Action 1: Learn About Cold Email
Burrr… It’s getting cold in here!
Cold email gets a bad rap, it really does. The truth is, plenty of people make their living on cold email alone, and over the next few actionable sections we are going to be getting into some cold email strategy.
Right now, though, I want to start things off by really defining what I am talking about when I say “cold email.”
Cold Email – any email sent to a potential client that doesn’t have an existing connection to you
If you were to send someone you’ve never had any contact with before an email you found through a publicly available email address, that’s a cold email.
If you were to email someone you’ve never met, asking for feedback on a YouTube video, that’s a cold email too.
The first problem with doing cold email is that many people go about it the wrong way. That’s why we didn’t start with it in this series.
Another problem is unrealistic expectations. We’ll get to that later on, but first, let’s talk about doing it the wrong way vs. the right way.
By including the following in your email, you will raise your chances of success with cold emails:
- Your actual name (not some fake name)
- A conversation starter
- Some degree of personalized content
- A specific request
- Your contact info
Sending a cold email should feel like a personal conversation. It’s like a cold call, but less intrusive. Your goal with cold email is to get them on your warm organic list, not to sell them anything.
Cold email is not spam. Think about this:
- Spam uses fake names all the time.
- Spam is not big on including contact information.
- Spam is very generic in nature, as though meant for thousands of people.
- Spam is done for commercial intent, 99 percent of the time
Let that last one sink in. Spam isn’t meant to start a conversation, it’s looking for a direct purchase, so very commercially motivated. These types of emails get filtered by email service providers routinely.
We’re not going to be sending spam. This is just like a cold call, but in email.
With cold emails, ideally you want to:
- Not go for the direct sale
- Address the person you’re emailing by name
- Have a specific and relevant request
- Be transparent about how you got their email
Action 2: Acquiring Cold Leads
Okay, so in the last section, we talked a lot about what to do and what not to do when it comes to cold email. Today, we’re going to be taking actionable steps so that you can actually get some cold email leads.
One thing that I want to make clear when it comes to these cold leads:
Don’t email them from your autoresponder.
Use the simple Gmail account that you created at the beginning of this challenge to email these particular leads, individually, one at a time.
Now, I know that sounds really inconvenient and slow, but it is in your best interest.
The fact of the matter is, these leads are completely cold, and you’re at a high risk for them labeling you as spam if you try to email a bunch of them all at once.
You have to be careful because you don’t want your autoresponder to get upset and terminate your account. So as you get a handful of cold leads, it’s better to just email them from your standard Gmail account individually with a simple goal of just getting them on your warm organic list through opt in.
So, how do you get these cold leads?
I’m going to give you a simple method to use to get started, followed by a few more after you take action.
What I want you to do is email these cold leads using the template I’m going to provide below.
Uplead.com is a place where you can get five leads for free. All you have to do is simply create an account and sign up for a free 7-day trial.
You don’t have to enter any credit card information or anything like that. Just make sure to use a Gmail account when you register, they don’t accept Yahoo emails for whatever reason.
When you are inside the software, there will be different categories. Pick the one closest to your niche and get your leads. You will have 5 free credits. 1 credit = 1 lead.
Now that you have your first five free cold leads, let me give you a template for an email to send to them:
Hey [FIRST NAME]
I’m [enter your name here] and I was referred to you from Uplead for people interested and working in [your niche.]
The reason I was reaching out is that I thought you might be interested in joining my free newsletter on the subject. I created a free cheat sheet on [whatever your free thing solves] which you can find here if interested:
[link to your lead capture page]
Thanks for your time. I’m looking to build a strong newsletter in the [enter your niche] space, that provides value and helps people in the niche.
If not interested, feel free to delete this message. I understand and won’t keep pestering you. But… I’m really excited about the newsletter and looking to make some strong connections with others in the space.
Hope to see you on the newsletter!
[Your Name]
[Your business]
[Your website]
[Your email]
Okay, use this template. Notice how it’s pretty transparent and unassuming.
Model it to fit your niche and your market, and email those 5 leads you got from Uplead, one at a time. Now, the truth is, you have no idea how these people will respond.
On average, cold email response rate is around 1%, so if we use that logic, you would need to email 100 of these cold leads before you would get somebody on your list from cold emailing.
So that being said, don’t get frustrated if you don’t see amazing results right away. Keep it in perspective. This is just another way to build your list. A tool in your tool box.
In the action step below, we’ll talk about some more ways to get free cold leads.
