why is cold emailng so poor at lead gen?

Email as your first contact with a prospect can be a difficult way to go. Prospects are inundated with emails.

Consider lead generation letters to highly targeted list of 50-100 prospects. Read Bob Bly's Power Packed Direct Mail book for some excellent info. on lead generation letters.

Your letters will stand out even more since people send less mail today.

I know, I know...email is basically free...but look at your results.

Maybe 99.99999% of your emails are going directly into a junk folder? In which case, it's not really ever an "initial contact".

maybe......how do i know/rectify this?

I do send from gmail. Are they notorious for this?

it does seem a bit strange i do not get any replies..not even telling me to f*** off or something. Which I'd take right now.

Cold emailing is a great form of lead gen if you do it right. Take a look at one of your emails and read it like one of your prospects would.

Whats the purpose of your initial email? Are you trying to sell them right off the bat?

yes....is that wrong?

Any wso's or posts on cold emails that work?

Like i said i have tried all kinds of different methods. Short and sharp, long and story like, makes no difference.

Cold emails suck... It's the lowest response rate out of ANY lead generation method. It's also my favorite.

Most people don't have success with cold emails because they're not doing it in volume. If you're sending to 2,000 people a week... it's not enough. 20,000 will give you better results. .0001% is the typical response rate. How you define your response rate will change that number. If you're considering your response rate to be anyone who responds that is qualified or not, as part of the numbers then it will be higher. I consider it to be those that are actual leads.

You have to consistently send. I have cold emails that I've sent to for 2-3 years and never called, never emailed, nothing...then they eventually call after consistent contact and buy.

You have to realize that it is a numbers game like everything else. Even with an awful response rate it can be very profitable.

You're doing it wrong though. If you're manually sending these emails, thats no bueno. If you're doing low volume, you're wasting your time. If you're using a free service like gmail, hotmail, etc. it's a waste of time.

The biggest initial problem people have is deliverability. If you don't have good deliverability then what's the point? Second.. is spam filters and domain blacklists. Third, but a devastating issue, is your IP being blacklisted.

Email is usually the most favored way to enter the game for beginners. However, it is the most difficult and advanced form of lead gen that you can do and that's why most people fail.

I must get 10 mails a day to my contact for things like SEO and web design services (lol irony!), lights, masonry, etc.

Businesses get roped into joining places like manta (like I did, sobb), then they are listed in a huge directory with their contact info. Spammers use these "services" to scrape emails and send out mass mails to them. It is an epidemic because an email is a mere trifle to do and send out in mass amounts.

So yeah, it is because it is WAY over saturated, and people hate them with a passion!

It can also be that your sales copy really really sucks as well. Most people do crappy sales emails and think they should be the next millionaire online.

Some things to consider I guess...

Most of them on here though. Selling software on the wso section that does that!

Definition of "crappy"?

Maybe your subject is not something worth opening. It is important that you capture the audience attention just by the subject line.

Yes, very low response rate, but still better than 0%, right?

So the answer should be obvious: increase the sending volume and make sure to contact your prospects more than once, probably with a bit different email templates. Some won't respond or buy until they see it 4-5 times.

Think about how you, yourself would react to getting an email from someone who you do not know, about something you do not care about. 99.9999% of people will trash the e-mail without even reading it.

I did emailing a while ago when I was selling mobile websites. Although I agree that the response rate is low, mine was not in the 0.0001% range. It was more like in the range of 0.5%. Now, the response rate is something, conversion rate is something. So, my rate of closing deals was about 0.1% (about one in a thousand). I remember once selling 3 mobile sites out of about 3,000 emails that I sent. I might have improved my response rate and conversion rate if I kept testing things and continued on this but I was lured by other projects that seemed better in terms of return.

When emailing businesses, the first important thing is to accept that not all your emails will be seen, and among the ones that are seen, not all will be seen by the business owner. Sometimes, they will be seen by the current webmaster wo will laugh at your email and immediately delete or even mark it as spam. Also a large number of emails will be seen by the gatekeepers who don't really care about tech stuff or growing the business so they will just ignore your emails if they smell marketing/selling. Actually, some gatekeepers will ignore any type of emails because they don't care enough about the business to check all the emails they get every day.

Second important thing is to accept that business owners are not waiting on the other side of the screen for your email to hear about your fantastic services to bring more customers to them. They do want to have more customers (honestly, some even don't care about that), but they don't care about your services no matter how good or profitable they can be for them.

Third important thing is to accept that Internet has a bad reputation for all those scams/frauds etc. that happened heavily in the past and that still continue to happen. Email has always been the best way for that type of activities. So, the majority of the business owners or gatekeepers who read your email will consider it as spam or an attempt for scam and simply ignore.

In short, whatever you do, you will never get a high response rate.

Once you accept that, your expected response rate will not be 2%. 2% percent is high for this type of emailing. Even some active buyer lists don't have that response rate (I don't mean open rate). If you get 10 responses from businesses for 1,000 emails sent, you should feel good.

