Charles Perry – Talk Recap FemtoConf 2019

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Twitter: @dazeend

Brute-Forcing Customer Acquisition with Cold Email

• started out with RelaNet, trying SEO
  • no customers, very little traffic
  • needed revenue right now
• tried Content Marketing next
  • very few conversion, because I had no traffic
• tried Facebook Ads next
  • it worked somewhat
  • spent money faster than revenue came in
• Realization:
  • I need to hunt down my customers
  • So I started cold emailing

The Process

1. Create Email List
2. Compose
3. Send

Step 1: Create Email List

• nice thing about B2B: businesses want to be found (on the internet), makes creating the email list easier
• Three step process:
  • Target Audience
  • Decision Maker (who can say yes to purchase decision?)
  • Categorize by need (helps you personalize the message)
• Define your target audience by:
  • Occupation
  • Revenue
  • Number of employees
  • level of sophistication (expressed through job titles)
  • Geography
  • Technology

Targetting by Occupation

• are you trying to get in front of people who need to register with the government?
  • e.g. pharmacies, dentists, firearm instructors
  • There is probably a society and a website that has all the registration data

Targetting by Size (Revenue, Number of Employees, Job Titles)

• LinkedIn is the way to go
• LinkedIn has a boolean search capability
• Use LIX (LinkedIn search eXporter) to export search results

Targetting by Geography

• almost all governments make the business registrations available online
• powerful way to find businesses

Targetting by Technology

• Use BuiltWith to find businesses/websites that use a technology
• Free alternative: https://techlookup.hunter.io/

Finding the Decision Maker

• get a virtual assistant to find the relevant contacts and fill in the blanks in your contact list

Categorize by Need

• categorized each business by
  • has a nice website
  • has an ugly website
  • has no website

Step 2: Compose Emails

• two things to compose:
  • Subject Lines
  • email bodies (plural)
• tips for subject lines:
  • use their name or the company name in the subject line
• Email bodies:
  • write one email body for each category we identified earlier
  • best email bodies are: Relevant, Genuine, Personal
• Structure for a good email:
  • “Hi $Firstname”
  • Introduce yourself and your company
  • Mention that you are local (if applicable)
  • In simple words state the problem they have (“I was looking at your firm’s website, and noticed that it might be due for an update”)
  • Offer to help (“If you’d like a hand with this, I can help”)
  • Show them how you can solve it and why you’re the best choice for the job
  • Write a clear Call-To-Action that is appropriate to your audience (e.g. accountants are used to doing business on the phone)
  • Sign off and mention your contact details

Step 3: Send Emails

• Don’t send them by hand one at a time
  • Automation avoids really embarrassing errors
  • MaxBulk Mailer
  • Bluetick.io – also automates follow-ups

Results

• based on when I used MaxBulk Mailer, so no follow-ups!
• I expect that all of these results are way better now
• 6.6% Response rate
• 1.5% book call rate
• 0.4% email-to-close rate
• Knowing these statistics allows you to calculate how many emails you need to send

-Christoph