And we’ll talk about a way to automate the process a little bit.
In the meantime, take some action on this method. Email all five of your cold leads and see if you can get some of them to opt in to your warm organic list.
It might seem like we’re taking things pretty slow, considering how fast and how many cold leads that you can truly acquire (which is a lot.) What I will tell you is there are laws against spamming, and unsolicited email is a little bit close to spamming.
There is a difference between what you are doing here and spamming, but a lot of things come down to how many people read your email and decide to mark it as spam.
So in this world of cold email, it’s much better to take a slow and steady approach at least until you develop your cold emailing skills, confidence, and email address authority.
Action 3: Gmass And More Cold Leads
If you go to Gmass.co, you will find a pretty amazing Google Chrome extension. It’s called Gmass, and essentially it will work with your free Gmail account to (in their own words)…
“turn your regular Gmail or G Suite account into a powerful mass and cold email platform. When you send mass or cold email campaigns from Gmail, you send emails through the world’s best servers in terms of deliverability. Prepare for the highest open rates you’ve ever seen from a mass email service. Mass and cold email features include open tracking, click tracking, mail merge personalization, scheduling, and more.”
Although Gmass is truly a paid service, it has a free version. You can use this free version to email up to 50 cold emails a day, just by sending one message.
I won’t go into how to use Gmass here, as there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to help you with specifics, but suffice it to say it makes it fairly easy to build lists of cold leads and mass email them with a single message.
Remember, though, the goal is to get them on your warm organic list.
Now, how to acquire some more cold leads for free:
First tactic – Uplead Alternatives: There are other sites out there just like Uplead where you can get some free cold leads. Just simply do a Google search for “Uplead alternatives.”
Most of them have free trials that do not require a credit card to try out. Again, put these leads on your Gmass account and work to get them to your warm organic list.
Second Tactic – MLGS: MLGS stands for My Lead Gen Secret, and you can find it at myleadgensecret.com. This one is not free. There is currently a set-up fee of $30 plus $30 a month. So initially you will pay $60 and then only $30 for every month after that. For that, you will be given 100 drip fed “Business Opportunity” email subscribers every 24 hours.
You can email these leads directly on the platform and pitch your free thing to put them onto your warm organic list. After that first month, you will have roughly 3,000 leads. If you don’t want to keep up the $30 a month subscription, you can download your leads as a CSV file and cancel the subscription.
Then you can simply email those subscribers from Gmass at 50 subscribers a day.
Third Tactic – Safe lists: A safe list is a group of email users that have agreed to add their email address to a mailing list and use that list to send their promotional emails. It is a closed group where people send emails to each other.
If you head over to getrichwithjerry.com, you are not only going to find a lot of great information about safe lists, but you are going to find up-to-date safe lists that are actually working well right now.
The thing about using safe lists is this. Make sure to have a different email address that you use to sign up for these safe lists. Make this one a special email that is just for safe lists.
For your free email ads that go out to the safe lists, pitch your free opt-in. Just like everything else with cold emails and cold advertising, your goal is to get people onto your warm organic list.
Fourth Tactic – LeadFeeder: LeadFeeder is a cloud based software that allows you to gather emails and contact information from everyone who visits your website. This can be pretty powerful if you have people visiting your opt-in page, but they decide not to sign up. It gives you the power of follow up.
This is a paid software, but you can actually sign up for a 7-day trial. This is a tactic that you want to use once you have some of the things I talked about earlier already working for you.
Obviously, if you try to use this first before anyone is visiting your site, it’s not going to do much for you.
Fifth Tactic – LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com is often overlooked, but it’s the 21st most popular website in the world, with over a billion people visiting a month. If you build a LinkedIn profile and join a few groups in your niche, you can start to network with people in your space fairly quickly.
Unlike, Facebook, many people on LinkedIn have their contact email readily available on their profile under “Contact Info.” This creates a great opportunity to start manually finding people with like-minded interests who might be interested in your newsletter.
LinkedIn actually has a tool called the LinkedIn Sales Navigator that will speed up this process greatly, however it is not a free tool. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial, but you’ll have to remember to cancel before it is over.
Alright, that’s 5 more ways to go out there and get some cold leads. Again, these aren’t the highest quality leads and this is far from all the ways to get them…but this is a great start, and cold leads definitely have their place in list building strategy.
Next, we’ll be diving into buyer leads. For now, though, unpack some of these tactics and see if you can get a few more cold leads.