Accepting all the above sad facts, your first job is to attract the attention of the person who sees your email title. Whoever that is. Your first email title should say "open me" from that business point of view. You can only do that by having a title that is related to that business such as asking for information about the business, asking for details about their services, products, location etc. Even in that case, you will be surprised how low the response rate is. I mean, you, as a business man would reply any email you get that is related to your business, asking about your services, products, right? It is not the same in local business world. Send 100 emails to random businesses asking about their services/products from a customer point of view and see the response rate yourself. There are many reasons for that. The email address is not active, the emails are checked like once a year, the email is not seen, the person who saw the email did not read or care about it or forgot to reply.

Anyway, once you get a response your second job is to build trust before firstly mentioning any of your services. How you do that is up to you. In the second email, you should transform from a potential customer to someone who can help their business, softly. Let them know you are a real person by including your contact info/social profiles. Tell them about yourself and your skills and what you noticed about their business/website/marketing that you think can be improved. That way, they will start to think that you are a real person, you know what you are talking about and you are trying to genuinely help them. You might tell the problem in 2nd email and offer your solution in 3rd email, up to you. Once you get the first response, getting a second response to your next email is like 100%.

If the first responder is not the business owner or decision maker, kindly ask how you can reach that person to discuss further about ... in detail. Put anything you want in the dots. Prefer not to mention any of your services.

You will not be able to close every business that responds but the main difficulty in emailing is to get the business to respond. The way I described above you will have a higher chance to get the first response. The rest is up to you.

Sorry - nothing personal, but I'm still just amazed at the number of people trying to sell services like SEO and web design that has the potential to make them thousands of dollars, and yet they're using the cheapest and most ineffective methods out there like cold emailing.

Marketing rule #1 is you have to get your prospects attention, and joining the ranks of the other dozens or hundreds of seo's contacting your prospects by email monthly doesn't make sense to me.

If you have decent sales material and a good offer, have you tried spending a buck on a real letter or sending something via Priority mail to really get their attention? I know nothing about your business, but if you can make $1k+ on an SEO client - why not spend a few dollars to get a client by being a little creative and doing something the rest of the world is NOT doing?

If you're sending out email and getting less than 5% then you're one of those coarse morons sending out overt sales messages trying to sell or pitch something right of the bat. Like every other unsophisticated idiot spamming people's inboxes with, irony upon irony, offers of taking care of their marketing for them. I really despair at how amateur and cheap people are on the Warrior forum. Like the grasping monkey who get their hands stuck in the jar because they just cannot let go of the candy inside, they just can't let go of their own greed and consider things from their market's perspective.

I mean, ask a simple question in an email, a one sentence question of a business, with genuine intent to offer some kind of info that will help them, a guide or something, and you'll massively increase your response rates and from there you can move the conversation on.

Create you own solo ads in your email templates that act like ads and link to a landing page to sell your stuff, but just keep the content of the actual email neutral and non-salesy. Most businesses, just out of curiousity will not instantly dismiss an email if it differs from the other 100 spam messages they got that week, and could be from a customer or genuine business.

And if interested, and your banner ad in your email (as long as you are using business customized email and not just text email) catches their eye and has a strong headline they'll more than likely click anyway if you have vomited a cheesy sales pitch all over them in your first email.

ok let me put it another way then

Cold emailing = stinks

cold calling = much better

Why is that? Both are spam.

wow.."moron", "idiot"

"pot and kettles"

That's good advice. SEE NO NEED TO CALL NAMES.

If you're sending the same bland email to hundreds or thousands
of businesses at once you shouldn't expect a good response.

If you take the time to highly personalize each email and use a
little psychology you should be able to get 50% to 75%+ of
people replying.

The more work you put into personalization the better the return
you get out.

If you're approaching a niche market you should be looking at charging
substantial fees in that niche market so taking the time with each
prospect should be worth the effort.

It's a mistake when you're looking at getting clients worth tens of
thousands of dollars or more to you to try to contact a whole pile
of them as if you're selling a $10 product.

Take the time to create something that can't be ignored.

And as has already been mentioned...consider direct mail too as your
first contact.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

OP,

If you're doing this to win new business, I wouldn't really recommend email.

You'll only get a decent number responses if you send a TON of emails, and even then you will have burned up many perfectly good leads.

The main reason that response rates are so poor for email is most busy professionals can get 100+ emails on any given day, and if a large number of those are from colleagues & clients, your email will fall right to the bottom of the priority ladder -- read: they'll flag it up but never get round to following it up.

The other reason is that most people (including you) seem to go straight into sales mode when they send an email out. They seem to think that their prospects will instantly see the value of using their services. Nope.

When you do make that first contact -- be it by phone, email or direct mail -- your aim is simply to start a conversation.

For example, when I started freelancing I used to send the same type of emails that you do. My response? Nada.

But then I changed things up a bit. A few weeks later, I noticed a software company with some pretty awful marketing copy. Here's what I did:

- I rang the company. I asked the receptionist who deals with their website, and if I could have his email, as there's a few things I'd like to point out to him.

