Nobody does what you don’t ask them to

Check out my epic failure.

This is a 6-email campaign from 18 months ago. Sent to a cold list of 247 CROs.

It looks like a huge success.

It wasn’t.

(Disclosure: I wrote all 6 emails).

Check out those open rates: 84 to 101%.

Check out those clickthrough rates: 2-18%.

These are crazy good numbers for cold emails sent to C-suite people.

Of course I’d never show these stats in a pitch.

(No one can guarantee specific performance on campaigns.)

Here’s why this campaign is messed up.

The Reply rate was just 1%.

For this campaign, the focus was on getting the click.

So I wrote to get the click.

In cold email prospecting, you offer one Call to Action. In enterprise sales, that should probably be a reply.        

We should have focused on clicks for the first 3 emails, replies for the rest. Or we could have alternated.

Maybe some of those clickers became clients.

But almost every CRO (or their assistant) opened 1 or more emails. How many conversations did we miss because we didn’t ask for one?

Be smarter than this campaign? — decide beforehand what you should ask for, then ask for it.

Nobody replies if you ask for a click — people who don't know you will always take the easier path.

You don’t get what you don’t ask for.

Notes*:

1.?? Email dashboard numbers can seem wonky. It says there were 3 replies but only two people who replied, because someone replied twice. And an open rate greater than 100% typically means people forwarded your email(s)? — either to someone else, or to one of their other email addresses.

2.?? I still look at this campaign and wonder WTH we were thinking.

Check out the Docs section at winstonwrites.com?

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