MBA1214 Does Cold Emailing Work in 2019?

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 where a better business is just 10 minutes away with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn Does Cold emailing work? In 2019, sending out an email to see if you can somehow work with somebody, do business with them, or start to build a business relationship without ever speaking to them before. What's cold emailing? Well it's emailing somebody you've never spoken to before, online or offline, to see if you can do business with each other. You're reaching out with an offer or even an attempt to build a business relationship. I get a ton of cold emails every day in my inbox. People emailing me, pitching me their businesses, pitching me their products, their services, asking hey, can we work together? And I've never spoken to them before. Not in person, not on the phone, not on a video call, not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not through another mutual friend. So do these emails work? Do they actually trigger somebody's interest to say, hey, I'll give this person a shot? Or are those days over? Is cold emailing a bad idea? In 2019. That's what we get into in today's lesson. So sit tight, because we're gonna tackle this one in 10 minutes. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Full transparency. I took a look at my email inbox, and I looked at all my cold emails in the last two years, and there were over 250 emails. That's like three cold emails a week. Now, this is 250 different senders, different people. This is not including spam. Like, these are legitimate people, legitimate businesses. This is not somebody trying to sell me pharmaceutical pills, Right? These are people that mention me by name, mention the podcast, mention our business. And out of those 250 emails, 250 people, I replied five times. Five times. That's like less than 2%, right? Why did I reply to those five emails? Well, they may have caught my interest. I may have heard of the person before. We've never met, but maybe I've heard of the company or the person who sent it to me. But at the end of the day, 5 is not a good number. So I gotta ask myself, why don't I reply to these emails? And why do they not work? And how could they work? How can a cold email actually work for somebody? Well, first we have to start with the premise that when you're trying to reach out to somebody that is important that you want to work with, that is of significance. Chances are that person is busy, your email is not on their agenda for today. They have other things on their to do list. Okay, so how do you get on their to do list? A cold email just simply doesn't do it. Okay? Even if you've written it so well and it's so enticing, and very few of us have that type of copy skills. I can name two or three people that I know offhand that could do that. Your chances can increase dramatically if your email's not totally cold. And I'll explain in a moment. But the point is, if you want to take somebody important, somebody that you perceive as important's time, you want to do business with them, you want to take their time to read it, to consider it, to reply to it, that's a serious investment of time for somebody that you've never heard of. Why would they do that? You got to ask yourself honestly that question. And you might be saying, hey, I'm actually offering them something good, something that can help them, something that really, I'm not even asking for money. I'm just asking, hey, I can help them in any way. It still doesn't discount the fact that it's going to take them time to reply. So what do people actually make time for? Things they perceive as important, things they perceive that, hey, they should do. So how do you get on the should do list? Well, you can send emails to people, right? But my question to you is, why do they have to be cold emails? Why do you have to email somebody that you've never spoken to before when you can easily speak to them, right? You need to strategize a little and plan ahead so your emails are not cold and they do get replies, even if the reply is, hey, I'm busy at the moment, or I'm not interested right now, but please follow up with me in six months. You can simply just follow this person on Twitter. That's the beauty of Twitter. You don't need to friend request them, right? They don't have to accept you. You can just follow them and you can follow their conversations, comment, and build a relationship from afar. I've been on Twitter for some time and I know the people that reply to my messages, so I'll recognize the name if I see it in my inbox. So spend a month or two or six following somebody on Twitter and contribute to what they do. Sign up for their newsletter, find out what they're doing, find out what they're launching soon. Are they coming out with a book soon? Is there a way you can help them when they need help instead of just saying, hey, I would like to help, when right now they're busy and they don't actually need anybody to help them with something? I mean, look at this scenario. Instead of sending out a cold email, say, for example, you subscribe to somebody's newsletter. You're aware that in two months they're launching their next book. You've been following some of their discussions on Twitter and you've been, you know, partaking in those discussions, giving your opinions. And then you reach out to them and say, hey, love the discussions we're having on Twitter. I read in your latest newsletter that you're releasing a book in two months. I'd love to line up a spot so you can appear on my podcast. I'd love for you to discuss the topic of your book. I'd love to work out a way so we can help you sell more copies. Thanks for the great discussions. Here's the link to my calendar to book a time for an interview that is so much easier to reply to by clicking a link and then just choosing a day and say, yes, I'll be on a podcast and talk about the book that I'm trying to sell. Yes, I recognize this person. Yes, we've had discussions on Twitter and they're a subscriber of my newsletter. They're a fan of mine. They know who I am, they know what I do. And in order for me to do that, it didn't take a lot of effort, right? It didn't take, you know, a crazy amount of work. It just took a bit of time. And you got to invest some time. If you want to take people's time. You can tweet that if you want. You got to invest in some time. If you want to take some people's time, you got to do it. And you're going to get just a higher response rate because it's real and it's personal and it doesn't come off as like, hey, I've emailed a hundred people today and you're just one of the hundred people that I've cold emailed. So I believe generally in 2019, straight up, cold emailing somebody is not a reliable way to do business. It's just not. But the good news is, is you don't have to do it that way. You can just invest a little time to build some relationship with the person, even if it's at a distance. It makes a world of a difference. Subscribe to the newsletter and reply to one of the emails. Hey, awesome newsletter. Love this blog post. Going to be sharing it with my crowd with no agenda, with no ask. Just give and build that relationship. Spend some time now. This only works if you're actually strategic about who you want to build relationships with. Instead of just spraying your emails out to everybody, you sit down at the beginning of your year or beginning of your quarter and say, hey, Here are the 10 people I want to build relationships with. Here's the 20 companies I want to do business with. Let me start building those relationships now. Let me start following them on Twitter. Let me start making sure that I chime in in the discussions. Let me follow them and, you know, subscribe to their newsletters. Let me maybe try out their product so I understand what they do. Maybe I'll watch a video or two on YouTube or listen to a podcast episode or three. You want to try to increase the conversions of your email. This is what you do. Another strategy to avoid cold emailing and building relationships is to work off introductions. If there's somebody that you want to get to know and you know somebody that knows them, ask them for an introduction. Even if you're doing like, let's say an online summit or you've had somebody on your podcast or on your web show or contributed as a guest blogger on your blog, you've done business with that person, you've done something with them. Hey, thanks for being a speaker on our online summit. Do you happen to know Omar Zenholm from Webinar Ninja and the $100 MBA show? I noticed that your product integrates with his product. I'd love to have him as well on our summit. Do you mind, you know, doing a quick one liner introduction? That person already has committed to being on that summit. They are sold on you. Right? So it's going to be easy for them to say, sure, I know Omar, I'll send him a message right now. So much easier than, you know, sending a five paragraph cold email about, hey, this is the summit I'm doing. This is the value we're giving. And this is often what people say, this is what I need from you. They actually write those words and, and they have a list of bullet points. And for anybody who's busy, that just looks like another whole to do list.

