Are you questioning cold emailing?
Can’t decide if it’s right for your business?
Let me tell you something.
I was in your shoes in the past, and cold emailing has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made as a service provider.
It gives me complete control to land clients when I please, and it puts my success in my hands.
It’s also quick, easy, and very scaleable if you do it right.
That’s why today I’m going to share some cold email case studies to show you the power of outbound and what you can learn from them.
Case study #1 – 578 prospects turned into 73 leads in 6 weeks
I don’t know about you, but as a solopreneur, 73 new hot leads in 6 weeks would be insane!
And, guess what? You can be getting these kind of numbers, and you don’t have to send out tens of thousands of emails or slave away.
The SaaS company Ambition set out to do a cold email campaign in 2014 from November to December.
They reached out to a total of 578 prospects, composed of:
- 291 VPs of sales
- 287 VPs of sales operations
At first, they only received a measly 6 responses. That’s less than a 1% response rate 🙁
Ambition knew they needed to do something about this. Do you know what that was?
Following up.
Look at the data they collected from their two campaigns targeting the VPs of sales.
They followed up seven times, for a total of eight touch points.
The more they followed up, the more responses and leads they generated. By the end of the campaign, Ambition boasted 73 new hot leads to add into their pipeline. Impressive!
Main takeaways:
- You need to follow up after sending cold emails or you won’t land as many clients.
- You don’t need to do huge campaigns, but rather optimize smaller ones.
Case study #2 – 129 hot leads from only 1,303 emails
The lead generation company HipLeads began working with the online manufacturing company MadeRight to help them acquire more customers.
Their campaign composed of 1,303 emails and generated MadeRight 129 new hot leads.
That’s almost a 10% conversion rate!
Here’s how they did it.
Step 1: They identified the ideal lead
As great as it would be to target anyone, you need to define your exact customer or you’ll be pitching low quality prospects.
HipLead used their database of 130 million contacts at 20 million different companies to form a buyers persona for MadeRight.
They specifically targeted:
- Prospects that had the position of owner, director, president, VP, or head of operations
- Companies that had 1 to 50 employees
- Fashion, apparel, retail, and consumer good industries
Step 2: They created their cold email templates
HipLead’s next step was to learn more about MadeRight’s service, value proposition, and what pain point it solved for clients, so they could craft irresistible emails.
Here was the first version they composed:
And here is the second:
It’s good to have email variations because you can then test which ones perform better.
Step 3: They launched the campaign and optimized it
HipLead began sending out emails to A/B split test subject lines, allowing them to double down on what worked best and generate improved results for MadeRight.
The goal of the email was to present a different value proposition, while also poking at a pain point the prospect may be experiencing.
Here’s the results they created from the campaign:
The first week of the campaign they generated a 5.60% interested rate with only 125 emails. That’s really good!
Then, the following week they sent out almost double the amount of emails and achieved a 3.73% interested rate.
HipLead used this data to complete the rest of the campaign, and was able to get their client MadeRight 129 new high quality leads for their manufacturing service.
Main takeaways:
- You need to split test different parts of your email marketing campaigns to find what works best. Consider A/B testing your subject lines and messages.
- Develop a buyers persona and use databases to target these exact individuals. This will help you pitch only the most relevant prospects, improving the overall results of your campaign.
Case study #3 – Fortune 500 clients and $12,000 worth of work
Would you believe it’s possible to generate five figures worth of work and land Fortune 500 clients through cold emailing?
Because it’s been done, and you can achieve it, too.
The creative strategist Jake Jorgovan has used cold emails to land huge clients, and he believes that you can take one of two approaches:
- The quality approach(The sniper): You send fewer emails, but you spend more time researching the prospecting and crafting the email. This has the potential to result in better campaigns with less total emails sent.
- The quantity approach(The shotgun): This is the opposite of the quality approach, meaning that the goal is to email as many possible prospects with the hope that some will stick.
He also believes that the key to successful cold emailing is to create case studies, as these display the results you’ve generated for previous clients.
Seeing as online reviews are looked at by 90% of consumers before a sale is made, case studies serve as testimonials to help increase conversion rates.
Next, Jake says that he’ll create an email that mentions a few specific things about the prospect’s situation, and how he can solve them. Here’s a template he used to snag a client worth $4,250:
This shows the prospect that he’s done research and has dedicated time to outreach. It’s not a copy and pasted message they already get a dozen of times per day.
He’ll follow up after seven to ten days if there’s no response, as well. This is a message he’ll send:
Main takeaways
- Research into your prospect and create an email that aligns their pain point with your service. Mention very specific things that clearly shows that you did your research.
- Follow up as many times as you need to get a response. Wait at least a few days in between your follow ups to not appear pushy.
- Decide on either sniping leads that match an exact criteria or sending out mass email campaigns to land as many clients as possible.
Case study #4 – $30k/month in 12 months from cold emails
Doesn’t mid five figures per month sound nice?
Well, the founder of LeadFuze, Justin McGill, was able to achieve this monthly revenue with the use of cold emails.
Justin used LeadFuze’s own software to collect a list of prospects and build an outbound marketing campaign.
He then created a cold email template that he calls “QVC.” This stands for question, value proposition, and call to action.
- The question: Justin believes that every email needs to start off with a question to prompt and a response and to make you stand out from the normal introductory emails.
- Value proposition: What makes you different? This part of the cold email needs to identify your experience, skills, or service that they can’t get anywhere else.
- Call to action: An email needs to end with a call to action for a phone call, free demo, or some other step forward in the journey.
Try using this template that Justin has used for previous campaigns:
Just like the previous example Jake Jorgovan, you need to focus on following up after you send these types of emails. I personally enjoy using Hubspot for my email automation, but there are plenty of other CRMs you can use to achieve the same process.
Wrapping up
Cold emailing is a seriously powerful tool to grow your business.
The best part is that you don’t need to send out tens of thousands of emails to land huge clients.
You just need to be consistent, target the right prospects, and follow up.
Focus on making your emails as personalized as possible, and research every prospect to make a customized message.
Wait a few days in between your emails and send a follow up.
It’s also wise to split test different components of your campaigns. This includes the subject lines, the bodys of the email, and calls to action.
You may find that certain approaches create better results, and you can double down on those.
What’s your experience with cold emailing?
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