#77 - Playbook: Cold Emails

Foreign.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. My name is Armand Farouk. I'm here with my co host, Nick Sigelski, and we have probably one of the most overdue playbooks that has ever been requested. Cold emails. How to not send emails like your grandma. How to get your grandpa to open them. How to get a CEO to open them. How to get reply rates. Nick, why should people listen?

Well, first of all, I'm kind of concerned that you're emailing the elderly so much. But we are gonna cover a lot of the core elements of what makes a successful cold email, because apparently salespeople book meetings using email. We're gonna talk about a couple things. First, what is the goal of sending a cold email? Hint, it's not to close the deal. What do you actually put in your email? So what do you write in those emails? What do you write in the subject line? What are you putting in the body of an email? And then we're gonna talk about structuring sequences like, when are you actually sending emails in your cold outreach cadence? Let's start with what is the goal of your sales email, Armand? The first piece is you're not trying to close a deal. Nowhere in the history of software sales has somebody sent an out of the blue email and gotten a reply from somebody saying, hey, you know what, we need this. Can you send me a docusign? So what you shouldn't be doing is explaining every single nuance and piece of how your solution can change their business. What you're trying to do is, is get their attention. So you're explaining how you solve a problem that you think they have and just trying to say, do you want to learn more? So my goal when I send a cold email is to do three things. I want to explain very shortly a problem that I think they have, tell them that I might be able to solve that problem, and then ask them do they want to learn more. Short emails, get attention, have a conversation.

One key point on this is way too many people try to send five bullets in their email. They try to explain everything their solution does. They try to send PDF overviews of their product. And this is the biggest problem with cold emailing is they try to do too much in one email. And what you forget is you're going to probably send seven emails over a sequence. And so one email, one topic, one goal. If that doesn't work, don't worry, you have another email and your pocket totally right?

And like, I've seen people Include information in initial cold emails that the customer doesn't care about at all. Hint the year that your company was founded, the fact that your CEO used to be a X and you're selling to X role like the customer doesn't care about any of those things. They might when you get into sales process, but when peaking attention in a cold email, it doesn't matter at all. Okay, let's talk about when we're actually sending emails. Let's talk about sequence structure.

All right, sequence structure. So before we get into what the actual emails look like, how many emails are we sending over how many days? How are calls mixed in? Whole nine yards. So general rule of thumb is 10 to 14 touches over 30 days. I won't go into all the studies behind this, but in general, if you look at Outreach and Gong and many other companies that are great sales organizations, they tend to fall within that range. So here's how they're actually mixed in. In general, most good sequences will start with an email. And the reason for this is, yes, we love cold calling. However, a naked call is not very effective. And here's why. If I can send out 200 emails, what's gonna happen is I'm gonna get 50 bounces back or I'm going to get 50 quick. I'm not the right people back. And so what I can do is I can make it so those remaining 150 dials are much better dials and so I can use email to dequeue early on. So after that first email, then the cadence is typically call, email, call, email, call email, call, email, and then just emails. What I mean by that is you're going to make a cold call on day three after your first email, for example, and then the moment that person doesn't respond, you're going to send a voicemail. We'll go through that in another episode. And then immediately after you hang up the phone, you're gonna follow up with an email.

When you contact somebody which you don't want them to think is, oh, this is an automated email message that's being sent by a marketing machine, you're a real human being. And so when you tie a call to the email, it bumps your email response, right, no one's gonna call you back. I've gotten maybe two sales callbacks in my career. But they realize, oh, Nick's a real person actually sending emails, they because you're linking the call, the voicemail and the email all together.

