How to do cold email (the only guide you need)
February 9, 2024
How to do cold email (the only guide you need)
Compared to other client acquisition channels, cold email is the most obvious option that you can go with, if you haven't already.
It is the only a plausible option that allows you to reach thousands of decision makers at companies that are directly within your ICP without learning a whole new ad platform, spending thousands on courses/software, and wasting hours of your time trying to re-invent the wheel.
You just have to do what works, and I'm here to tell you - COLD EMAIL WORKS.
It works hilariously well, actually. If you do it correctly.
This is the most in-depth & honest cold email guide that you'll see in 2024.
Before we begin, it's worth mentioning that you can watch the 89-minute overview of this whole process here: (for the people who don't like reading)
This step-by-step overview will show you every single part of our service that we provide at Infinite Bookings.
This will apply directly to you if you are an:
service based business owner
looking to scale and bring on more clients consistently
without having to put thousands of dollars on the line
Why listen?
6x increase in booked calls for Fred using our cold email outreach.
Ben sells high-ticket marketing, everything from website design to paid ads.
"We got our first sales call within 3 days of signing the contract."
Prerequisites
Setting up your agency for success with cold outreach.
Bad agency before cold outreach = bad agency after cold outreach.
The bare bones of your agency must be optimized before you even think about amplifying customer acquisition with cold outreach.
This means taking care of your:
offer, ICP, risk reversal, etc
social presence
landing page
service delivery
sales process
Once again, if you have a bad agency before cold outreach, it will still be bad after cold outreach.
OFFER
Think about a 2024 Lamborghini Huracan - brand spanking new off the lot. 0 miles on the dash.
This car has an MSRP of roughly $300,000. Not cheap by any means.
Now, if I told you that I will sell you that exact Lamborghini today for $10,000 - what would you do?
Well, I know that I wouldn't even hesitate one second to take it off the lot.
It's a complete "no-brainer" offer. It makes logical sense for me to move forward with this deal.
Your goal is to replicate the same feeling with your leads when they hear about your offer.
The whole point of being so specific with your offering is:
for the prospect to visualize the exact result of your service
become entertained by the offer
feel stupid saying no to it
The benefits of having a no-brainer offer:
Quicker sales cycles
Sign higher quality clients
Charge more for your service
More sales opportunities (people interested in your service)
Examples (bad vs. good):
Key Points Of A Lamborghini Offer
Specific ICP - what type of companies are you selling to?
First, you need to understand the type of companies that you will be getting in touch with.
Lawyers, eCommerce Brands, Software Companies, Property Managers, etc.
—
Then you need to identify different sub-niches within the broader market.
Lawyers: Injury Lawyers, Business Lawyers, Family Lawyers
eCommerce Brands: Supplement Brands, Household Accessories, Office Supplies
Software Companies: AI Software Companies, Fintech Software Companies, eCommerce Software Companies
Now, you are clear on the exact companies you are getting in touch with.
Why do you need these sub-niches?
Having sub-niches within the broader market that you are targeting will help you personalize a message to these companies and make it EVEN more relevant to them. (high chances of positive response)
We will do more segmentation based on technologies, location, funding, etc once we are building lead lists.
Quantifiable result - the jackpot in the casino.
Now, you need to figure out what you are going to be delivering for these people.
If you run a SMMA for personal trainers, you don't just "do social media."
The personal trainer doesn't buy from you just so that you can post a few times a week and make their Instagram followers increase.
They are paying you to bring them more clients to train 1-1, or to buy their online coaching. ($$$)
You don't sell the service, you sell the result that you get from the service.
This becomes the promise that you make to your clients on what you will deliver.
There are three different categories that your promises can fall into:
Save Time -
We'll save your marketing team 15 hours a week in repeatable tasks using our ***** automation system. You only pay if it works.
Save Money -
We help DTC e-commerce brands decrease their customer acquisition cost by 50% within 30 days using our **** ad optimization strategy, and we only take a percentage of the savings.
Make Money -
We'll increase your Shopify website's conversion rate by 15% in under one month using our CRO-optimum strategy, or you don't pay a single dime.
Remember, the bolder the claim you can make (must be believable), the more people will be interested by your offer and be willing to work with you under those conditions.
Timeframe - how long will it take?
The prospect needs to know when they can expecrt to get the promise you just made for them…
Will it take 24 hours? A month? A year?
