Building A Business With Cold Email

The idea of promoting my wares to people I have no clue about always made me feel uneasy. Even sending off this article makes me tense. So, using cold outreach to build a business was never an option for me. I parked that one in the too-uncomfortable basket.

But last year, that all changed. After adding my 167th future business idea to my list, I decided it was time to give one of these things a nudge. And being the good lean methodology disciple that I am, I first had to try and make a sale.

In my previous half-hearted attempts at new businesses, I've hidden behind Facebook ads and landing pages to prove demand. But this time, that wasn't going to work. I needed to get some real-life yes’s, not call-to-action button clicks. Cold email made sense.

That was March 10th, 2023. By March 16th, we had our first customer. Fast forward 10 months and ~200 cold emails later, we're doing 6 figures in revenue and have 20 clients. And we still don't even have a website.

Here's what we do:

Be Specific

Your response rate is a proxy of how good your targeting is. There is 0 point in sending emails to people not interested in your offer.

Show Legitimacy

Today's website is yesterday's storefront—it legitimises your business, and we're hurting ourselves by not having one. The first thing people do after reading an email from us is hop on Google.

Include a Reference

Our response rate doubled when we included a reputable reference in our emails. That means the name and number of someone who will vouch for your work that people respect.

There are two more things I add into my cold outreach to double the reply rate, you can find these here. So if you're looking scale with emails, you'll want to read the rest.

Author: Kale Panoho

But more importantly, How could you do the same for your business?

You can read how right here on our newsletter: The Method