Welcome to the new episode of the Cold Email Podcast, where Jeremy from QuickMail.io and Jack from Emails That Sell go further into the nitty-gritty of cold emailing.
In a dozen of quick questions and answers you will learn what the #1 goal of cold email is, and get useful tips for building trust and starting a positive conversation with your leads. Tune in now!
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:
– What is the main goal of cold email?
– Why is cold email only a single step towards your end goal of getting more sales?
– Cold email Vs. Direct marketing
– An example of cold email that successfully starts a conversation
– The most common mistake you can make that puts your cold email straight into the spam category
– How to approach your leads even when you’re absolutely certain that you have the right solution for their problem?
– What to do if they don’t reply and how to follow up without repeating yourself?
– The risk of trying to get as many responses as possible and how to avoid it
– Are negative responses really negative and how to benefit from them?
– What mindset should we adopt in order to start a positive conversation with leads?
Shownotes
If you want to learn more and see a full case study of a campaign that successfully started conversations, download a free PDF HERE that we put together from our Tokyo Project
Transcript:
– [Jeremy] What’s up? This is Jeremy founder of QuickMail.IO.
– [Jack] And this is Jack from Emails That Sell.
– [Jeremy] And today we’re going to looking at episode 2. The question of the day is what the goal of a cold email? So, Jack. Tell us! What the goal of a cold email?
– [Jack] In it’s simplest form? The goal of a cold email is to start a conversation.
– [Jeremy] That’s it.
– [Jack] That’s it!
– [Jeremy] All right! It’s cool. It’s starting conversation but hold on a second. My goal is to get more sales not to chit-chat.
– [Jack] For sure. At the end of the day you’re trying to get something. You’re growing your network. You’re trying to get funded. You’re trying to test a new market. Whatever it may be. But sending that cold email is just a first step towards achieving those things. It’s not, it shouldn’t be the goal of your cold email. That’s your end goal.
– [Jeremy] What’s difference? Isn’t that exactly the same?
– [Jack] No those are two different things. So the goal of your cold email is one thing. And your end result that you’re trying to achieve is another. And it’s important to keep in mind that the goal of your cold email is just a step towards your angle. And you’re gonna be a lot more successful if you treat cold emails as a single step in that process as opposed to going for the kill right away.
– [Jeremy] What if you only have one step? Ya know? What about direct marketing? I heard like people are doing great! You keep hearing that on internet. You know, they send just one email. People are interested, they go, they buy, job done! Right?
– [Jack] Sure. Look, the idea of pressing send and having people click a buy button and send you money is really appealing. But we’re giving advice that works 90% of the time and 90% of the cases out there. And more often than not, your business isn’t special. It’s going to work out that taking a direct marketing approach to cold email is just not going to give you the results that viewing it as a conversation starter will.
– [Jeremy] So, okay I got it. Give me an example of an email that starts a conversation on the right foot at least.
– [Jack] Sure. So let’s take an example. Let’s say I’m a marketing consultant and I help businesses expand into new markets. So I could write an email like this that just starts a conversation. Notice how it doesn’t go for the sale at all. It could say, “Hey Jeremy. I just helped a similar company expand into Latin America and I noticed that you’re hiring a sales team down there. So I wanted to find out if this is something worth considering at your company.”
– [Jeremy] That’s definitely not the type of cold email I’m receiving daily.
– [Jack] Which is a great thing which tells you if you’re standing out from most of the junk emails that you get on a daily basis, you’re doing something right. And at the end of the day, it’s probably the reason why most people think that cold email’s spam. ‘Cause most cold emails go for the kill right away and sound sales-y as opposed to conversational.
– [Jeremy] Okay. Let’s picture this. Right? Let’s say I did my research very very well. So I know for a fact that the people I contact already have this problem. It’s gonna just skip the step and just go ahead and offer my services right away. Would that work?
– [Jack] You might be able to skip asking a particular question in an email. But you can never skip building trust during a sales process. That’s why it’s best to build it up front and if your first impression leaves them feeling like you’re just another salesperson who is going for the sale away, it’s going to be hard to reverse that feeling later on. So instead sending a conversational email that helps them feel understood will just start your conversation off on the right foot. And it’ll give you the best chance of leading to whatever your end goal is.
– [Jeremy] Okay. What if I send my first email and they don’t reply. So I’m going to send a second email, like a follow-up. Should the goal of the follow-up be exactly the same? It’s still to start a conversation or it’s a different goal?
– [Jack] From now until the last email you ever send when it comes to cold emails, always start a conversation. So, yes. Whether it’s the first touch or the tenth. It doesn’t matter. Each email’s goal is to start a conversation. But that doesn’t mean that your call to action has to be the same in every single email you sent.
– [Jeremy] All right. But if the goal is to start a conversation then maybe I want to explore ways to trick people into replying. Could be like sending, “Hey. Found a bug with your software.” Where I didn’t so I say, “I’m disappointed because we didn’t connect.” You know those sort of trickery or adding, my favorite one, is adding a R-E in front of the email. Just to pretend I’ve already been replying to an existing email I haven’t sent. Will that work?
– [Jack] It would probably work to get you more replies. But remember, it would be like winning the battle but losing the war. Because you’re setting the rest of your sales follow-up for failure. Remember you’re building a relationship here. So if your whole conversation is based on a lie, it will be nearly impossible to recover from that later on. So it may get you more replies but you probably won’t be hitting your goals if you start a conversation based on anything but the truth.
– [Jeremy] Fair enough. Fair enough. What if my sales team gets a ton of responses but they all sort of negative. Should it be my goal really to starting a positive conversation? Instead of just starting a conversation?
– [Jack] I get it. You want sales so getting a bunch of negative replies can seem like no help at all. But truth is the negative reply is going to give you two things. One it will tell you who you should be not spending your time pursuing. And two, it’s gonna give you the feedback that will help you improve your campaign. So whether you get a reply that leads to sale, a referral or even a hard no, you’re gonna be better off for it.
– [Jeremy] If everyone just replying to me “take me off your list” surely my goal is not reach. Is it?
– [Jack] So, actually it wasn’t reached. The goal of a cold email is to start a conversation not to overcome rejections. So “take me off your list” doesn’t start a conversation but I’ll say just ’cause you haven’t reached your goal doesn’t mean you should abandon it. Instead keep at it, just iterate on your approach. And you can use your ratio between positive and negative replies to gauge if your new strategy’s working better or not.
– [Jeremy] So do you have any good resources on how to approach starting conversation with cold prospects?
– [Jack] Sure I got two things. Right off the bat, when it comes to writing the email that’s gonna start a conversation it helps to picture that prospect in your mind while you’re writing the email. As if they’re a close friend or trusted colleague. Because you’re going to, if you’re talking to them as if you’ve already got a relationship going with them then the email’s going to have a much warmer tone. It’ll be a lot different than if someone’s just sending a regular sales cold email. And the second thing is if you wanted to see a full-case study where Jeremy and I put together a campaign that we use to start to conversations. You can download a free PDF that we put together from our Tokyo project and the link’s in the show notes.
– [Jeremy] Awesome. Thanks a lot, Jack.
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