Actionable cold emailing techniques to generate sales

It is often very difficult to reach out to the right person and find your potential customers. Let's take a look at how to tackle this problem.

Step 1: Make a list of potential customers

First, you need to make a list of potential customers. When I worked in sales, we were building a software-as-a-service product for news publishers. So, I made a list of all the news publishing companies (magazines, newspapers, journals, etc.) that I could find. Some examples of starting resources were:

• https://dmoz-odp.org/News/Newspapers/Publishers/Associations/
• https://dmoz-odp.org/News/Newspapers/Publishers/
• https://dmoz-odp.org/Business/Arts_and_Entertainment/Media_Conglomerates/

Using this list as a starting point, I began finding people to contact by searching for specific companies on LinkedIn to see who currently works there. For example, if you search "The Wall Street Journal" on LinkedIn, you'll see:

You can now add the people with the relevant job title to your list of leads. You can refine this search by searching on specific job titles, location, etc.

Step 2: Get emails for your leads

The next step is where most people get blocked. It is difficult to get the right email of your potential customers and not a generic email like an [email protected] or [email protected] email. There are two approaches to do this.

Approach 1: Use hunter.io to find the most common email pattern

You can use a tool like hunter.io to find email addresses in seconds and connect with the people that matter for your business.

Approach 2: The email permutator method

If that doesn't work, you can try to figure out all possible email combinations yourself, but there is a better way. There's this nice free tool called Email Permutator.

By simply putting the first and last name of the person as well as their company domain, all the combinations will be provided to you in seconds.

Now, here's a neat trick that you can do. In order to verify the right email address, go to Gmail and paste all the different email addresses. If the right one exists, you'll be able to see it directly. Gmail will show you the information of the person you want to contact.

If this doesn't work, you can try googling the emails and seeing which one turns up in search results.

And now you've done it! You have a list of potential customers and their email. What's next?

Step 3: Cold emailing to get responses

Instead of sending an email directly to the decision-maker, I've found that sending an email to their direct manager is more impactful (or to someone a hierarchical level or two above the decision-maker). Ask this higher up to refer you to the right person.

For example, if your decision-maker is the Marketing Director, you would send an email directly to the Managing Director.

What not to do when writing the email:

Don’t send a message that is too sales-oriented, like:

“Hello Matt,

Let me introduce myself. I work for <company>, we have been selling a software-as-a-service product to sell to news publishers since 2013, blah blah blah…”

How to write the email:

On the contrary, your email must be very short and get right to the point. Since you are targeting a higher up, remember that they receive hundreds of emails a day.

• Your email must be readable in full on a smartphone screen.
• The answer should be understandable in less than 5 seconds. This way, they can easily click on the “forward” button.

In your email, ask for only one thing: to speak with the person who manages <the problem that your product solves>.

If your email is straight to the point, there is a good chance the Managing Director will transfer it to the decision-maker.

The decision-maker who receives your forwarded email will generally have no other choice than to make an appointment for a phone call. After all, it is his boss who is asking him!

The benefits of this approach:

I have found some concrete benefits of this approach:

1. Your prospect has a bit more time for you, because you have made an appointment
2. The response rate to emails is higher than that of other techniques
3. Your sales team can focus time on their strength: selling! There is no longer any need to waste time identifying the right decision-maker (and getting it wrong)

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