Dan Martell - How To Write Your Outbound Cold Email Template That Gets Responses

00:00:00.700 No yawnin', Jarrett, no yawnin', if you yawn,

00:00:04.240 five burpees, five burpees.

00:00:07.280 Just a bit, yeah.

00:00:09.200 Hey, I'm talking to the camera and the video guys

00:00:11.080 they're going, rawr, yawnin' like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

00:00:22.420 The SaaS sales cold email template that gets you customers.

00:00:26.720 Now, maybe you feel that inbound marketing

00:00:29.120 is a little slow, or that you've done it in the past,

00:00:32.500 you've done some cold email outbound

00:00:33.960 and it didn't work too well, no responses,

00:00:36.200 or maybe you just don't feel like being spammy.

00:00:38.520 Well, let me teach you some simple, easy way

00:00:42.360 to craft your emails so that they're short,

00:00:45.060 they're simple, they're personable,

00:00:48.040 and they get responses from your ideal customer.

00:00:51.040 That's what I wanna share with you guys today.

00:00:52.680 I first learned this when I was 18.

00:00:54.520 I've been cold emailing forever.

00:00:56.080 I cold email people to invite them to my founder dinners.

00:00:58.780 I cold email investors, entrepreneurs,

00:01:01.680 like it's just, I have no problem.

00:01:03.780 I don't mind sending an email,

00:01:04.820 but it's because I have a format.

00:01:06.180 I'm gonna give you the four specific kind of sections

00:01:09.360 of your email that need to be true for you

00:01:11.020 to get a positive response to not look like it's spam.

00:01:14.760 So when I was 18, the first few,

00:01:16.500 I remember I was sitting there and I was like,

00:01:18.260 I should get some advice from people who've been there before.

00:01:20.500 Usually a good idea.

00:01:21.540 So I found a list, I think it was the top 20 technology CEOs

00:01:25.580 or executives in the world.

00:01:26.940 And on that list was Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,

00:01:29.600 et cetera, et cetera.

00:01:30.880 And I had to think about like, what's the email?

00:01:33.820 How do I say it?

00:01:35.220 How do I connect with them?

00:01:36.280 How would I get a response?

00:01:37.380 So I figured out a way and I'll tell you what I asked.

00:01:40.660 I pretty much said, you know, here's who I am.

00:01:42.920 So I gave some context and then I said,

00:01:45.720 everybody keeps arguing about these three things.

00:01:48.220 What you know, so education, who you know, so network,

00:01:51.540 or being tenacious or have grit or hustle.

00:01:55.560 Which one of those do you think is the most important

00:01:59.200 to be successful, okay?

00:02:01.140 So that was the question, super short, simple,

00:02:03.440 three things, pick one, let me know, and I get a response.

00:02:06.380 Here is my favorite response out of emailing all those people.

00:02:09.480 It's from Mark Cuban, and this is what he said,

00:02:11.980 very Mark Cuban, he goes,

00:02:13.280 doing all three when everybody else is trying to pick one.

00:02:16.740 Again, I was 18 years old when I sent out that email.

00:02:18.780 I got a response from many of them,

00:02:20.480 but Mark Cuban replied, and that blew my mind.

00:02:23.080 So what I wanna share with you is how that evolved

00:02:25.460 over the years to the point when I was building my company

00:02:27.420 Clarity, which was a marketplace for experts to give

00:02:29.500 advice over the phone.

00:02:30.460 We grew it to 50,000 experts in a 12 month period.

00:02:33.860 The way we did that was outbound emails.

00:02:36.240 We sent over 250,000 emails in that period to collect and

00:02:41.680 curate incredible experts.

00:02:44.040 And the way we did that is following this format.

00:02:46.220 So the first thing you need to do, it's four Rs. 0.98

00:02:48.780 The first R is research.

00:02:50.420 You need to research the person, the individual.

00:02:53.720 Who are you going after?

