust.

The biggest question I got really is:

1. Are you trying to train them to replace you?

2. Train them do deal with a specific section?

I think most people with the first hire go in and make the mistake with trying to train them to do everything you do and you in effect giving them to tools to go and compete against you, and to be honest. Why wouldn't they? If your paying someone to do your job for you and your giving them 10% of whats on offer.

They will just cut and run and go get the other 90% doing exactly what they doing now.

This is where the fear of them cutting and running comes in if you ask me. I've been there and done this.

I think you would be better off doing number 2.

Just train someone to do a small section of what your doing now. This is why you need to figure out where your time is going. To train them up id start basic and just record your screen now with voice overs.

Break these videos down into 10min short bursts they can open back up and watch over later. It's better to do it like this because someone will get stuck in the same are ALL the time and if there is a video say 3. XYZ they can just repeat that rather than trying to find it in a 60min long video.

As your confidence in them grows and the trust (it's two ways also!) trust them and expose them to another side to continue developing them. Then when they are doing two lots. You go back and bring in a new person to do task 1 and the first hire is doing job 1 and 2.

And so on. It's so tricky to get right.

But id not get hung up on finding the perfect person, you want a clone of your self. It's not out there sorry, and it sucks to hear that because Id love 20 of me in the office.

Welcome to DM me exactly what your doing and I'll try and help break that down into a job.

GREAT FUCKING ADVICE MATE!!



Good luck @INCC