How long does it take on average?
These are all things that helps the prospect visualize the value of your offer and how it can benefit their business directly.
Unique Mechanism - why should i go with you?
This should be more than a weird name that you make for your process/strategy. (you don't even need a name - that's the least important part)
This should be the reason why they choose to go with you over your competitor.
What "special sauce" you have that your competitor can't deliver for them?
Let the people know.
You should have a description/whitepaper of this process somewhere easily accessible so that people can understand the details if they are interested.
Risk-reversal (optional) - what is there to lose?
Remember, these are cold prospects that you are asking to send over thousands of dollars over the internet.
They need to feel some sort of security that minimizes the risk for them if things were to go south. (people are very skeptical around agencies, as you probably know by now)
That's why, being able to say:
we work on a performance basis
only pay if you see results
or you don't pay
or your money back
etc
will seriously increase every single metric you can think of. (booked meeting rate, close rate, etc)
The goal is for the prospect to feel as if there is nothing (especially money) that they can lose.
Alright, so now you have the base complete - your no brainer offer. Let's move to the next step…
SOCIAL PRESENCE
When you send an outbound email to a cold prospect, they don't trust you at all - you can't change that.
But… you can change what happens when they search up your name or your company name.
The quickest and easiest way for them to start trusting you and thinking of you as an authority in whatever space you are is to EXIST on the internet.
This means producing content and exerting marketing material on social media and your website in order to increase the likelihood that the people will find your content about said topic.
Depending on the type of companies you are reaching out to, you should tailor your content strategy to them. This includes:
These things may not bring you a direct revenue benefit, but they will help you increase authority throughout the lead gen, sales, and fulfillment process.
Example: Compare the two different service providers; imagine you got the same exact outreach email from them:
❌ Service Provider #1 ❌
- Nothing shows up when you Google their name
- Out-dated website w/out case studies, social proof, etc.
- No Business YouTube/Twitter/LI Content
- No Podcasts
✅ Service Provider #2 ✅
- Tons of collabs w/ high-level entreprenuers
- Moderate internet presence
- Active on social media
- Sleek, high quality landing page packed with case studies, blog posts, social proof, etc.
Tell me, which one would you be more likely to choose and trust to send over thousands of $$$ over the internet?
Of course, it would be Service Provider #2. It just makes logical sense.
That should be your goal. To make people trust you just after seeing a few pieces of your content online.
The bottom line: running cold outreach without a personal brand isn't feasible anymore. An online existence is crucial for credibility and leveraging trust-based selling during sales calls.
LANDING PAGE
A landing page is the home page of the website that people come to when they are approached by your company.
There is a specific way that you are able to build out landing pages and optimize them specifically for conversion from cold lead flow.
The following is that exact framework, step by step explained for you in detail:
SERVICE DELIVERY
This shouldn't even have to be said, but it's crazy how many people still do it…
You need to have some sort of onboarding & service delivery systems in place to even think about cold outreach.
Once again, if your agency is unable to deliver results before cold outreach, cold outreach will not be the thing to save it.
Make sure that your onboarding process is fully taken care of so that your are able to onboard clients and not have them churn right away.
SALES PROCESS
If your cold outreach we're to go insanely well, and you got booked up with 50 meetings in the first month (hypothetically), would you be able to handle the volume?
You need to have a sales process and sequences for whatever happens before & after the call.
This includes a new booking sequence, notifications, qualifying questions, post-call emails flows, etc.
Your sales process should have a structure to it, even if your industry has a long average sales cycle.
You've got the basics. What's next?
Setting up infrastructure (email & automations)
With this cold email infrastructure, we are able to easily send up to 2,000 cold emails every single day without having to worry about:
thousands in overhead fees
deliverability issues
ESP restrictions
long, complicated technical setup
1 - Buy domains and email accounts with Mailscale.ai.
There is a little bit of controversy about whether or not Mailscale has reliable emails accounts.
We have used other solutions in the and will continue to use Mailscale as they have brought us great deliverability along with a much simpler (and faster) set up process.
After ~24 hours, you should have a spreadsheet back from the Mailscale team to be able to upload your fresh accounts into smartlead.
Follow their exact instructions and make sure you enable you're warmup is "on."
2 - Set up a Smartlead.ai Account (your email sending tool)
Choose a plan that makes the most sense for the amount of volume that you will be sending.
