You're 1 Cold Email Away from a Life Changing Deal, Customer or Partnership

My cold emails have generated millions & gotten me meetings and/or responses from Cuban, McAfee & CEOs

Below are 1,823 words on every cold emailing lesson & tactic I've learned over 15 years, for free. If you use email & make money, it's for you.

All of the tools I mention here are linked in the 1st comment below.

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If you find any value here, here just drop me a "thanks" in the comments. Let's get into it:

COLD EMAILING:

We love it and we hate it. We love it because it's our free foot in the door with anyone on the planet. We hate it because we get dozens per day and 99.99% of them are a nuisance.

But I’ll help you with that. By the end of this email you’ll know ~80% of what I’ve learned about cold emailing over the last 15 years, including:

‣ When to use cold email vs not

‣ Where to get valid emails

‣ How to stand out from the crowd

‣ Which software options to choose

‣ How to set the tech up on the backend so you don’t get sent to spam

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When to use cold email

I can’t think of any situation where it wouldn’t hurt to know how to cold email. And when I say cold email, I mean all of the following situations:

‣ Reaching out to someone much more important or influential than you

‣ Reaching out for your dream job

‣ Mass emailing potential customers

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Cold email is most effective when you’re selling either a high-ticket or recurring product or service.

Cold emailing is best when you’re selling something that requires someone to book a call to close a deal.

Maybe you’re a fractional CFO and you charge $5k/month. Cold emailing is perfect for you. Email > open > interested reply > book a call > close the sale.

If you only close .5% of your emails then you only need 2,000 relevant emails to build a $50k/month business.

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So where do you get valid emails?

Ah, so many places. My favorite is a bit under the radar, however, and very, very cheap.

Upwork or Fiverr

Now I’m not talking about hiring a Filipino VA on Upwork to scrape emails, although that works too. It just takes too long and I’m impatient. This is an actual post of mine on Upwork from January

That was for a project I was helping a friend with.

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You’re looking for something that is already found. You just need to find the Upwork VA that already did this job for someone else so you can buy their CSV for $20.

I’ve done this about a dozen times and it almost always works. So your job post might say,

“I need names and email addresses of veterinary clinic owners in Ohio.”

And then buy the CSV for $20 instead of waiting 2 months and paying $500.

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You can message relevant freelancers on Fiverr with the same request.

If this doesn’t work then just use something like Apollo, Clearbit or a Chrome extension that can scrape them from LinkedIn such as Hunter.

Once you have your emails DO NOT EMAIL THEM until you have validated them. You have no clue how old they are, and about ~5% of emails go bad every year, so please validate them.

I have been using Bulk Email Checker for years and it’s the best and cheapest I’ve found, but there are dozens of options.

If you can, get as much info on these emails as possible. At a bare minimum get their first name, because you’ll be including that in the email and it makes a massive difference on response rates and deliverability.

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How to stand out from the crowd

I almost never see a good cold email. Literally, maybe I see one per year. I’ll help you fix that.

Here’s the whole purpose of any cold email:

Start a conversation, don’t try to sell.

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You won’t sell from the first cold email, you just won’t. You have to build some semblance of a relationship first, so seek to start a conversation. And yes, this logic holds true whether your product is $100 or $100,000.

Let’s use the example of my tree biz bootcamp because it’s top of mind right now. I’m not doing any outreach for it aside from the occasional tweet, but if I were I would do this:

I’d start with landscaping owner emails, and first email would look something like this

First name,

Do you still own (landscaping business name)?

Chris Koerner

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That’s it. That’s the whole first email. No link! Wow. Brilliant, right? Hah, just kidding. This would be my first email, that’s it, really! Why? Because I’m starting a conversation and qualifying the lead at the same time!

If they say yes, I respond. If they say no, I don’t. If they don’t respond, I’ll send automated follow ups (more on this later.)

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Let’s say they say yes, my next email would be,

Awesome. Do you offer tree trimming? The reason I ask is because we’re hosting a tree biz bootcamp in Dallas and I’d love to see if you’d like to either attend or speak at it. We're happy to pay. Would love to chat either way!

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Ok, so here’s my thinking here.

I could keep up the bait and switch-ish vibe by just asking “Do you offer tree trimming?” But that’s a bridge too far in my opinion.

That’s too much, too many emails. You will lose trust. I’ll just hit them with the pitch in email #2 because I don’t want to feel slimy.

If they respond once their chance of responding twice is much, much higher.

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Most cold emails lead with the pitch. STOP DOING THAT! The sunk cost fallacy is real. They’ve already spent the time responding to you once, might as well see this through.

My other strategy is that I’m offering to pay them to speak. That’s a real offer. If they already trim trees and know a ton about operations, I literally need them to speak and am willing to pay them.

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Humans need to know what’s in it for them. In the case of this 2nd email, they can either be paid to speak or get more jobs by learning new marketing tactics and adding a 2nd service line.

Emails # 3+ would be to get them on the phone to close the sale, since it’s high ticket you won’t really close it online very effectively.

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What about the subject line? Keep it short, stupid.

Quick question used to rule them all, but it’s played out now. For this one I would simply do, trees?

3 words or less is my rule. Seek to pique their curiosity, not to convince them to open directly.

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Which software options to choose?

I love Mixmax and Lemlist, but Mixmax gets the nod.

Both offer mail merge and automated follow ups, and that’s what really matters. But Mixmax is cheaper and more user friendly. I've used both for many years.

What’s freaking cool is that you can spend an hour setting up a campaign and then get leads in your inbox on autopilot for months to come, without ever having to login to the software again.

Automated follow-ups turn off when the person replies.

As my British friend Zach would say, “It’s brilliant.”

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How to set the tech up on the backend so you don’t get sent to spam.

This one is really easy, just follow these exact instructions:

Warm up your inbox by ensuring that you’ve been sending and receiving emails successfully for a month or so.

There are tools you can pay for like Warmbox or Warmup Inbox that will do this for you so you can cut the line, if you’re impatient like me.

Don’t use a gmail account, use a custom domain. I use Namecheap to buy a $10 domain and then Google Workspace for a $7/month email.

Use the Lemlist deliverability checklist below, it’s the best guide I’ve found all in one place.

Don't ever use links in your first email. There's more downside than upside. They aren't going to book a call with you or buy your product cold, but the link may be the reason the email goes to spam.

Like I mentioned above, ALWAYS validate emails before sending. If the result is unknown or catchall, just skip.

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Add at least one custom variable per email, preferable first and business name. This will show Gmail that not all of your emails are the same.

Add in automated follow-ups that are 1 sentence or less "Just checking in." This will show Gmail that you aren't a one and done kinda guy.

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Conclusion

Whew, ok, that’s about it. I feel like there’s many thousands more words I could put in this, but there’s only so much time.

Cold emailing is awesome because it’s scalable and on autopilot. Once you figure out what the formula is for your offer, it’s just simple math.

Send 1,000 emails, get 200 replies, get 20 calls, get 2 sales, etc. Then it’s just a matter of finding enough solid emails.

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Would appreciate a follow @mhp_guy if you learned something helpful.

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PS: Below is the 4th or 5th response I got from the late John McAfee back in 2018 when I was pitching a product to him.

I ended up spending the day at his house and partnered with him, but that's a story for another day...

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