The Art of Cold Emailing : Every Startups’ Gateway to Marketing
Freecharge started with the vision of helping businesses increase their footfalls in their stores through a simple coupon system. But how did they get through to these businesses and convince them.They cold emailed. They got replies and that is how their story started.
What about Capillary technologies? They wanted to help businesses increase their revenues with their small in-store technology. How did they get in touch with their potential clients? You guessed it. Cold Emailing is very much an important part of business. It's done by the best and it's been done since time immemorial.
When Steve Jobs wanted a job at the HP, he cold called the CEO. When Elon Musk wanted to build rockets, he cold called the Russians.
Why is Cold Emailing seen as a weak strategy?
This is because; the execution of cold emailing is botched up by a lot of people in the eco system. They send uninformed emails to the wrong audience with poor content and this has spoilt cold emailing for everyone in the ecosystem.
Cold Emailing is here to stay.
Here are list of items you can use cold emailing for:- Submitting a guest post for back links.
Asking a potential client to try your product.
Requesting a meeting with a Venture Specialist.
Requesting a meeting with a CEO of a company you want to partner with.
Pitching a journalist to cover your startup.
Pitching your service to a business that would need it.
Getting a Person's Email Address
You need a person's email address and that can easily be found with a simple tool. There are lot of tools, but a very good tool is Find that Email. You can immediately check out their tool on their homepage. They also have 15 free credits a month.
Say you want to find Drew Houston's email address. Enter the Details and you can get the results.
Details Box
Just enter a person’s name and their domain and you get their email address. If you don’t know the exact person you are looking for, you could always use the People Search feature on their Chrome Extension.
This is how it works. Say you want to pitch an article to a writer on Yourstory. Download the Chrome Extension.
Go to yourstory.com and click on the Find that Email Extension.
Click on Domain Search
You'll get a list of all the people that work for yourstory.com and you can filter based on titles or positions.
So what should you write?
Tips on Sending the Email
Here are some points to keep in mind before sending out your email.
1. If you have common connections with the person you are reaching out to, get an introduction first.
2. In the email - Introduce yourself and state clearly who you are and why you've mailed them.
3. Mention any important credentials you might have - You studied in IIT or IIM( It shouldn't matter, but it matters). You've closed a bigger client or you've been covered in a top publication.
4. Talk briefly about your product and how it can help the person you are reaching out to. Mention examples of companies that have been benefited.
5. Aim for a Skype call or a face to face meeting.
6. Be creative with your subjects and body copy. Play to your audience. Gauge whether they'll like a casual and informal mail or a formal one.
7. Keep changing up your incentive and your style and see what styles gets the best responses.
Cold emailing is an effective strategy. Most of us aren't born with contacts ready to help us. We need to pursue people and convince them about our dreams.
