email will never die
(+ trying to de-stigmatize cold email)
Hallo, it’s a new day. New edition. Let’s do the marketing.
I’ve wanted to write an edition about email for awhile but couldn’t find an angle I wanted to cover (lots to talk about!). Thought about doing a breakdown of different inbound sequences startups could use, or how to clean your email lists, or a combination of both. After some healthy decision paralysis, I decided to keep it simple:
Why email is so important (and will probably never die)
One inbound sequence every startup should have
De-stigmatizing cold email + an interview with a true cold email expert
So a bit of a catch all in this edition (get it? please tell me you get it).
That’s the outline. Let’s get into it.
“Is email dead?” *heavy eye roll*
If you’re in marketing long enough, you’ll see these headlines pop up every now and then. The author didn’t have any better ideas so they recycled a topic and question that’s existed for over 15 years. Yes, you read that right. People have been asking if email is dead for a very long time.
The thing is, email isn’t dead and I am not convinced it will ever go away.
Yes, email standards have and will continue to change. We’ve all heard about Apple’s iOS updates that are impacting ad and email tracking across every sector. Marketers will need to be smarter in their email communications and ensure they are offering high-quality emails that show up in the inbox. But I can’t think of another digital channel as ubiquitous as email (95% of consumers check their email every day).
Every startup should have a marketing funnel for email
The biggest reason why I push email marketing for startups is the ability to control the rails and build their own audience. Owning all of your content and its distribution is essential to long-term marketing success - and it takes a lot of consistency and patience.
~~quick example~~
When building your social media strategy, you’ll likely want to focus on one or two channels to capture your audience.
But what happens when these platforms change and it’s not in your favor?
Let’s say you have 100k followers on TikTok and tomorrow TikTok changes it’s algorithm which drastically reduces organic reach. This results in a steep decline in views, follower growth, and ability to hit your goals. You’re upset. Your boss is upset. I’m upset.
The reality is, these platforms don’t owe you anything and it could all be turned off tomorrow. The 80/20 rule exists for a reason. Spend most of your time on the channel(s) that work for you and the remaining time testing other channels. This provides an extra layer of marketing (and business) security as you continue to grow your audience.
This is all prevented by building a funnel around collecting emails. If you have someone’s email, you have direct access to them. While this obviously should not be abused and they can always unsubscribe, email is the gold standard of online communication because of its ubiquity and ability to build true 1:1 relationships.
Demand = traffic = better email conversion
I’m not saying social followers, or any other channel metric, aren’t important. In fact, social media, your website, and landing pages are some of the top areas of your marketing where you create and capture demand.
Getting someone’s email is that next level in customer acquisition you should strive for.
The one inbound email sequence you should have: a welcome email series
A human reads a blog post from your site, likes what you have to say, and decides to opt into email. It will most likely be a newsletter or some other top of funnel activity. But I don’t see many companies in the B2B space using a welcome email series to engage new subscribers.
B2C companies do this all the time. You sign up for a 10% discount code when you visit the site for the first time. This action will often trigger a short email series welcoming you to the brand.
Don’t underestimate the importance of the welcome email.
Regardless of your email sequence content or purpose, the first email they receive is the most important. This sets the precedent for all communications moving forward and can be used in a variety of ways. It is typically the most opened email as well, increasing your chances to get the right communication and call to action in front of them.
B2B marketers are often way too forward. As soon as there is some level of interest from a person, the B2B urge to get them in front of sales is strong. But buyer trends are always changing. In fact, 87% of buyers want to self-serve some or all of their purchase journey - so let them!
A welcome email is an excellent way to get your new lead engaged with the company in a less obtrusive or pushy way.
A big theme of your welcome email series should be “softness.” What I mean by that is don’t try to sell anything or push them too hard in a direction. Shoving a case study or demo page down their throat is not a great way to begin a relationship with anyone.
The welcome series should only be 2-4 emails. There will be other email sequences or initiatives (ex. newsletter) that you spend a lot more time on. You can also trigger the series based on a variety of criteria (new site visitors, for example) so make sure your content aligns with the audience you’re targeting.
Here’s what your welcome email series can look like. This model works for B2B or B2C companies.
Say hello and encourage enrollment in a more regular communication channel, like a newsletter. This is also a good place to offer them something if they do subscribe. A discount, free report, or other asset. Make their conversion as seamless as possible.
Direct them to your top social channel. A startup may only have 1 or 2 channels they focus on. You don’t need to drop all of your social accounts here. Share the one you think is the best representation of the value you add to your community. Give a 1 sentence explanation on what they can expect from the account if they follow.
Drive traffic back to your site or store. Your third (and possibly final) email should help reinforce the area of your website they first converted on. This will help cement your brand as the authority figure in that given topic. So if they share their email on a blog post about marketing automation tips, maybe direct them to another blog post on marketing automation examples or strategies. For B2C, email 3 is a good chance to remind them of your offer in the first email if they haven’t converted yet.
