I actually got a sale from cold e-mailing today

Congratulations, BE! Remember to keep up the sales momentum while you're working on your first project so you minimize your "dead time".

Quality post. Can I ask you a question? what parameters are you using to scrape emails with mobile renegade? I have the same tool but it yields very few e-mails.

Congrats on your success, but be careful using scraped emails. If you are in the US you need to comply with CAN-SPAM.

Thanks for posting this. Do you have a target on the number of clients you want get?

@TheyCallMeBE What do you lead with in your email? Do you promote or just general information? Did all your outsources send the same email? What time did they send it? Did you use generic usernames for the email or it did you set it to your business name or personal name? What kind of call to action did you use?

Sorry quite a bit of questions there lol

I assume the reason you're using gmail accounts and not name@yourdomain.com is because of the risk of getting flagged as spamming?

What cautions do you take not to get flagged? For example how many emails a day on 1 account and so on...

Good job.

Imagine if you automated the process more. Export into an email management script or system like mailchimp, and hit all those emails at once. Schedule lists of 2K weeks in advance. Avoid spam complaints by forwarded domains. It's a tough game to play but well worth it. The biggest thing you need to avoid is being flagged as content spam with Gmail. Mailchimp is more dangerous but the reward is much higher. Your main domain would be at risk to be blacklisted but if you're smart and remove the emails that have an FBL system you avoid the risk, just reaping in the reward.

At first I was hesitant to tell people, but realistically, people aren't going through the trouble of that. And, if they did, chances are they wouldn't do it right or see results immediately and give up.

You're on the right track. Nice job!

Guys. Are you using the forever free option with MailChimp to send the emails.? Do you import your email addresses and then send a newsletter? Do you get the emails one by one or do you scrape them? if yes, what software are you using for scraping the emails?

How do you avoid your domain from being blacklisted?

Thanks

Lulu

Great job, keep it up!

I've gotten 2 sales in the last week from cold emailing online service providers.

All I did was provide a product targeted to their needs and wrote a short, compelling email that linked to a demo of the product.

I manually harvested emails from Google search results for the most competitive keyword in their niche. Service providers are likely to have their email addresses publically available for contact on their websites so people can reach them.

50 emails sent
9 emails opened
2 responses
2 sales

I must admit, like many Warriors (I suspect from all the threads I've read), I foolishly thought I knew what spam was and what it wasn't, having never taken the time to really sit down and read every word of CAN-SPAM, trying to understand exactly what it meant until today, because of Hostgator's restrictions on how I can use email accounts I set up on their servers. I thought they were being ridiculous, but now I am less inclined to think that.

I have seen it repeated many times in this forum, and never seen it contradicted, that cold emailing businesses to get new clients is absolutely distinct from cold emailing individuals to get business, and it made sense to me, since businesses make their email public. Many WSOs advocate cold emailing, and I believed them when they said there isn't a problem soliciting businesses that way. Now I'm having serious doubts, based on this quote from CAN-SPAM:

"The law makes no exception for business-to-business email."

The idea of using proxies and hard to trace email accounts is troubling to me, since it seems to imply that what you are doing could get you in trouble if someone discovers your real info. Which to me, spells high risk, due to questionable legality. The risk of having various accounts shut down or banned is bad enough, but what really scares me is the $16,000 fine (FOR EACH EMAIL-imagine if you sent out 500 they consider spam!!!!), and worse yet, the possibility of imprisonment. Here is a quote from the section that really gives me pause:

"The law provides for criminal penalties – including imprisonment – for:

• accessing someone else’s computer to send spam without permission,
• using false information to register for multiple email accounts or domain names,
• relaying or retransmitting multiple spam messages through a computer to mislead others about the origin of the message,
• harvesting email addresses or generating them through a dictionary attack (the practice of sending email to addresses made up of random letters and numbers in the hope of reaching valid ones), and
• taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without permission."

I was going to use Hostgator emails connected with some of my domains to email businesses, offering a service for free, when this line of thinking got me nervous.

Why do Warriors never talk seriously about this when discussing cold emailing? Am I just being overly nervous? Is there some reason people aren't too concerned?

I do think the op, myself, and others using a similar approach might be okay because there is a strong argument (I think-but I'm no lawyer), to be made that since we are only offering something for free in the original contact email, with no obligation to buy later, we are not actually sending a "commercial message", which means CAN-SPAM would not apply, or so I believe from this quote: "Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages..."

So I know this is a legal issue, and we are only discussing making money here, so any replies have to be considered as the opinions of other marketers, but I would appreciate any opinions, even if just to satisfy my curiosity that most Warriors seem totally unconcerned with this. Hopefully they have better reasons for not being concerned than I have for worrying.

You shouldn't even be directly promoting yourself on first email? Just firing so many blanks to get a few who don't curse you as a spammer. I used to send out 40-50 emails a day and get 5-10 replies back on average when I started out with one approach. But I was clueless then, just following some wso method and all those leads went to waste. and had hired people who let me down and messed up the sales process.

I had 30 businesses on a trial with less than 2 hours overall prospecting and sending mail. If I knew what I doing at the time, or hired the right people at the time making sure to train them properly.

Sending out thousands a day and only getting one back, while I'm pleased you got off the mark, I'd like to see you get better returns than that and to know it is possible by refining your method. And you can, by not trying to sell them on yourself or your presence on the first go.

Jeremy's approach and success is worth reflecting on. If you'd have sent out 250 with that kind of response rate, you'd be swamped. The demo thing to targeted prospects is far superior. Because it's more immediate to them in wiifm sense, presses a current need they have right their and then and the offer of a quick demo gives them a good reason to check it out, and be more inclined to do that instead of thinking they were get linked directly to a pitch.

Well done on finally getting go and getting off to a great start. You are good with people, obviously, and refining your approach can only move you on to greater and greater success. You'd soon be able to quit your job if you want to.

I'll post the email if requested too, that I used to send. It's a winner. Very simple. One of two sentences. Get's attention and responses, and initiates a sales process far more effective than a self-promoting email.

As much as I detest cold-calling from both being the caller and on the reeving end, I must take a moment to congratulate you on your result because results are what it's all about.

Well done!

BAYO

Wow. That's pretty rare. Keep up the good work though.