This is where you will manage your accounts, campaigns, and any other metric.
3 - Setup a designated Calendly booking link (if you haven't already)
The way we run our system involves setting up 2 different booking links:
The first one, for the prospect to book in themselves. (with qualifying questions)
The second one, when we manually book in a prospect for a specific time & date. (without qualifying questions)
4 - Integrate Calendly with your CRM and enable the show-up sequence.
Now, we want to be notified and update our CRM whenever a new booking is made through either of the links.
The CRM is completely up to you, as most fo the good one's will be able to integrate with Smartlead and Calendly without a problem.
We highly recommend using either Monday.com or Airtable.
Now, you have the option of using Zapier (easier, less flexible) or Make.com (harder to use, more customizable) to create all of the automations.
The basic workflow should look like this:
This also includes setting up:
no-show sequences
nurture sequences
unqualified sequences
… and any other actions before and after the call that are able to be automated.
5 - Integrate Smartlead with your CRM
Using Smartlead's (very strong) API you are able get notified and update your CRM with every single positive reply that you update the lead category for.
For example, when you mark a lead as "Interested" in Smartlead, it will automatically get added to your CRM and you will be able keep track and automatically follow up with prospects - you can't let any one fall through the cracks.
6* - Custom Inbox Management Software Solutions
If you are using our Custom Automated Inbox Management System, this is when you would be introduced to that and we set up all the integrations, so that once the campaign is ready to launch - we don't have to scramble and set up automations then.
We will go over the whole system in the "Inbox Management" section, but this is a sneak peak of how it looks.
Market Research and building lead lists
Now, you have the infrastructure that you need to send 2,000 emails a day - but who are you going to send it to?
You need to create a lead list of decision makers at companies that are within your ICP.
There are a few filters and tips that you need to keep in mind when building your lead list.
What technologies does your ICP use?
softwares, website builders, ad platforms, social media, etc
Where are they located?
How big is the company?
Recently funded?
Any industry specific knowledge (example: official klaviyo partnered email marketing agencies)
All of these questions will help you build a unique angle within your outreach message and set yourself apart from the others.
You will be able to tailor your message to be more relevant to the reader.
This is called "segmentation" - division into separate parts or sections.
So, instead of building one singular lead list of 20,000 decision makers - we build 5 lead lists of 4,000 decision makers within specific industries.
Also, depending on what industry you are targeting, you will use softwares/directories such as:
BuiltWith (generic technology filtering)
Storeleads, Brandnav (eCommerce Brands)
Crunchbase, Clutch.co (Software Companies)
Clutch.co, AgencyVista (Agencies)
Once you get a list of companies from one of these websites, you're able to go into Apollo.io and export the leads into a regular CSV file that you can use.
To export the list from Apollo, you have a few options:
actually pay for Apollo (don't do this)
custom scraper
After you export the list from Apollo, it's important to "verify" that these emails are valid.
You can do this easily with a software such as MillionVerifier, Listclean, etc.
About 60% of your list will come back valid, meaning the emails are real and they won't "bounce" to hurt your email reputation.
Verified Email - an email that is "safe" to send to.
Bounce Rate - the percentage of emails that you send to that aren'y valid. (the lower, the better; should be under 3%)
Email Reputation - the score that the ESP (email service provider; Google, Outlook, Yahoo, etc) assigns to your email. (the closer to 100%, the better.)
Great, so now you have a few thousand decision makers that you can pitch your offer to.
The next step? Free Value.
Creating lead magnets/sales assets
With sales assets, we introduce the idea of providing value to the prospect up front.
Definition: a resource that you can give to a prospect to position yourself as an authority.
Instead of asking thousands of people get on a call in the first email (like everyone else), we need to differentiate our email from the hundreds of other emails in the inbox of our prospect.
How do we do that?
Give them some sort of value, and then ask for the call.
These forms of value include, but are not limited to:
personalized loom videos
generic strategy guides
free service plugins (scripts, automations, etc)
free trials/credits
This will allow you to get your foot in the door with more people, and make people more inclined to work with you.
Some more specific scenarios you can use for inspiration:
50 point Klaviyo Audit for 7+ Fig Beauty Brands (sent to brands using Klaviyo)
Fully custom cold calling script for real estate property managers. (sent to RE property managers)
5 free copy & paste automations for cold email lead generation marketing agencies (sent to cold email agencies)
These assets are not only good to have for lead generation, but also during the sales process.