- I sent the guy an email asking if they hire freelance copywriters to work on their copy, and gave him a link to my samples page in case they ever do. I also gave him some tips in a "P.S" statement about how he could improve his website.

- 2 days later (most busy people won't give you an instant reply) the guy replied. We had a short conversation about their website and how it could be improved, and now he's booked in for June. I'm rewriting all of the website copy.

- The email worked so well because it was:

a) Non committal -- I asked a simple question rather than the "hire me now and I'll change your life!" sales mode that turns so many people off;

b) I had some credibility -- I name dropped his receptionist in the email, saying she told me he was the right person to speak to;

c) I offered some value up-front -- giving him some tips on his website, nothing over the top, showed him that I had something to offer, and wasn't just going for the quick easy sale.

Giving this ^^ a try might help you, but it takes a lot of time to do the necessary research. In all honesty if you apply the same tips to cold-calling (i.e. invite a conversation rather than pushing your services down their throat) you'll get a better response rate.

Another option would be direct mail. It's much easier to get the right office address than it is the right email. Hire a good copywriter to draft you up a lead-gen direct mailer with a free report/guide as the offer. If they email you or call you by XX/XX/XXXX you'll send it right to their inbox free of charge.

Do it right and you'll get a much better response rate than going for the kill with the first contact, and you'll then have a well targeted list of prospects to follow up on. They'll now be much more receptive to speaking to you about your services, as your whitepaper/free report helps to establish some credibility.

You could also try generating leads through your website. Same scenario as the direct-mail offer. Set up a landing page (or hire a decent copywriter to do it for you) promoting your free report. Drive targeted traffic with PPC and if they opt-in they can download the report. Set up a drip-feed auto-responder series offering emails that solves problems they'll be having. When you get to #9 in the sequence, offer them a free consultation/critique or something like that.

Hope that helped.

-- Ben Lawton

That's not true at all. You can send one spam email Doesn't have to be a high number to be classed as spam. Geez. Think before you call me careless.


ou use words carelessly, or with a meaning they don't have.

Too much spam and multiple email addresses for every individual makes it tough for you to ever get through. At least with a phone call you can have a goal of reaching someone and if you don't catch them you can most likely leave a voicemail.

people have emails solely dedicated to sign up for email lists they don't want.

hell some people don't answer emails they are expecting.

I barley read email unless its a client, or from someone I enjoy reading from ( Ben settle comes to mind)

Try delivering value up front that's infinitely harder to ignore than yet another pitch from someone they never heard of. Would you be more likely to respond to yet another SEO email pitch saying essentially: "hey stranger; buy from me because I'm great at what I do" or a message from someone who makes the effort to email, call, and send a letter, asking them to Google "best divorce attorney in Atlanta", to "check out the video I created and ranked on page one of Google" to show them that you're not just another SEO advertiser, ready to take their money, and deliver nothing like others before you already did?

People have been burned; a lot. They aren't impressed by promises; they are impressed by results. Deliver them and you'll get noticed. Otherwise it's just more noise.

i wouldn't go out of my way to say that email is the best way to go, but it does work. if you're not capable of generating very few responses, then edit your mail again and send out as much as you can. Editing your copy is not that hard to do. Again, volume is the goal The more messages sent out the better

As a person who gets a ton of spam, I'll tell you, anything I don't recognize gets junked. Anything that looks remotely like I didn't sign up for it gets automatically spammed. Hard truth, as I'm an IM'er too, but that's the way it goes.

See. First off, I might be you in a parallel universe with the " Iv'e tried all kinds of different approaches, long, short, smart, factual, with price, without, etc.." so its fair to say I know a great deal about what you are saying. PS: In SEO only.

Let me add that it will never be 2%+ as long as it is cold. But it can be upto 0.5% which I have achieved so far.

I have been in and out trying emailing through:
-----------------------------------------------------------
- Gmail (Works best for cold emailing)
- Yahoo, Live, Aol etc (very good deliverability but work less than gmail taking all things into consideration
- Both automated & manual emailing for the above points
- CRMs (work very good)
- Dedicated & Virtual private servers (not a good idea for cold emails)
- Sending through E-mail SMTP Clients with free email addresses (not so good)
- Many others which are points of discussion

All I can say today is two things.

- A combination of good list & good email deliverablity is all that you need while sending cold emails.
- Cold e-mailing Leads and conversions have probably the highest rate of ROI.
- The road of cold e-mailing is going down, probably has already gone down.

During my 3+ years of doing all of these above, I became so good at building excellent prospects lists that this is what I do now at investigatedomains. com and have been very successful in getting high converting (& happy) SEO customers. we should have a chat someday to share know how. I am sure there are a lot of things we can learn from each other.

Fact: Indoor air pollution is more toxic than outdoor air pollution. Email is becoming like indoor air pollution. You need to find other ways to capture a business owner's attention because this route is clearly not working for you (and many others). Perhaps try engaging with them through social media, get acquainted there, exchange contact info, and then have a real conversation with them via email, skype, phone or other one-to-one channel.