MBA2074 4 Cold Emailing Tips if You Hate Cold Emailing
2 Feb 2026 · 14 min
Omar Zenhom shares four ways to cold email without hating it: start with Twitter DMs, get warm intros from well-connected people, write short personalized emails with specific compliments, and follow up three times at 3 days, 1 week, and 2 weeks.
Chapters
USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and Sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply. Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Powerful business Lessons to start your day every single day 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 Webinar Ninja and in today's lesson you will learn four Cold Emailing Tips for those who Hate Cold Emailing Some people love cold emailing. They find it exciting. They want to write some good copy. They're curious to see how many people reply. They see it as a challenge. For the rest of us, cold emailing is a real chore. I know firsthand I don't enjoy cold emailing, but I do it because it works. Because it actually is more effective than a lot of other techniques and strategies to grow your business. Whether you're cold emailing somebody to use your product or to market you, or to partner with you, to become an affiliate or even to make an introduction for you, you need to get over that kind of icky feeling of oh, I don't want to do this and and get over it and start cold emailing people. Because there's only so much you can do with your own resources, with your own network. But don't worry, I'm gonna show you four tips that really work. I use them myself to get you over the hump and get started. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.
Yeah, but we'll be with family.
You're in a good mood. What's your deal?
What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G, just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top Tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at metro by T mobile, just bring your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.
I want to start today's lesson by just saying that I know a lot of entrepreneurs, really successful entrepreneurs, that have started some amazing businesses, and the vast majority of them have used cold emailing or messaging at some point to get to grow, to get customers, to meet the right people, to get the right partnerships, maybe even to get some investment. Whether it's Chris Savage from Wistia or the founder of ConvertKit, Nathan Barry, or podcaster and course creator John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, it doesn't really matter what you sell. Courses, training, coaching, a software, a product, a service, an event. At some point you're going to need to cold email and you might be delaying it. You might be kind of putting it off because it feels weird, feels awkward. What if I get rejected? I get all that, and I feel that way a lot of the times. And that's why I wanted to create today's lesson to give you four solid tips, four strategies that you can do to get over that hump and start making opportunities happen for you with cold emailing. All right, let's start with tip number one, and this one's very simple. Some people have a really hard time emailing somebody they don't know, they've never met, they don't have a relationship with. So a good way to get around that, if you are not an email kind of person or feel like that's kind of abrupt or kind of awkward, is to use the DM system in social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. I recommend Twitter because it's actually quite easy to direct message people in Twitter. Most people that use it regularly have their DMs open, and it's just easy to kind of comment a few times on somebody's message, have a few conversations, or be part of their conversations. You do that enough for a couple of weeks, you're not a complete stranger anymore, right? They recognize your avatar, at least in your name, so that when you do DM them, it's not really that awkward. You have some context. You can actually start the conversation talking about what you were participating in on Twitter, whether that was a conversation or a comment, or even maybe something funny that happened. You can lead with that. This was kind of my gateway to cold emailing because I was kind of cringing at just emailing people out of the blue. And it just gave me a bit of a buffer because I had a chance to kind of maybe get to know somebody a little bit online through the social media platform like Twitter, and then I DM them. So this is really a great way to reach out to people that you want to reach out to, but you don't have a direct line to. So that's tip number one. Tip number two, get to know some connectors, okay? This is probably the number one tip I can give you, not only in cold emailing, but in relationships in general, in business. There are people in your space, in your niche, that are just really good at networking. They know everybody. They're connectors, they're social. They're like the hub of all conversations. Get to know these people, okay? Build a relationship with them. Do whatever you got to do to get to know them and become their friend. I'm serious. Like, there are people in my space that are very, very well connected. They know pretty much everybody in the space. I happen to be friends with these people, and therefore I have basically endless contacts. Why? Because I could reach out to them and say, I would love an introduction to this person, because this person would be somebody I would normally cold email. And instead of cold emailing them, this person can do an email intro to me. Hey, I know Omar. Omar meets so and so. So this is an alternative to cold email, because your connected person can introduce you to the person that you want to connect with instead of cold emailing them. So they could say, hey, so and so. This is Omar. I know Omar is a. I'll let you guys take it from here. And a warm intro makes your life so much easier because now you're basically been vouched by this person and you have their attention. But this doesn't work if you are living under a rock. You need to make it a point to get to know people. This is why I say it's very important for you to go to conferences, whether they're online or in person, to speak at events, to get on other people's podcasts, to be as social as possible, you know, having conversations on social media. And if you know a few of these types of people, you're basically as well connected as they are. And I can name these people, for me, on the