I don't want to do more things.

So what happens is that email gets ignored. But if you come with an introduction, hey, Omar, meet Sean. He's running a online summit. I'm going to be speaking there. I think it'd be a good fit for your audience. I'll let you guys take it from there. I'm willing to listen to the conversation now because you've came through somebody I trust and somebody that, hey, if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for me. These are very simple things you can do to avoid that cold email. The thing is that you can build a bad reputation if you send too many of these cold emails around your marketplace. You're going to be known as the person that spams people's inboxes. You don't want that, so avoid it if you can. And I'm telling you, you can.

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To wrap up today's lesson, I want to give you some advice to somebody who may be receiving, you know, some of these emails, some of these cold emails. Some of us, at the start, especially when your business is starting to get traction, we're going to start getting these emails and we feel obliged to reply to every single one of them. We feel bad. We feel like, hey, I should reply to this person. And some of us, we have a hard time ignoring them when they're not of benefit of us. The best way to look at this is like, hey, I'm not asking you to like be a mean person. Of course not. But you got to look at your time. You have a limited amount of hours a day, right? And we all get the same amount of hours. How are you going to spend those hours? Are you going to spend them on your customers, on your product, on serving your customers and making sure they're getting what they are asking for, improving your product, all that stuff. Are you going to use it on somebody who's looking to get something out of you without investing the time to build a relationship? You got to use your time wisely. And if you're twiddling your thumbs and you have time to reply, go ahead. But it should be low on the priority list. That's my opinion. I know that sounds harsh, but hey, you got a business to run. You gotta make sure you're profitable and you can stay afloat and you can pay your bills and you can pay your staff and all that stuff. That's the top priority here. Making sure your customers are taken care of. Yes, there might be some emails that'll help you grow or maybe partner up, but usually when someone's cold emailing you, it's not a one sided win. You're gonna have to invest time and sometimes money to get a win. And it may not be on your to do right now. It may derail your focus. So be selective. Skim through it if you have to. If it doesn't seem like something that you can actually add on your plate, say no. Learn to say no. A great book for that is essentialism by Greg McKeown. Check it out, but invest your time with what matters most. Your customers, your team, your business. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 Holland BA Show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We're on everything. So whatever you're using to listen to this podcast right now, whether it's Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, we're on it all. Just hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. You'll find our next episode waiting for you right on your device so it's there for you when you're ready. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. Create some folders, create some tags, create some filters in your inbox, whatever you use, Gmail or otherwise. I have a little folder called Cold Emails and I quickly see them coming in my inbox. I mark them, I go down the line and then I move them to that folder. And about once a month or so I'll take a look at that folder, see if there's anything there. But for the most part, it's out of my brain. It's out of my inbox or my main inbox so I don't get overwhelmed and I don't kind of lose any other important emails because I'm drowning in cold emails. Clear your inbox, you can clear mine. All right, thank you so much. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of you.

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