
Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups - mustafabisic1
https://medium.com/@dunjalazic/10-cold-email-tips-i-used-to-get-60-000-app-signups-dd928d86ca21#.h0s9l6wzp
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loteck
Some comments here aren't grasping the idea that some people's legitimate job
involves sending cold emails to targeted individuals, and some people's
legitimate jobs rely on receiving those emails.

If this concept is foreign to you, then you may only read the story as tips to
spam people. That knee-jerk mostly just indicates you have never been in one
of the two above job roles.

~~~
wwalser
For clear examples of what op is talking about:

Guess blogs — PR — Reporters — Co-marketing with partners —Guests on podcasts
— Most notable speakers at conferences

All require one party to make first contact. That first contact is often a
"cold" email.

It's a bit embarrassing reading the comments. It makes painfully clear how
ignorant the tech side of an org is about how their employers marketing and
lead-gen departments work. That blog about a partner's integration that was
published on the exact same day as the parter published about your company?
Yeah, that's not magic.

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hyperwriter
Hey everyone, thanks for defending me in the comments here :D

I'm the author of the article, you can ask me anything :)

~~~
geuis
Your article has a photo of a football game with the subtitle "Every pitch
counts." There are no pitches in football.

~~~
shadyrudy
What do you call a short, backwards pass, say on a reverse or double reverse?

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sharmi
This is one of the most thorough, thoughtful posts I have read in a long, long
time. In the land of generics that rule startup advice often rehashed with a
few additions (not that we don't need it. In spite of reading them often, I
still, on every subsequent read, recognize some mistake I am are doing. These
posts are reminders to self-evaluate), this particular post has been a breath
of fresh air. As an engineer, this is the post about marketing that makes the
most sense to me.

It also reflects how much she believes in the product, to put so much effort
in the emails day in and day out.

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janci
What is the difference between cold mailing and spamming?

~~~
Splendor
If you do it it's 'cold mailing'. If someone else does it it's 'spamming'.

~~~
_hyn3
Nearly lol'ed on that. I would add that if you're actually doing what the OP
claims:

> I’ve personally typed and carefully went through every single email I sent.

Then I would definitely consider that cold mail, and not spam. A targeted,
personal, concise email is worth 1,000 spammy emails (and perhaps approaches
infinity if you factor in negative strikes against "good faith"). The
difference is more qualitative than quantitative.

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fecak
As someone who coaches job seekers, I couldn't help but notice that these are
identical tips I give to my clients when sending out a contact to a potential
new employer. Most "cold" email techniques can be boiled down to "just don't
make them feel _cold_ ".

~~~
dawnerd
As someone that gets a ton of recruiter emails, I really dislike when they try
acting like they're my friend or try relating to me. I can see right through
those as the person being fake.

~~~
fecak
Funny enough, I'm a recruiter by trade. We walk an impossible line with
candidates, particularly when demand is so high (candidates care a lot less
when the economy is down, and I used to get job seekers acting like _my_ best
friend in the early 2000s).

If it's "too generic" the recruiter is dismissed as being lazy and spamming -
"too personal" and the recruiter is fake.

I do understand what you mean and have seen recruiters that try to get a bit
too chummy. By relating to someone, I might mention if we went to the same
college or if I know people from their company or group they belong to. I'm
not going to ask about their kids or spouse unless it's someone I know well.

~~~
philh
Naively, it seems to me that the thing to do here is to mention something
about the person's work.

I would dislike someone saying they went to the same university as me, because
I don't care - I recognise that others differ, but to me, it seems fake and
try-hard.

But I would like something like "your $project on github is interesting", or
"I liked your blog post about".

(Attempting to fake this can go wrong. I've had emails that said things like
"we were impressed by your github portfolio, particularly in Python and C",
which sounds spammy because you could easily generate that by scraping Github,
and I barely use C.)

You know your job better than me, but that's how I would think to avoid
seeming either too spammy or too chummy.

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pdog
_> I’ve sent about 500 emails, resulting in 94 new, high DA backlinks. [...]
The conversion rate from visit to signup on these articles is at a staggering
40%._

These are great tips and the results speak for themselves. Kudos.

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jasonmp85
When I get such an email, I reply and ask them to not contact me any more. If
they reply and say "no problem, but <keep pushing>", I reply "it is no
problem, that's what Gmail's block button is for", then block their entire
domain.

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CoVar
On the same subject, here are some tips I gleamed from Heather at SalesFolk:

One email, one focus. Send 8 different emails to every prospect. Four days
apart. 30% responses come from email 5-8.

Keep it conversational, in first person.

Create benefit driven messages. How your product can help solve their
problems?

Cold emails should be 2-5 sentences.

Again keep it conversational.

Keep words and sentences bare minimum.

Prove your worth. Show social proof or case study.

A/B test your message. Different value propositions. Different time/day.