And that’s it! Treat your welcome series as its own campaign and continue to optimize subject lines and CTAs to drive the right engagements.
Reminder: This kind of communication is very top of funnel. Its purpose is to introduce your existence to the person who is a tiny bit interested. Don’t try to convert them on everything under the sun or expect these subscribers to be sales-ready.
Give cold email a second chance.
I want to shift gears and talk a bit about outbound. And specifically, I want to talk about the stigma of cold email and provide some tips on making you successful in this arena.
Many marketers get a bad taste in their mouth when they hear ‘cold email.’ The phrase reeks of spam (not this spam) and annoying communication. The reality is, cold email is essential for a lot of businesses. But it isn’t an approach that should be taken lightly. It won’t work for every offering or every audience. This is where the stigma comes from! So many companies think they can just get a list of contacts, send them some generic email, and hope to convert at least 2% to justify their effort….
I’ve been doing email marketing for my whole career and have worked on tons of campaigns and ran a lot of experiments. There is always something new to learn. I recently got the Cold Email Mastery course from blackhatwizardd on twitter. I haven’t learned this much about email marketing in a very long time. When I saw it come up on my feed I thought: “it’s cold email. How much more is there to teach on this?” The creator, Daniel, brings a direct, yet effective view on running cold email campaigns and it is absolutely perfect for startups, founders, and people who want to move quickly.
And since I’m starting to see some early wins in my cold email strategy, why not ask some questions for the guy who created the course?
Here’s my Twitter DM interview with Daniel aka @blackhatwizardd.
Everyone needs a niche. Why is yours cold email?
Cold email isn't my niche. Cold email is a traffic mechanism. I sell cold email services (course, SaaS) to agencies and freelancers because they're the only niche cold email works for. Similarly, if you sell Facebook ads, or Google Ads, you're not going to sell that to hedge funds. It doesn't make sense. Your service (mechanism) has to actually make sense for the niche. Cold email doesn't work for anything else, and I make that very clear to people who want to use it for other things. Always has to make sense for the business.
Cold email gets a bad rep. What is the biggest misconception about it?
The biggest misconception about cold email is that you're sending out mass blast messages that are annoying. If you personalize the message, promise a quantifiable result, and have a guarantee behind it, it's very difficult to not see results over the long run.
You've built a solid machine for yourself centered around this Cold Email Mastery course. How do you think about the integration of other offerings after people have bought the course?
If you want to execute a cold email campaign there's a bunch of tools that are going to make your life tremendously easier. I'm talking shaving off 80 - 90% of the effort necessary. The tools exist, so I said I might as well own them myself. And now I do. For scraping emails, writing personalized intros, into sending the cold emails.
Care to share some details on one of your top performing campaigns? What were the performance metrics? Why did it work so well?
In general you want to shoot for 15% reply rate and 2-4% meeting book rate. If you're consistently getting below that it's because you have a weak offer. You need all the following: an offer with a quantifiable promised result and a guarantee. A landing page with a short video sales letter that explains what you do and your results if you have any. Adding the landing page and video sales letter often 2x-3x's your results instantaneously. And this makes sense. Because you just sent an email to somebody you've never spoken to before. They need to hear you speak if they're going to trust you. They need to know who you are.
Finally, who are you learning from these days?
Alex Hormozi, Alex Becker, and Russel Brunson. You always need to be learning from people who are just 2-3 steps ahead of you. If you make less then $10k/mo you should be entirely unconcerned with what Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk are doing. They are in a completely different universe than you. If you make $5k/mo, you should be listening to people who make $15k/mo - $100k/mo.
Here are a few tips on cold email I learned from Daniel’s course:
Make sure you have DMARC set up for your domain
Warm up your email account prior to sending your cold email campaigns. I used Mailerrize for 5 weeks before sending anything.
If your domain gets burned - aka google hates you and is blacklisting your domain - just get another domain. Have a few on reserve just in case you get burned.
Take the time to write first lines in your email. They should be as targeted to the individual as possible. You can even hire a freelancer to do this for you after giving them a list of linkedin profiles. I’ve been paying a freelancer to write first lines. I have never got a conversion on a generic email - only the ones with personalized first lines:
If you’re interested in the Cold Email Mastery course, check it out here. I’m not an affiliate or anything, just a big fan of this course and what it can unlock for a business. Throw Daniel a follow too.
So, to recap:
email will never die (probably)
explore a welcome series as a separate inbound email sequence
see if cold email makes sense for your business and take the time to set it up correctly
That’s it for this edition! Any topics you want me to cover in the future? Reply to this email and let me know. See you in a couple weeks
-Connor