As a new B2B business owner, your success hinges on connecting with decision-makers who can benefit from your expertise. I also know that as an entrepreneur wearing many hats, your time is finite. If I could recommend one sales strategy that gives you maximum output while conserving your time, it hands-down should be cold email campaigns. In this blog post, I will show you the power of setting up a cold email campaign, and every step involved in the process, to get your business in front of key decision-makers for you.
Cold Email Campaigns: Your Missing Piece
Your most powerful tool for driving your sales growth is simple, affordable, and sitting right in front of you: email! While the thought of sending cold emails may send shivers down your spine, a well-executed cold email campaign can be the key to unlocking steady growth for your business. Why? Email outreach consistently has higher engagement than any other sales channel compared to the time it takes to get started. That’s why your sales outreach efforts focused on cold email outreach can make the most of your limited time.
Still not convinced because you’re worried about annoying people? Think about it this way – the worst thing that could happen is I annoy someone who I don’t even know. The best
Without further ado, here is how to set up your own cold email campaign from start to finish.
How to Set Up a Quick Email Campaign
Setting up an email campaign for the first time can be overwhelming. I want to challenge you, please, not to click away at the first sign of resistance. It takes some practice, but this process does work. After you set up your first campaign it is only smooth sailing to boost your sales and keep repeating results.
If you want to see me set up a campaign step by step, check out my YouTube tutorial here.
1. Identify your target audience.
What does your ideal client look like? For example, at FounderGoHere I work with new company founders all over the world. Sometimes I’ll put all my focus into contacting a CEO at a well-known Fortune 50 Company, or cast a wider net for fast growing startups. This process works to target one person, or 100 people, so tailor the campaign to your personal goals.
2. Research your leads.
Let’s use the low-hanging fruit to find people in your target audience who can benefit from your offering. First, see what is at your disposal: any email contacts from networking events, or a previous business idea, that are related to this project? If so, gather up your contacts in a spreadsheet to use for later. If you don’t have any contacts yet, no worries! Instead, we can use a powerful search engine to research some prospects.
To search for leads, I use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool to tap into one of the largest business networks at your fingertips. (Full transparency, Sales Navigator is not free but 100% worth it!) The filter options are extensive, making it easy to narrow down your results. For my case, I usually search for people with the job title of “Founder” or “Co-Founder” who have been at their company less than five years. You can also filter on what you don’t want to see, which is equally helpful.
For more help on LinkedIn searching, find out how to get more out of your search here.
3. Find the email addresses for your leads.
Now that we have our leads, we now need to find each of their email addresses. A third-party tool like LeadLeaper makes this easy and automatic, extracting each person’s email address for you.
(psst.. If you end up using LeadLeaper for your email campaign, tell Frank that Diane Prince from FoundersGoHere sent you! It might just get you some free credits 😉)
As an alternative, you can always cold message inside the LinkedIn platform, but it will be a more labor-intensive process down the line.
4. Set up your Email Campaign.
This is where the rubber meets the road. To send your emails automatically, you’ll want to lean
on another email tool that specializes in cold outreach. Note: this is not the same as MailChimp or Flodesk, which focus on email engagement.
In the past I’ve used MixMax as my email outreach tool of choice. The features are easy to navigate, and I’ve been happy with their reporting features. If you want more bells and whistles, for more bells and whistles I like Instantly.ai.
Your setup will involve the “nitty gritty” tasks of importing leads, naming your campaign, and “spacing” your emails (i.e. sending the initial email during business hours, then the next one 3 days later). The setup is a balance of logistics and copywriting, especially as you gear up to write the emails in your sequence.
Write your outreach emails.
Ah, copywriting: there’s a lot that goes into writing a great email. To keep it brief, I’ll distill it down to the best writing tips I wish I had known earlier about writing sales copy.
- Make your subject line relevant and engaging to your audience. Keep it under 50 characters so it doesn’t get cut off.
- There is a balance to be struck here. You will want the emails to sound specific and personalized to the reader, but general enough where it will apply to everyone in the campaign. You can show them how they got your attention with something along the lines of: “I see you are doing some impressive work in the healthcare tech space!” When done correctly, it will not read like a copy-and-paste template.
- Keep it simple. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or write long paragraphs. Less is more.
- Stay consistent with your messaging. Write in your voice and show up regularly to build trust with your readers.
- Always end on a clear Call to Action (CTA) so the reader knows the next step. Whether it’s scheduling a call or signing up for a demo, ask for what you want.
For more help on email writing, check out our additional blog posts here on effective sales strategies.
Stay consistent.
You have all the pieces needed to get started! At this point, you should be running a campaign that will steadily convert email addresses into potential new clients. Just like every part of entrepreneurship, this is a learning process. Your reply rate might be a little underwhelming at first, but please don’t give up! Try changing up subject lines, or rewriting some of the emails, and see how your metrics respond. Make tiny changes after each run to see what works and what doesn’t.
Most importantly, be patient. Even the best cold outreach strategies take time. You may have heard that most people do not close the sale until the 7th point of contact, and it’s so true! In fact, one of my largest clients received 15 cold emails of mine before we started collaborating. Just stay consistent, test out new changes, and stay focused on your goals.
Repeat the process.
As you run this cold email campaign over and over, use feedback to keep optimizing your results. Keep track of your open rates and response rates to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign. Over time your sales rate should climb, and the time spent on new campaigns should be faster too.
Can you see the potential in letting this run automatically? You can even delegate this out to a Virtual Assistant (VA) to run on autopilot. Focus on scaling as you reap the benefits from this client-generating system.
TLDR:
A successful cold email campaign can be the game changer moment in your B2B business. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you’ll be able to craft an expert sales process to get your message right in front of key decision makers. Once you put in the work to implement your email machine, it can eventually run for you to gather leads while you sleep. Don’t wait any longer on this powerful sales tool – – set up your cold email campaign today and watch your business grow!
Need help to advance your email campaign strategy? Take full advantage of our other articles at FoundersGoHere.com. If you’re ready for some more personalized help, join our Slack Group for sales secrets you can’t find anywhere else.
Check out more about the Startup Sales Strategy. and How Do Angel Investors Work?