00:02:54.860 Even if you do a mass email, let's say 100 emails a day,

00:02:58.040 and that's usually the upper limit you want to be sending out

00:02:59.900 because you have to have time to respond,

00:03:01.760 you want to segment and target those lists of people

00:03:05.100 so that you can focus on a city, a job title,

00:03:08.580 a company size, an industry,

00:03:10.680 and make it hyper-targeted and relevant.

00:03:12.740 But if you're just doing one-on-one,

00:03:14.340 just spend the time to do the research in your first line

00:03:17.280 in the email should personalize the email, okay?

00:03:20.120 Just like you would be sending it to a friend

00:03:21.960 or a new acquaintance that you might have just met

00:03:23.920 on an airplane or in an event.

00:03:25.760 So that's the first thing.

00:03:26.760 Number two is you need to make sure

00:03:28.560 that you provide reference, okay?

00:03:30.260 The second R is reference.

00:03:32.000 Talk about potentially like,

00:03:33.500 hey, we've worked with companies like,

00:03:35.700 and you don't say we've worked with a company like yours like,

00:03:38.240 you just say here are some of the clients we've worked with

00:03:40.260 and make sure that they're on target reference

00:03:42.800 that they would know who they are

00:03:44.100 so that the person receiving the email is like,

00:03:46.200 oh, that's like a company like mine.

00:03:48.220 I actually know John at that company

00:03:50.180 or I've heard of that business

00:03:51.440 and if they help them then maybe they can help us.

00:03:53.480 So again, it's not a sales email.

00:03:54.920 It's just like, hey, congrats on the new store opening

00:03:58.120 and here are some of the companies that we've worked with.

00:04:01.260 And then finally, then you wanna do a reward.

00:04:03.420 Some kind of way, so the third thing is R for reward.

00:04:06.660 How do you reward the person for opening the email?

00:04:09.160 Now, some people choose to kind of do some kind of

00:04:12.700 personalized critique of if it's a marketing thing,

00:04:15.500 their marketing content, their website, et cetera.

00:04:17.800 Here's where that'll fall short is that if you come off

00:04:20.380 as criticizing in a first outbound email,

00:04:23.380 I just think it's gonna fall flat.

00:04:26.120 What you wanna do instead is say,

00:04:28.080 hey, I noticed this was something you guys are working on.

00:04:31.060 Here's three ways that we've found to increase that outcome.

00:04:35.560 So never criticize, never say,

00:04:37.360 hey, I went through your checkout flow

00:04:38.960 and I noticed that these things are broken

00:04:41.000 because that's gonna make the person in charge of that go,

00:04:43.340 what does he know, is he a Mr. Know-It-All?

00:04:45.300 Instead you wanna say, hey, here are three ways that are,

00:04:48.900 you know, maybe it's kind of like

00:04:51.300 not very well-known strategies to increase the checkout process

00:04:55.100 for an e-commerce site, whatever it is.

00:04:56.500 But if you can not have an attachment, not a link out to

00:05:00.300 anywhere else in the email, just put it there, okay?

00:05:03.440 But if you have to make it a link out there, don't put it

00:05:05.880 behind an email capture, don't make it some cryptic thing,

00:05:09.720 this click, make it very clear, very simple to your public

00:05:13.320 website so they feel comfortable clicking it.

00:05:15.360 If it's required, you're better off putting it in the email.

00:05:18.160 And then the fourth R is request.

00:05:20.760 have a call to action.

00:05:22.360 So many times I get an email from people cold

00:05:25.260 and they don't actually ask me for anything.

00:05:28.140 It's just this long three paragraph email

00:05:31.340 thanking me for my content and here's what I'm doing

00:05:34.580 and then pretty much it says, thanks for whatever, right?

00:05:37.880 And I just think it's a missed opportunity.

00:05:39.820 If I'm actually gonna read that,

00:05:41.480 give me something to bite into to maybe,

00:05:43.580 so maybe it's like, hey, me and my co-founder

00:05:46.620 are thinking of splitting our equity 50-50.