Exactly. And on that note, typically where you'll start to weave in social in your sequences is you'll send that first email and then touches 2, 3 and 4 will be connect with them on LinkedIn, make a cold call, send them an email, and then usually around step seven or eight, you'll start to send them another message on LinkedIn if they've accepted your request. And, and if they haven't, then you can burn an InMail on that. And so usually I'm doing one connection request, one message a little bit later in the sequence. So in terms of the topics of the emails, a lot of people will smack you over the head with the same email 17 times. So 30 minutes to President's Club does this, this and this. Email number two, hey, I'm not sure if you saw but 30 minutes to President's Club does this, this and this. No. So each email has a different purpose. Let's walk through it. Email number one, you save your biggest problem and you put all of your tailoring in that first message. And so if Nick is a chief financial officer, I'm going to take the biggest problem that I know for the CFO and I'm going to use that as my first email and I'm going to put all of my tailoring behind it. And we'll go through how you do that later on after that. My second email a couple days later is going to be very simple, a bubble up. The reason for this is it makes people think that you are actually a human. And your second email almost always has a higher reply rate than your first email. A great word for your second email is very simply thoughts or just called simply enough on the third email, usually one more bubble up. And the reason, if you spent all this time getting that tailoring into the first email, give yourself two more shots to to get that first email seen from there. If that didn't work, emails 4 and 5 switch to a different problem because that first problem didn't work. And then emails six and seven usually focus on building loss aversion. My two favorites are email number six is hey, are you the right person? And then email number seven is a classic breakup email and we'll go through what that looks like a little bit later on. So again, to recap your biggest problem, first two bubble ups, switch problems, another email, and then go to loss aversion for the last two. Nick, anything I miss while you're making.

Me cringe at Nick from the beginning of my sales career because I used to just send almost identical emails again and again and again and I wouldn't even change the subject line, I Thought, well, if I pester Armand enough with, like, the same message, eventually it's going to work. What you're doing is you're picking your top two to three problems that you suspect the, the person you're reaching out to has. And if they're not biting on the first problem, then you're sending the second one. And if they're not biting on the second, then you're proposing the third. The idea is if you put every single problem you solve in an email, it's gonna be way too long. It's gonna overwhelm them. So what you're doing is you're sending a couple messages to test the first problem that you think is the highest probability for them, and then you're working your way down. So you're, you're having a series of messages that build on each other. No one's like, actively really looking and reading and, and thinking about all of those messages. Maybe some people do, but the idea is you think they have a problem, and you're going in the highest probability order down.

All right, so we've gone through a full sequence structure. However, we've basically told you nothing around what's in the emails themselves. And so first thing you do is you open up your inbox, you see a subject line. And so goal number one is to get that email open. Nick, what are the keys to a good subject line?

You can write the best, most personalized, most tailored email in the world, where you spent 47 hours doing research on Armont, and if he doesn't open the email, you're not getting a response, you're not booking a meeting. So you've got to become a master of writing good subject lines. Let's talk about bad subject lines first. The first thing that you're never doing in your subject line is selling. I'm not saying ARMOD increased close rates by 57%. Exclamation point. They. That looks like a marketing email. My goal when I'm sending a colon email is I want them to know that a human being is sending this email. A human being has written this subject line. So I'll often do things like I'll use lowercase for my subject line. I'll use, I'll write just called lowercase j, lowercase c. I don't want it to look like something that a webinar machine is blasting out. So I'm not doing full sentences. I'm eliminating punctuation. What I'm trying to do is I'm making it about them in the email. I Don't know. Can you give some examples, Arman, of some good subject lines you've seen?

Yeah. And so some good subject lines that I've gotten in the past is someone sent me a cold email and it was titled Wrestling, all lowercase. And for those of you who don't know, Nick and I were college wrestlers together. And so there's no way that I wasn't going to open that email. I. I have no idea what it was about, but I gotta at least let the guy take a swing. All right. Other ones is one time I saw someone on their LinkedIn said, I love pizza. And so the subject line was pizza. You're getting the theme here. The last one is someone was an Ohio State grad. And so what I said is, Michigan is greater than sign Ohio State. And so I tried to troll them a little bit and I knew they would open the email.

So one of the things that's important here is salespeople will completely overthink that subject line. And what they'll do is they'll see Armon was a wrestler, but they're like, is that close enough? Can I make a connection? Like the connection that you make in that segue in the email can be pretty dang loose. Like something I did recently. I booked a meeting with somebody who is a leader at a law firm now, but he used to be an actor. And he wrote in his LinkedIn profile about how he was trained as an actor. And I literally made the subject line trained as an actor. And then the email I wrote about, well, it's really hard to get your foot in the door as an actor. I'm trying to get my foot in the door at your law firm. And then I just went into my normal sort of pitch. So it doesn't have to be this elaborate, powerful segue. Find something about them. Find the loosest connection possible to your thing. And it can be pretty dang easy.

