February 10, 2021
SMMA cold emails- that is – emails to prospects whom you have never met, and who have had no exposure to your agency previously – remains an extremely effective way of setting meetings and signing clients.
In this guest post, cold email expert Michael Gardiner explains the three ways to landing your next SMMA client with cold email.
Cold email is saturated, right?
It doesn’t work anymore?
Well, no.
Actually, cold email works beautifully if you do it right…
I’ve been doing cold outreach for nearly 6 years and have had significantly more success with it than most agency owners.
Today I’m going to be sharing with you three tips and also three ways to land your next SMMA client with cold email (and three things to avoid before you do!).
Good prospecting takes time and can be frustrating. But there’s one important reason why you should avoid collecting ‘generic’ email addresses for companies: they go straight to the secretary.
Or the assistant. The customer service manager. The gatekeeper. Someone in between you and the CEO/C-Level employee you actually want to speak to.
What’s their job? To protect the time of the person at the top.
And what email does the secretary normally monitor? Info@ sales@ help@ support@. These emails will never get you to the CEO. So why are you emailing them? Well for most agency owners they don’t want to put in the extra work of finding the “Name@Domain” email address of the actual person they want to contact.
Whilst there’s no substitute for hard work and research into finding the person you actually want to speak to, I do recommend some tools to help validate emails and decipher email trees within organizations, including:
Seriously, we get it. You’ve read a book on copywriting and also watched a couple YouTube ads and now you’re a master copywriter.
Good for you, now you’re lumped into the category of all the other “expert marketing copywriters” that your potential clients already get slammed with by the thousands in newsletters rarely consumed.
So how should you write a cold email? The best cold emails look like you found a company, took a genuine interest in it, and wrote to them. Cut the fancy crap. Be genuine, to the point and make it look like you actually wrote them an email. You’re not writing them an ad.
Remember: people respond to emails that read like they’ve been written by a human being.
WATCH: The Best Way to Get SMMA Clients
“I came across your makeup brand on Instagram and I absolutely love all the options for different colors you have available! I bet your customers are super happy” says John Doe, age 24 who’s never interacted with makeup outside of the time his girlfriend forcefully dragged him into Sephora.
Your potential customers see the crap. Stop pretending you’re in love with their products when you have no utter interest. It’s fine to reach out to businesses you may not be personally fond of, just don’t lie about why you’re interested in them, talk about why you are. Maybe their website design, content quality, strong following of engaged fans.
Also, consider if you do get on the phone with this prospect, they will be able to see right through your crap that you have no interest in your product. Write every cold email like you’re going to get on the phone.
So what do I suggest? Write emails to companies you like. Business owners especially are not stupid. If you’re genuinely passionate about mountain biking, write to companies relating to mountain biking. It will come off genuine, and when you get on the sales call, breaking the ice will be easy.
Now we’ve covered what you shouldn’t do with your cold emails, let’s discuss what you should do.
Here are three actional steps you can take today to land your next client.
When it comes to outreach and thinking of potential clients, we often forget the brands we use on a daily basis that are right under our noses. Go and look in your bathroom and find a skin cream you love, or your bedroom and a candle you actually use and can speak about – then send a cold email as a customer!
Have you listened to a podcast recently with an influencer, or business owner? Reach out to them, name drop where you heard about them, and express a genuine interest in them and their business.
Find a charitable cause you care about or a movement your passionate about – find the leading figures in this industry and…. cold email them!
Sounds simple? It’s not hard to get started with cold emails.
Get out there and start sending!
You got this.
Michael Gardiner
Instagram: @michaelrgardiner
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