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Content that works in cold emailing = negative marketing

by Matthew North
4 replies
So cold emailing has become my best avenue for getting clients. What has been working particularly well is creating content that creates fear/doubt and attacks the status quo (which is everyone's biggest competitor).

I write an email, create a blog post with negative titles, then follow the PAS copywriting formula, and it works. Prospects reply, meetings get booked, and some people buy.

The content is negative but helpful and I get a few compliments about it from people who reach out to me. I find that taking a negative angle really helps to cut through the noise of "The Top 5 Reasons You Should Do X", or just people sending them emails to connect for 15 minutes to discuss XYZ benefit. It shows in my opens, click-through rates, and replies. I also pre-qualify the list which helps even further.

In an inbox, a threat stands out; their RAS (reticular activating system) lights up. I got an email months ago from a marketer that had the subject line "You cheeky little..." and it jumped out to me. I just had to click it because it made me feel something. It offered me a cliffhanger of not knowing what was inside. Unfortunately, the rest was bait and switch with no follow-through. Just another generic autoresponder email with a clever subject line.

I feel that purely positive content has its place.. after the customer has been in enough pain to look for a solution, to reinforce the direction that they were already headed, at least in the context of cold email
#cold #content #emailing #marketing #negative #works
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  • Profile picture of the author ewenmack
    Mathew, I'm curious as to whether from your research
    that your target audience
    already show signs of having a pain?

    Or are you bringing a problem to their attention
    they weren't aware of but would
    be costly not having it fixed?

    Best,
    Ewen
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew North
      Originally Posted by ewenmack View Post

      Mathew, I'm curious as to whether from your research
      that your target audience
      already show signs of having a pain?

      Or are you bringing a problem to their attention
      they weren't aware of but would
      be costly not having it fixed?

      Best,
      Ewen
      Bringing a problem to their attention is part of it, as well as getting them to see the implication of what the problem is costing them, and compared to the payoff of having it fixed. For the record, I only cold email American businesses because the laws around email in NZ and other parts of the world scare me. Plus, the defence of deemed consent is shaky at best and emails need to be conspicuously published on the businesses website. So you can't guess what the owner's email is (which is easy to do). You also need to keep records of the people who you've emailed and where you got their email from for deemed consent to stand up. This is just what I've read on the DIA's website and I'm not a lawyer.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Jonas Phil VA
    Makes sense. We react more quickly when there's a problem that needs to be solved. We want to resolve it quickly. The positive emails can come in later, as a way of motivating the client to keep on going.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew North
      Originally Posted by John Jonas Phil VA View Post

      Makes sense. We react more quickly when there's a problem that needs to be solved. We want to resolve it quickly. The positive emails can come in later, as a way of motivating the client to keep on going.
      Exactly right. With tools like Klenty you can setup content to be emailed to them based on their behavior to keep funneling them towards a phone call. If the customer clicks the link but doesn't respond then they get another email drills down more into the ROI of my solution. I've posted about how I quantify the value of what I sell here.

      https://www.warriorforum.com/offline...-services.html

      Sending them short personalized videos also helps, it's another step in my cadence, usually near the end.

      Something else that works along with email is to combine it with other channels. Helps with moving the momentum forward and also engages with them on other platforms they may feel more comfortable using. For example on Linkedin and to a lesser extent, Twitter.
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