5-min guide: Intro to cold emailing

This guide assumes you've already chosen a target market, and identified a problem that you want to explore or solve. If you haven't, check out this little framework I have for startup ideas: https://twitter.com/Gourave_V/status/1550119941516378113

Finding the right people to email

There are tons of companies out there with databases of contact information. LinkedIn and apollo.io are tools that I use.

You can use filters to narrow it down to your target market and find people to contact.

I highly recommend starting with LinkedIn. From my experience, it has the most accurate info and you don't have to worry about emails being sent to spam.

Writing a cold email

Subject line

There's lots of advice online about subject lines and how to make subject lines that get more open rates. I've tried a few, but I've seen more success by keeping it simple.

I've had good open rates with the following:
"Hi {{first_name}}, I'm doing research on {{subject}}"
"Hi {{first_name}}, how do you handle {{subject}}?"

Just because one subject line works for one person, it might not work for another. Try to a/b test subject lines and see what gets the highest open rate.

Body

Intro

Start off with a short intro (1-2 sentences max). Introduce yourself, what you do and the reason you're sending the email.

"My name is Gourave. I'm an entrepreneur on a mission to {{subject}}".

Content

Ideally you would personalize your email to the person you're sending it to. Take a look at what they post on social media, the online groups they're in, and even things they've done in the past like podcast appearances, books they've written, etc. We want to use that information to write a relevant email.

"I really enjoyed reading the article you posted on Blah about X. I know that it's difficult to do X because of reasons Y and Z, which is why I'm building {{company_name}}."

Call to action (CTA)

Always add a CTA at the end of the email. A link to book a meeting (calendly link) or something like "Are you free on Thursday at 2:30pm for a demo?" is perfect.

Templates

You can find some email templates here for inspiration: https://hunter.io/templates/sales/prospecting

Following up

Following up on an email is the only real "hack" I know of. I've booked more meetings by following up than I have through the first email.

Why does it work so well? Your first email might reach the person at the wrong time. They may want to reply, but they might be busy.

Take a look at this blog post Onur made for some more info https://nureply.com/blog/email-follow-ups

Keep it simple.

Here's an example of a follow up email I would write:

"Hi {{first_name}},

I just wanted to follow up on my last email about {{subject_of_last_email}}.

If it makes sense to talk, you can schedule a 15 min chat here {{link_to_calendly}}.

If not, could you please let me know who the appropriate person for me to talk to is?

Regards,
Gourave"

Will people judge me?

No. Think about the last time you got a cold email.

How did you react?
Do you remember the name of the person that sent it?

You probably ignored it.

Looking for more info?

Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/Gourave_V

You can also DM me. I'd love to help out!