Imagine the prospect tells you - "I'm a bit skeptical about hwo you set up the FB ads, can you go over that in more details."
If you have a sales asset for that common objection, you are able to simply send them an in-depth & professional document to show them how you are able to get results…
Having proper sales assets is crucial going into 2024 for lead gen AND closing deals.
Writing scripts & subsequences
So, now you have your lead lists and sales assets.
The goal at this point is to write the highest converting email to open up a conversation with as many qualified prospects as possible.
We take a very "no-nonsense" approach when writing our cold email scripts & subsequences.
Logical, specific and relevant messaging > Unauthentic AI personalization
Opening
The good thing is that we have 5 different specific sub-niches within a broader market that allow us to personalize a message easily and use "industry jargon" to make our message personalized.
For example, instead of writing:
"Hey {{first_name}}, saw you own an eCommerce brand…"
You can say something like:
Hey {{first_name}}, came across one of {{company_name}}'s ads on TikTok, love the shirt designs."
DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE????
In the second example, we include a few key factors:
company name
TikTok Ads
eCom → Clothing Brand → Shirts
That is proper segmentation.
This is 10x more effective than giving them an unauthentic compliment generated by AI.
They know it. You know it. It doesn't work.
Social Proof
Once you have your first line written, you want to go in with some sort of social proof.
When writing this, you want to focus on leveraging the best data you have.
If you've worked with a recognizable company, include their name.
If you've worked with smaller, unrecognizable companies, include the result that you've brought them. (numbers.)
This should be no longer than 15 words, all in one sentence.
OR
Value Proposition
Another option that you have here is be direct and tell them what it is that you do that can benefit them.
Keywords being: "what you can do for them."
This includes saying the specific result that you can bring them.
For example: (UGC offer)
"We're going around and helping shirt brands like {{company_name}} create UGC content that actually converts into more customers, and doesn't cost an arm and leg.
And example of a bad body section of a cold email would be:
My name is Alex, founder and CEO of UGC Central.
We are a UGC creator studio based in New Jersey and work with all different types of companies, ranging from eCommerce to software companies.
Our standard package includes 30 pieces of short form content every month for the low price of $1,000 per month.
We understand that hiring a reliable and effective UGC creator is hard, so we've some to solve that problem for you.
Let's dissect.
First of all, it's too long.
Nobody is going to read this.
Second of all, it says the price over the email. (don't do this)
Third, it doesn't talk about the prospect, it only talks about what the service is.
Next, there is no tangible result other than the "30 pieces of short form content" (irrelevant)
—
It's important to remember the entire purpose of this first email - to get an interested response.
That's it. There is no other reason.
Only after they check out your sales asset you should be asking for a call.
CTA
Once you have piqued their interest with some sort of interesting social proof, you should pitch your sales asset or give a generic call to action that is east to say "yes" to.
For example, if you're looking to send them a sales asset (5 free automations to save 12 hours per client that you onboard), the message can look something like this:
"Can I share you 5 free "copy & paste" automations to help you save 12 hours a week?"
OR (if you already mentioned the specific results)
"Mind if I send you a copy?"
The CTA isn't a very complicated part of the email, but you want to make sure that you aren't just pitching a call.
You just need them to say "Sure, send it over."
THAT'S IT!
While writing out our cold email scripts, we also create the subsequences for when the prospect gives us a response.
We have subsequences for all of the following instances:
Out Of Office
Sales Asset Request
Loom Request
Generic Info Request
Pricing Question
Custom Response Needed
The subsequences also have follow ups if the prospect wasn't to answer to the first one.
We send up to 3 follow ups before we discontinue the lead.
Having proper subsequences built out specifically for each different sub-niche helps with saving time and getting quicker responses out once the campaign has been launched.
Here is an example of a Sales Asset Request subsequence:
Email 1
Hey {{first_name}}, here it is: {{insert_link_here}}
If this sounds interesting, are you available tomorrow at {{10 AM EST - 5 PM EST}} for a quick chat?
You may also book a call here: {{calendly}}
Email 2
How’s it going, {{first_name}}?
Wrote up the {{sales asset name}} for you the and sent it over a few days ago.
Did you get a chance to check it out?
Email 3
{{first_name}}, were you looking to {{insert_client_offer}}?