And the reality is you can't tailor every single subject line you send out.

So.

So here are some examples that you can use as templates in case you are not going to tailor your emails. So number one is very simply, this is shown to be neutral in terms of open rate, is I can do Nick Armand if Nick was my prospect as a subject line. That's one example. Number two, one of my personal favorites that gets a super high response rate is I'll take the company's investor. So I'll say Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia, plus their company name plus my company name Right. And so we have some attachment between their investor, their company, and my company. You can also do their company plus my company. Very simple enough. And the last one is where you can start to get creative is I can use something that's very, very, very subtle, that seems tailored, that could be theirs. So, for example, I might put in, if I'm a compensation company, I might say Nick's compensation or Nick's pay stub. That's probably going to get him to open the email or get a little bit of a smile out of them. But again, there's no selling involved and there's really not even much about, like, the product or the problem that I'm solving.

One thing that I stole from you, from the tailoring thing, was like, I'm selling to law firms and I'm sometimes I'm researching these attorneys and they have no online presence at all. And it's really hard to find anything about them except on their LinkedIn. I can see that they've been at that law firm for 16 years. And so what I'm doing with my subject line is I'm literally making it 16 years at XYZ Law Firm. And so I have to actually look at their LinkedIn and find out how long they've been at the firm. But that's actually getting a pretty decent amount of opens. It's about them, but it's not like the same as pizza or wrassling.

Okay, so now someone has finally opened our cold email. Hallelujah. And this is where most emails go to die, unfortunately. Here's the thing. We're gonna go through something. It's called the three by three rule. Three bodies of text, no more than three lines each when read on your phone. This is also known as the no scroll rule. So you should be able to read that entire email on your phone in one glance. The way those three bodies of text will flow is problem, solution and ask step number one, that first paragraph, when you're going into the problem, the key here is you need to be as crispy as humanly possible, in the words of Josh Braun.

So.

So in other words, something costs money or this takes you a lot of time is not crispy enough. What I need to hear is you stay up until 2am editing podcasts and making all of the sneezes of your co host, Nick Sigelski go away magically so that you can publish one episode a week. That's a crispy problem. Once you're done with that crispy problem, your second body of text explains what you do in one sentence. Some people will say, don't put anything about what you do in the email at all. I actually think that's totally bs. You need to give them just enough so that you can explain how you solve the problem. And that is the majority of the focus of the second paragraph. And then lastly, number three, you need to have an ask. And when you ask, what you typically want to do is not say, are you interested in looking at our platform or would you like to meet to discuss more? All of those things feel very, very, very heavy. The goal here is an interest based call to action. And so an example might be open to taking a peek or is that even moderately interesting?

The key around that three by three rule is you're trying to eliminate the decision fatigue and make it as easy as possible for the person to understand what the heck you do. And then either say, yes, I want to learn more or no, I don't want to learn more because it's actually a win if they don't want to learn more. You're trying to get a reply and if you send something that's a massive wall of text that takes them six scrolls to read, you're not gonna get a reply at all. You're gonna be put on the block sender list and then you're gonna burn a ton of energy. Following up, following up, following up. You're making it easy with the three by three rule. Okay, so let's give this first example, which is podcast editing at 2am and I'm gonna use that wrestling subject line. So I send Armand a message that says wrestling in the subject line and he thinks, what the heck is this? He opens it up. Here's what I'm writing. Armand, I know that wrestling is a really tough sport, especially when your training partner was Nick Sigelski and you had to spend all of your practices trying to fight off your back and not get pinned. I've heard there's one thing that's tougher than wrestling though, and that's editing podcasts at 2am, removing stuff like ums, ahs, and the occasional sneeze from the final product. I'm writing to you now. I'm moving into that how we solve it. I'm writing about something that automatically removes filler words from your podcast so you don't have to stay up till 2am anymore. Open to learning more. I've used crispy tight language. I've said stuff like stuff, and I've used pretty casual language. You should never confuse formality with professionalism. So that's what I would say. I hope I'd get a response from you.