top of my head because they're so well connected. Jordan Harbinger, John Corcoran, Noah Kagan. These people just are very well connected. And I know if I reach out to any of those people, they could probably connect me to anybody in the world. I'm serious. Whether it's through a direct introduction or Somebody who knows that person. Now, the good news is that these connectors are really friendly and that's why they're well connected. And that's why it makes it easy for you to connect with them, because they're interested in meeting new people all the time. Now, this takes time, but you need to start investing the time to meet people. I know that you might be introverted and that's not your thing, but these are the things that you got to do that are a little bit uncomfortable to be successful at whatever you do. And my advice is to see it as just making friends. You're trying to make more friends in your industry. That's tip number two. Tip number three, let's just get down to it. What if you just need to email somebody that you have no idea who they are, you just know that they can help you. You've never met, you don't know anybody who can introduce you to them. How do you craft a message that actually works? Well, I actually do this all the time. I actually did it just yesterday. It was my cold emailing day where basically I reached out to a bunch of creators on YouTube that would be a good fit to be creator ambassadors or partners for us on our at our software company, Webinar Ninja. And I'm cold emailing these youtubers based on the email they provide on their website or on their YouTube channel. Here is my strategy. I'm just gonna walk you through how I write this email. And basically my strategy is be honest, be yourself, be friendly. And when I say be friendly, I mean write to this person as if they're your friend. Like you're writing a text message. This makes you real. It doesn't look markety. It doesn't look like somebody's trying to pull a fast one. I literally just write a one word subject line. In my case, it's webinars and I just write in the body of the email, hey, Frank, I just subscribed to your YouTube channel. It's really cool. And then I go on and talk about what I like about it and I just give honest feedback. And it can be something really small or very insignificant to most people, but to me I thought it was cool. Like maybe like their graphic in the intro is really funky or I love your glasses or whatever. Just an honest compliment, right? I immediately then just get down to it and tell them, I'm Omar Zinn oma, the CEO of Webinar Ninja and we want to partner with you. Why? Because we think that you would be a great creator partner for us. And we rather just give our money straight to creators than to Facebook or Instagram using their ads. If this is something that's interesting to you, let me know. I'd love to give you some more details and work on how we can get started. Keep up the great content. Cheers. That's it. Literally how I would write to a friend to the point and just really laying it out on the table. I try my best to write each cold email separately, meaning like I don't use any templates so that it seems fresh and authentic. And it will seem that way because it is fresh and authentic and it allows me to just to have a little fun every time I write that email. Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.
Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times. You're playing the loot.
Yeah.
And it sounds pretty good, right?
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. All right, to wrap up today's lesson on cold emailing, here's my fourth tip, and this one. So many drop the ball. And that's follow up. Follow up. If you don't get a reply from somebody, that's okay. I like to give it three to four days and then I follow up in Gmail. You can set a reminder to remind you to follow up. And sometimes people get busy, their emails kind of get buried. They might have read it but just never replied. And by following up, you just basically remind them, hey, remember this email. It also gives you another shot at them opening the email if they didn't open it the first time. This also applies to any DMs on social media. I like to follow up because I got nothing to lose. Some people will reply the next day. Some people will reply after one or two follow ups. Some people will reply maybe even three weeks later. Point is, is that you gotta keep trying. Now you might be asking Omar, well, how many follow ups is kind of the limit? When do I stop trying to contact this person? Well, for me it's three. And I like to space them out. I wait three days, I follow up, I wait a week, I follow up. I wait two weeks, I follow up. Why? Because normally people are not away for more than two weeks. Some people could be on holiday, some people might be busy, some people might have an emergency in their family. This is actually more common than you think. And by spreading it out and giving myself three follow up chances. I kind of COVID my bases and know that, okay, I've given it my best shot. There you have it guys. Those are my four tips on cold emailing. If you hate cold emailing, listen. They work. My advice? Try them. Just go ahead and try them today or tomorrow. Just try it with one person that you want to connect with to help grow your business. You will not regret it. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show hit. Subscribe right now if you haven't already hit. It's a huge help when you subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you like to use. Also, while you're at it, leave us a rating and review. It's a huge help and I love to hear what you love about the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this when it comes to cold emailing or business in general, it's a numbers game. The more times you try to reach out to somebody, the more yeses you're going to get. If you have a 30% chance of somebody replying to you or then if you cold email 10 people, you're going to get three. If you cold email 20, you're going to get six. If you cold email 30, you're going to get nine. Maybe 10. Those are some really good connections and partnerships that will keep you busy for the next few months. So keep your numbers up to increase your opportunities. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls this trip is draining my wallet.
Yeah, but we'll be with family.
You're in a good mood. What's your deal?
What's my deal? I saved in Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.
