Nick Abraham sends between 1 to 1.5 million cold emails each month for over 150 active clients through his agency, LeadBird.
Some of his best clients include a yoga instructor who offers classes to local businesses—her campaign is highly successful. Another client sells wooden pallets to manufacturing companies, which is also proving to be effective.
Recently, Nick appeared on the “In The Pit” podcast to share a Cold Email Masterclass. Here’s a summary of his key points:
- Effective Offers
The most important factor for successful cold emailing is presenting a strong offer that addresses market pain points.
For instance, a video production agency can’t just say they create “nice videos.” They need to emphasize the benefits, like generating more leads or customers through concise one-minute video sales letters (VSLs).
To boost response rates, include a guarantee that reduces the prospect’s risk. Nick advises having a flexible pitch during sales calls. If a client doesn’t qualify for the guarantee, adjust the pitch accordingly:
“Even if you initially offer a guarantee, you can be flexible during sales calls. If you realize the customer’s situation doesn’t meet the criteria, you could say something like, ‘Typically, we guarantee results for clients, but I see your situation is a bit different due to X, Y, and Z. While I can’t offer the same guarantee, I believe our solution would still be beneficial for you. Here’s what I envision the results could be. Would you be interested in trying it?’ This way, you remain honest and adaptable while still aiming to close the deal.” ~ Paraphrasing Nick Abraham
2. Personalization
Nick emphasizes that personalization and identifying intent signals can significantly improve cold email outcomes.
Examples of intent signals:
- Scraping followers who engage with relevant LinkedIn content: For instance, if you have a tool similar to Swell AI, you could input Swell AI’s LinkedIn profile into your tool. It would then scrape data from those who liked or commented on the last 30 posts, indicating potential users of a podcasting tool.
- Scraping followers of competitor companies on LinkedIn: Another method is to gather data on followers from a competitor’s LinkedIn page. If a competitor has a large following, emailing these individuals with your value proposition can lead to conversions, like saying, “They don’t offer performance-based services, but we do.” This approach generated over 450 leads in three months and was one of the top-performing campaigns last year.
- Monitoring job postings for relevant roles: If a company is hiring sales development representatives (SDRs) or business development representatives (BDRs), they likely need help with lead generationexactly what your services offer.
- Cold Email Strategies
A. High-Volume Emailing Tactics
Nick recommends using educational panels (greyhat) to create numerous inboxes at no monthly cost. For example, loading 1,000 domains into these panels can generate 10,000 inboxes without ongoing expenses.
Educational panels are often provided by Google and Microsoft to organizations, typically schools in foreign countries.
Cons:The entire panel could get shut down, requiring you to start over. Your IP may also be based in a foreign country, which could impact deliverability.
Benefits:
- No monthly costs for inboxes
- Quick creation of multiple inboxes
- Ability to lower volume per inbox while maintaining high overall volume
This method is particularly useful for sending large volumes of emails (like 100,000 per month) while keeping costs down and ensuring good deliverability.
B. Automation for Efficiency
Nick suggests automating the processes of purchasing domains, setting up DNS, and creating email accounts. For example, LeadBird has developed an internal tool that automates these tasks, allowing them to concentrate on campaign performance.
C. Focus on Contact-to-Lead Ratio
Nick advises optimizing campaigns by concentrating on the contact-to-lead ratio instead of open or reply rates. They continually test and refine offers, angles, and calls to action (CTAs) to enhance this metric.
- Cold Email Infrastructure
Nick’s agency utilizes a combination of tools and in-house software:
- Inbox providers: Primarily Microsoft and Google, shifting away from just Outlook.
- Domains: Purchased from Porkbun, DNS managed on Cloudflare.
- Email Sending: Using Smartlead with same-provider inbox matching.
- Validation: MillionVerifier for cost-effectiveness and an internal tool called Scrubby for catchalls.
- CRM: HubSpot for internal use, but recommends Streak for others.
If reply rates drop below 1%, it’s better to consider the domain “cooked” and move on to new inboxes/domains. This strategy is more effective than trying to repair reputation, as the goal is to maximize overall volume rather than the health of individual inboxes.
- Bonus Examples
- Automatic Account Creation for Users
Nick’s SaaS lead generation campaign successfully converts leads by automatically creating accounts for potential users. They then send an email explaining the product:
“Hey, we created an account for you. Here’s your username and password. Let us know what you think. Feel free to sign in and check it out.”
This strategy proves to be highly effective. - YouTube Clips Offer
Swell AI employs a similar tactic with a slightly different offer: “Reply with a YouTube URL, and we’ll create clips for you for free.”
When a prospect responds with a URL, they create an account for them, produce clips from the video, and send an email inviting them to log in and view the content. This process eliminates the need for credit card information initially, reducing barriers to engagement.
They only charge prospects once they decide to use the service beyond the free clips, and this offer contributed to 20% of their new revenue this month.
Let me know if any of these tips were helpful!
P.S. If you enjoyed this, check out Startup Spells to learn more marketing and growth hacks for your SaaS.