I would hope so. And so let me give you another example of one that we use very frequently at pave, and anyone here can probably use this. So whenever you see someone switching jobs, if they go from big company to small company, usually they have far fewer resources on their hands. If they go from small company to big company now, it's like, holy crap, we're dealing with mega scale. Either way, there's usually a problem associated with that transition. If I'm emailing Nick, and Nick has gone from Facebook to Acme Company, right? What I'm going to say is, literally the subject line will be Facebook, Aero, Acme. He'll open the email. That first paragraph is going to be, hey, having done merit cycles at the scale of Facebook, typically every time you run a compensation review, you're buried in spreadsheets. And the current record for the number of columns in any comp spreadsheet is column qz. Do you think you'd win? That's paragraph number one. Number two is what PAVE does is we integrate with every HR system in your universe so you never have to build a compensation spreadsheet again. Very cleanly explain what problem I solve and how I solve it. And then lastly, number three, the ask. They're like, nick, is that even moderately interesting or am I off base here? Simple. I've had a very crispy problem around compensation that weaves in tailoring. I've explained how and what problem I solve, and then I've asked him with an accusation audit a la Chris Foss. Is that even moderately interesting?

One thing that I'm doing at the company I'm at right now, which is a time automation software so lawyers don't have to track their time anymore, I'll look on somebody's LinkedIn, I'll find out a thing that they enjoy doing. So for Armand, it might be fly fishing. Subject lines. Fly fishing. Here's what I write. Armand, I saw you wrote on your LinkedIn that you really enjoy fly fishing. I'm wondering, would you rather go fly fishing or enter your timesheet for your firm? I'm writing to you about something that automatically tracks your time for you so you can enjoy more time. Fly fishing. Would you like to take a look? That's a super quick one. I'm not even like, attaching, like, how our thing is related to fly fishing. I'm just saying, would you rather do the thing you like or enter your timesheet, which we make that go away. So there's a couple examples. You can see that we're pretty casual in the way that we write. There's a couple important elements that you want to think about when you're writing this email. So what are some of the highlights here?

Yeah, and so here's the thing is you can be three by three. You can describe your problem crispy, you can get into all these different things, but if you sound like a robot and if you don't sound like the way you talk to your friends, you're never gonna get an email reply. Okay. And so some common pitfalls are people will use things like I was looking at, or I'm just circling back, or I'm checking in, or instead of saying I'm. Or we're, they're saying I am or we are, or instead of saying I was looking at your website, you're. You should be saying things like scrolling on your site and saw little things like that that shorten your word count and make it sound like a human. Are the keys to a good cold email?

Well, the key is if you can eliminate a word from your email and have it still make sense, you should do that. I want my emails as short as possible while still communicating that segue problem. Here's how we solve and the ask. I don't want them to have this. Oh, my gosh, there's a lot of text here. In general, the less words you used, the less the higher response rate you're gonna get. The other area that I think people get trapped in is they confuse professionalism with formality. No one is looking at that Dear Mr. Farouk email and thinking, oh, this person, really. They show a lot of reverence for the work it's taken me to get to be a CEO and then saying, I'm gonna respond to this person. So cut that stuff. Kindest regards. Like, you can eliminate that stuff. You don't need to be overly formal. It actually makes you seem kind of weird.

The last piece here is a lot of times people will take the I'm going to explain a problem and only talk about the problem a little bit too extreme. And what they'll do is they'll start their emails in a way that sounds like a news headline. And an example of that would be for my email that I described at Pave, it would be, chief people officers hate running merit cycles. Instead, a more natural way of saying that might be, hey, Nick, most folks we know on people teams hate running merit cycles, right? And so I'm using a little Bit of a colloquialism. I'm not saying a blank statement that sounds like a news headline up front and is generally just super rigid. And I would never say that in my life anyways.