Thursday Friday better than Monday.

~~~
majewsky
> Send 8 different emails to every prospect.

I'm honestly surprised that this works. If someone sent more than 2 or 3
unsolicited emails to me, they would end up in the killfile really fast.

~~~
Gracana
It's phrased a little oddly, but maybe 8 different emails 4 days apart with a
conversational tone means actually having a conversation with the other party.
But if they're not responding, how can it be conversational without being
super-sleazy-salesman fake? Why wait days in between replies?

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asafira
The author here takes the average of the conversion rates from different
websites. Am I wrong in saying that isn't quite right? Shouldn't the "average
conversion rate" be just the sum total of users that go to Toggl and sign up
over the total number of users that went to Toggl?

It's obviously still useful to break it down by the referring website, it just
seems like an opportunity to inflate your conversion rate numbers.

~~~
philh
> The author here takes the average of the conversion rates from different
> websites. Am I wrong in saying that isn't quite right?

Yes. It gives too much weight to sites that referred a smaller number of
people, and too little to sites that referred a larger number.

> Shouldn't the "average conversion rate" be just the sum total of users that
> go to Toggl and sign up over the total number of users that went to Toggl?

Not "users that go to Toggl", but "users that are referred to Toggl from one
of those sources", on both sides of the fraction. (Possibly you knew this, but
it seemed worth clarifying.)

Equivalently, a weighted average of the conversion rates, weighted by the
number of referrals from each source.

> it just seems like an opportunity to inflate your conversion rate numbers.

Note that this could deflate numbers just as well as inflate them.

~~~
asafira
Yep! I agree with everything you mentioned, and should have been more clear in
my description of what I meant by a fairer way to average the results.

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gwbas1c
Reminds me of two emails that I got that tried to look like "cold emails."

One email promised to give our company access to one of our major customers...
That we show prominently on our web page as a major customer. They also
promised to give us access to our previous parent company that still held a
minority stake in the company, and who we still sell package deals with.

Another email was from someone who went through my linkedin and was trying to
sell me something. I wasn't sure what it is and I was too busy to take the 20
minutes to figure out what it was and why it was useful. I think the email was
hand-written, but as I couldn't figure out why this was useful, it was easier
to ignore than engage.

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column
The author should take her own advice : "7\. Make it short and simple".

~~~
hyperwriter
Lol, thanks :D

------
marklyon
The Author’s name was familiar and I’ve written about Toggl [0] on my person
blog before, so I checked my email. While my blog post was organic, turns out
I’ve corresponded with this employee, when they suggested I update my post
with their revised pricing.

Here’s the message she sent, it’s obviously a mass email they sent to everyone
with existing posts.

 _Please update the content on your website if you mention Toggl 's old
pricing structure.

Hey, thanks for mentioning Toggl at Mark Lyon. We just had a major update I
think you should know about - we made changes in the pricing structure.

For starters, the existing pro plan now costs $10 per user per month. We have
added the options to pay either annually or monthly, depending on the user’s
preference.

You can see the full new pricing structure here -
[https://blog.toggl.com/2016/03/pro-plus-and-
pricing/](https://blog.toggl.com/2016/03/pro-plus-and-pricing/)

NB: If you mention Toggl out-of date pricing of $5 per user anywhere on your
website, please change it to $10 when billed monthly and $9 when billed
annually.

You can find the latest screenshots and logos here. Please make sure Toggl's
listing on your website is accurate and up to date.

Finally, let me introduce myself - I'm Dunja, I'm the Media Manager at Toggl
and would love to work with you in the future! We always have something to
share and would love to see how we can work together.

Please let me know after you've updated the prices, and include your postal
address, I'd love to send you some Toggl swag to say thank you!

Regards,

Dunja_

I replied, letting them know I appreciated the updated info and had made
changes as a result. It went into a ticketing system and they thanked me for
doing so. A few weeks later, a bunch of stickers and a bag arrived via air
mail. That was nice.

As much as I hate spam and “content marketing”, I was actually pretty happy
with this contact as it helped me provide better information. I also really
like their service, which also probably contributes to my desire to interpret
their actions in a positive light. Contrast with the regular parade of cold
“guest post” emails all websites seem to get. [1] No “trick” or “funnel” is
going to get me to write a post about something that interests only the person
who gets paid to promote it.

[0] [https://marklyon.org/2013/04/tools-time-tracking-with-
toggl/](https://marklyon.org/2013/04/tools-time-tracking-with-toggl/)

[1] [https://www.popehat.com/tag/ponies/](https://www.popehat.com/tag/ponies/)

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kapauldo
What is DA?

~~~
pdog
Domain Authority

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discreditable
> 10 spamming tips I used to get 60,000 subscribers

~~~
jlebrech
if you believe your product brings value to a potential customer then it's not
spamming.

~~~
AznHisoka
everybody thinks their product brings value.

~~~
HugoDaniel
SaaS (Software as a SPAM)

~~~
Gh0stRAT
SPAM = the meat product

Spam or spam = unsolicited emails

