Why Cold Emails Aren't Working For Your Agency

Gonna keep this short: It's not the cold emails.

I know we're all tired of hearing that this doesn't work or that doesn't work.

It's almost never the medium you choose. It's the way you're doing it.

And most people are doing cold emails wrong.

How?

An average agency is selling a service that is upwards of $5k/mo or more. That's a huge ticket size.

With ticket sizes like that, you have multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles, a lot of 'objections' need to be overcome, and trust needs to be built.

So, when you just pitch your service on the cold email, one of 3 things happen in order of most likelihood:

1. They don't need your service right now, not even remotely on their roadmap so they ignore you.
2. They don't trust you enough or are too busy to respond on the basis of that lack of trust so they ignore you.
3. They trust you, and regardless of whether they need your service or not, they might respond just to get a relationship going (or a transaction if they need the service right away).

The keyword is: Trust.

If I trust you, then whether I need your service or not, I'll respond just to keep you in my orbit for when the time comes.

But why should you care what I'll do?

Because I'm a buyer. I've bought services from cold emails before.

How to build trust

Let's divide into 3 stages:

1. Before the pitch
2. Within the pitch
3. After the pitch

Before the pitch

Goes without saying: Content.

Prospects who've seen your content somewhere -- a blog, some Linkedin posts, a podcast appearance etc., are much more likely to respond to your cold emails.

They have seen you, they know you exist and are legit and solve their problem.

The more you show up in the prospect's world, the more they'll trust you. It's plain and simple.

Unfortunately, 95% of agencies that I talk to are still getting it wrong.

Most of them are not even writing ANY content. They get 0 marks.

Some are writing content but not DISTRIBUTING it. They get 2 marks for effort.

Some write content, are distributing it too, but it's the wrong content (i.e., doesn't solve any problem for the prospect, not even helping them buy your service). They get 5 marks for at least doing something.

This is a much bigger topic that I'll keep touching on in this newsletter. If you need an immediate fix, DM me.

Regardless, if you're looking to get started on Linkedin, LiGo for LinkedIn is the best place to start (I'll personally help you set it up if you use the contact button in the onboarding).

Within the pitch

After receiving hundreds of cold emails, I have come to the sad conclusion that ...

You need to stop talking like a therapist (i.e., don't be Josh Braun).

If you've followed this newsletter from the start, you know I used to be a big fan of Josh Braun. Unfortunately, too many people are misapplying his lessons and frankly, at this point it's overdone.

Prateek Sanjay pointed it out in one of his posts. That is not how a real human talks and it feels weird whenever I receive an email that starts with "noticed" or "seems like" or some other 'common interaction' that I've never had with you.

The best cold emails very plainly describe the offering, address some objections, and close with a CTA. Here's an example:

(shoutout to Berkley Day )

If the offering sucks, no amount of sales tactics or psychological phraseology is gonna help. And yes, I actually responded to Berkley ("not the right time" :P).

Bonus: if you can write an email that encourages people to connect with you on Linkedin, that's the holy grail. Figure out how to do that.

After the pitch

That bonus tip bleeds into this.

The best cold emails should encourage your prospect to look you up, connect with you on Linkedin, follow your blog, or subscribe to your newsletter. Basically, it should incite the thought, "I need to learn more from this guy because he's talking about a [potential] problem I have".

Alternatively, do multi-channel yourself. Don't just cold email. Connect with that prospect on Linkedin (pls don't pitch right away -- no one wants to be pitched twice) and just keep them in your orbit.

Overtime, if your offering is what they're looking for they will reach out.

How likely they are to do that depends on only two things:

1. Your offering
2. Its relevance to them

If your offering is, "I develop custom software" -- just give up. No one wakes up and describes their project as "Custom software". But that's a topic for another day.

Long story short

The reason why your cold emails aren't working is because you are thinking of them in isolation.

Think of cold emails as a cheap way of introducing yourself to people outside your circle. People don't like strangers so unless you find a way to show up a few more times in front of each prospect, you're really down to luck (i.e., them having that need at exactly that point in time -- which you have no control over).

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