The {{sales_asset_name}} I sent above goes over how you can do that, step-by-step :)
If you already checked it out, I’d be happy to go a bit more in depth over a quick call within the next few days.
Here's my calendar link for you: {{calendly_link}}
Easy as that.
Don't forget that you should also add some spintax to your subsequences.
Launching the campaign
Now you have the three essential parts of the campaign that are needed for the launch:
✅ Lead List
✅ Sales Asset
✅ Scripts & Subsequences
It's time to go into smartlead and launch your campaign.
At our agency, this process is fully automated, but here is the breakdown if you are still doing it manually.
Add a "New Campaign."
Upload a single sub-niche's lead list.
Paste your scripts in the "Sequences" tab.
Select your email accounts.
Set your time zone. (we send emails from 10 am- 6 pm; 5 days a week)
Double check and launch.
Go to "Add Subsequences."
For each specific lead response category, paste your subsequence copy with follow-ups.
This is the root of the campaign. At this point, make sure that all of your automations are working correctly and that your email accounts reputation is steady.
Inbox management system
So, now you have a live campaign and you should be getting replies from your prospects.
Just to be clear, there WILL be negative responses.
People will be out of office.
People will cuss you out.
People will threat to contact the government due to the CAN-SPAM Act of who knows what.
What's the answer to dealing with the 60% of replies that come in like this?
Don't deal with them. Mark them as "Not interested" and focus on the positive responses.
To deal with positive replies, you should focus on:
simply handling their objection
getting them a quick response (under 15 minutes)
redirecting towards a call
That's the whole point of your inbox management - get qualified prospects on to the call, maintaining excitement.
If you are just an agency doing your own lead generation, you don't need all of the fancy inbox management systems and automations, but if you are a cold email agency with over 20 clients - it's worth investing in a proper inbox management system.
Our inbox management system is able to automatically interact with multiple different campaigns & offers to send custom messages from the specific subsequence.
Also you are able to use AI within Smartlead to categorize the lead category. (within settings)
Also, depending on how intricate you made your automations, you will have to update your CRM with the status of the lead conversation that you had through email.
Booking in the call
Using the automations between Calendly, Slack, and Airtable you have two options when booking in the call for the for the prospect:
The prospect books themselves in through the Calendly you sent them within the conversation.
This will have the Calendly qualifying questions such as revenue, team members, etc.
2. You book in the prospect manually through another Calendly.
This Calendly booking will have less information but will only be used when you are having a qualifying conversation with the prospect beforehand (meaning they are still qualified)
Managing the system
Once you launch the campaign, there are only really a few things that you need to manage:
make sure there are always quality leads loaded into the campaign
which scripts are working/no working
inbox mangement
deliverability
That is of course, if you don't want to test new angles, new industries, etc (you should)
The biggest issue that you usually run into if you are anxious to get started is deliverability and landing in people's spam boxes.
The way that you can combat this is slowly increasing the volume that you are sending over 2-3 weeks.
If you notice that a lot of your emails are landing in spam, you need to make adjustments and lower volume.
It's the only way to make sure that your domains don't get burned.
That's it.
The whole system from A-Z if you are considering launching a cold email campaign to bring in more clients for your service based business.
To recap, this is the process outline:
Prerequisites
offer, ICP, risk reversal, etc
b. social presence
c. landing page
d. service delivery
e. sales process
Setting Up Infrastructure
Market Research & Building Lead Lists
Creating Lead Magnets/Sales Assets
Writing Scripts & Subsequences
Launching The Campaign
Inbox Management
Managing The System
This knowledge will help you use cold email effectively within your B2B company and bring on qualified clients.
I guarantee you, in 6+ months this document will start to look a little "outdated", as the lead gen space is always pushing new limits and testing new strategies.
As you'll notice, there is a ton that goes into launching a successful campaign.
If you are an agency owner:
doing over $10k/month
able and willing to invest multiple 4 figures into lead gen
have case studies and testimonials
and are looking to:
inflate your tax bill
get on 15-40 sales calls every month with your dream prospect
looking to only pay for every call you get on (no retainers)
book a time on THIS calendar link below to see how we can work together.
If you still have any questions about cold email or cold outreach in general, HERE is an article we wrote to go over the BASIC questions you might still have!
Or… you can just watch the video here:
Alright, that's it for now - hope you enjoyed it and learned something new :)