All right, well, you want to move into some rapid fire cold email tips so the audience can put some stuff into play right away.

Let's do it. Alrighty, what's tip number one?

So, number one is I see a ton of salespeople understanding that sending stuff like PDFs, case studies and videos is a good way to share information. And I totally agree. I love sending videos as a prospecting technique. I never actually include attachments. However, on my first email, I always want to send plain text emails in the beginning. The reason for this is I want to improve deliverability if I send a cold email with an attachment that's getting caught by spam filters. So I always start with a plain text email. All right, Garmin, give me one.

All right, tip number two. Use a breakup email. Definitely create loss aversion. But if I see this stupid, you're either A, interested, B, not interested, or C, buried under a rock and you need safety right now or you're about to be eaten by an alligator and you want me to help you right now. Guys, that stuff was creative about five years ago. Now everyone has seen those and it's gotten to the point where it makes it extremely obvious that you're using a templated breakup email. And so my best practice for a breakup email is I'll say, hey, it seems like pave isn't a big area of focus for you. Just in case you want to have access to it, here's a quick recap of what we do. Could I get the thumbs up or thumbs down just so I know to not reach back out again? And what I'm doing is I'm giving them a reason to reply. I'm saying, hey, if you reply to this email, you know I'm not going to be back in your inbox again. And at least you'll get a response instead of the stupid alligator breakup response, which will usually result in you getting a negative response. Alrighty, Nick, what's number three?

So if you spend a ton of time putting together a really tailored email and you don't get an open on that email, not a response, it doesn't even get opened, it's okay to send that exact same email again. Just change the subject line number four.

Over using bolds links bullet points. The more structured and formatted your email looks, the more obvious it looks like you've templated it.

When people respond to my emails with not interested or unsubscribe, here's exactly what I say back. Armand, no problem. Was it just bad timing or a different reason? I don't want to unnecessarily follow up. If it was the latter, that forces them to go take a look back at your email and either say, yeah, it was bad timing, which means you can find out what good timing is and schedule a meeting for six months out, which hey will contribute to your pipeline them or they give you a real objection. Not interested doesn't really give you any information to work with.

And then the last one that I've got is it's actually okay to break the three by three rule every once in a while if you have really, really, really good tailoring. And so, for example, you might say, hey, I'm using the wrestling subject line. I might have the first paragraph about how you started USC wrestling. I didn't know that was possible. And then your next one does the segue, the third one does the problem, the next does the solution. And then you have a cheeky ask at the end that really leverages a lot of tailoring. However, what you are not allowed to break is you are not allowed to break the three line per body of text rule. In other words, no big blocks of text ever allowed in your cold email. Your blocks of text should be two to three lines max, and they should read like some of these fancy LinkedIn posts that you see everybody posting every day. Alrighty, so let's roll it from the top. We went through a million different things in the world of cold email today. Number one, we went through the goal of the cold email, which is really. Guys, stop trying to sell people. Do one thing one email number two. We went through the sequence structure in general, 10 to 14 touches over 30 days. It starts with an email, then goes call, email, call, email, call. Just emails. Your first email is your biggest problem. Your fourth starts the next set of problems. Your sixth then switches to loss aversion. And then we talked about subject lines. Four words max. No sentences, no selling allowed, only about them. Then when it comes to the body of the email, we went through the three by three rule, crispy problem, what you do in one sentence, and then a quick ask that is asking for interest, not for a meeting. And then last step, we talked about the style of your email. And in other words, do not be a robot. It's okay to use conjunctions. Don't use over formalities or news headlines or any of that nonsense. Alrighty, Nick. Where can people help us out today?

Beloved audience member, my guess is if you've listened this deep into the episode, you may have sent an email or two in your lifetime. It's time to get a taste of your own medicine. If you'd like to receive emails from me and Armand, we do have a moderately entertaining newsletter. And you can sign up for for that newsletter in the link in the show notes. We promise not to send you anything about alligators consuming human beings or weird pictures. Okay, we might send weird pictures of me and Armand skiing, but sign up for that and we'll see you next week on 30 minutes to President's Club.