Save Yourself Time with My 3 Years' Worth of A/B Testing Experience

I've been sending personalized cold emails at scale for 15 years & have A/B tested everything 6 ways past Sunday.

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This 3 min thread will save you 3 years of testing and learning:

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The subject line is everything.

"quick question" used to rule them all, but it's dead now.

Keep it 5 words or less, and include the recipient's 1st name.

Longer ALWAYS loses A/B tests and including 1st name always wins.

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Better subject line = more opens = more replies

Don't sound professional.

Don't sound like a robot.

Always sound like an interesting human.

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If you aren't interesting or clever, then get help from a friend that is.

One of my best performing openers was.

"Put down your $17 avocado toast and read this stupid pitch already.

"I know gurus preach "it doesn't matter how long your email is as long as your copy is compelling."

That's BS. Full stop.

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Your email needs to be shorter than Danny DeVito.

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Rule of 5:

5 or less words in subject.

5 of less sentences in body.

No links or pics in signature.

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Are there exceptions to this? Of course. Long copy has made folks billions.

But rarely in email. And your copywriting isn't that good. Neither is mine.

You need to end the pitch with an easy call to action.

Cold emails are no different than fishing. Let me explain.

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When you go fishing you can't set the hook too soon or too late.

THE PURPOSE OF A COLD EMAIL IS TO START A CONVERSATION. NOT TO SELL!! You're fishing.

Keep the ask very simple in the beginning and don't ask for much.

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As you reel them in, as for a little more at a time.

My first email usually ends with:

"Any interest?"

"Thoughts?"

"Mind if I send a little more info?"

Every time you ask someone to hop on a call or a Zoom in the FIRST cold email, an innocent puppy dies.

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Don't you freaking do it.

Don't set the hook too soon.

The more times you can get them to reply, the more of a relationship you have.

The more likely they will be to either buy or hop on that stupid Zoom you keep wanting to ask for.

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If your cold email can't give them

- Money

- Time

- Attention

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Then they aren't buyin'

Let's talk tools. There are a ton of cold emailing tools. I've used them all.

GMass - Lightweight, cheap, simple. It's great.

Lemlist - Feature rich, a bit expensive. Unintuitive UI.

Apollo - Solid, affordable, but more targeted towards leadgen and not the email tool itself

Start by sending in batches of 200 per day.

A/B testing 100 at a time.

Keep iterating until open rates are over 50% and reply rates are 15+%

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It all depends on your industry, product and pitch, however.

I've seen 90+% open rates and 40+% response rates if targeted enough

The more personalized the emails are, the better response you'll get. Obvious, I know.

You'll always make a tradeoff between scale and response rates.

Pick your poison.

2-3 personalized fields per email is key.

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No more than 2 follow ups. PLEASE.

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Because hey, I get cold emails too. And when you follow up 3-6x I literally want to murder you.

It does more harm than good.

In general, follow ups are weak. If it's a no on the 1st email it's 90+% chance going to be a no on 2-3 as well.

With every word they have to read in the email, the % likelihood of them deleting the email goes up.

Friction is not your friend.

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These same people stop watching a Tiktok video after 4 seconds, you think they're gonna read a 400 word enterprise software pitch?

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The winning A/B test will be the one that leads to more cash in the bank.

Not the ones with the most opens or replies. Make sense?

Sometimes the lowest response rates are the highest INTENT responses.

You need to track these nuances, not just the numbers.

That's all I can think of for now. Will add more below as they come to mind.