00:05:49.480 What are your thoughts?

00:05:50.520 And that prompts a request.

00:05:51.680 Now, I might reply and send you a link to a video

00:05:53.760 I've already done, but at least that creates a response.

00:05:57.000 You have a request.

00:05:58.200 For outbound SaaS, this is, hey, do you have seven minutes

00:06:01.600 tomorrow at 2 p.m. to get on a call?

00:06:03.240 I would love to show you a demo of our product

00:06:05.160 that we've used to serve those customers I reference.

00:06:07.440 Or, hey, let me know if next week's works.

00:06:09.640 I'm in town and I'd love to sit down with you and your CTO

00:06:13.680 to walk through the product for 10 minutes.

00:06:15.920 I'm in your neighborhood.

00:06:17.080 And many people, when they do these outbound emails,

00:06:19.040 actually wait till they get a bunch of responses.

00:06:20.880 That's why it's valuable to actually segment into a city.

00:06:24.540 And then once you've got all these people saying,

00:06:26.280 yeah, I'm free, I'm available,

00:06:28.240 then you book your plane ticket.

00:06:29.880 Okay, so that's a ninja tip.

00:06:31.420 Now, here's the deal.

00:06:33.180 A lot of people, I wanted to break a myth right now.

00:06:35.620 A lot of people think that cold emails don't work.

00:06:38.800 And here's the truth about cold emails.

00:06:41.420 It's not that they don't work,

00:06:43.000 it's just that the market can be qualified.

00:06:45.840 The outbound target that you're going after,

00:06:48.640 that potential customer is, you know, it's not spam.

00:06:51.300 You're personalizing it, you're doing the research,

00:06:54.220 you're sending the email, you're keeping it short,

00:06:56.680 simple, concise, very natural.

00:06:59.660 And what the outcome is, is they're just not in market.

00:07:05.360 You know, the truth is, is that like,

00:07:07.020 they could be qualified but 50% of the customers

00:07:09.360 may not be ready to buy right now.

00:07:11.060 They don't have the pain that you solve.

00:07:12.740 That doesn't mean you stop, okay?

00:07:14.360 I truly believe four follow-ups.

00:07:16.960 If you get no response for follow-ups by the fourth

00:07:19.600 follow-up, maybe one every other day, then you stop and you

00:07:23.860 just put them on a nurturing program maybe once a month or

00:07:26.500 whatever, but I just think that so many people stop too quick.

00:07:30.000 You know, most average salespeople stop after three tries.

00:07:33.680 80% of the success is gonna happen on the back end of the

00:07:37.680 fourth, the fifth, the follow-up of that segment where

00:07:40.780 somebody's like, hey, somebody reach out to me and mention

00:07:43.580 some solution, I'm gonna search my email and find it, and like

00:07:46.260 a year later you could have somebody reply and reengage

00:07:49.560 with your email.

00:07:50.500 So those are the four Rs, the template for building a great

00:07:54.860 outbound sales email.

00:07:56.660 The first one is research, make sure you personalize it.

00:07:59.500 Second is reference so they know that you've worked with

00:08:02.140 companies just like them.

00:08:03.420 Third is reward, give something of value to them, put it in

00:08:07.320 the email, keep it short, concise, and unique.

00:08:09.680 And then fourth, request what you need next to move the

00:08:12.560 conversation forward.

00:08:13.720 That's how you generate sales from outbound emails.

00:08:16.160 If you have any questions or better yet,

00:08:17.760 if you have a template, an email that's not working today,

00:08:21.300 post it below in the comments

00:08:23.040 and I will reply with my thoughts.

00:08:25.140 I recently did this for some of my coaching clients.

00:08:27.340 It was invaluable.

00:08:28.780 Just the act of reading their email out loud

00:08:31.880 to the rest of the group really showed to them

00:08:34.420 kind of where they were going wrong in their assumptions

00:08:38.420 for how the email's coming across.

00:08:39.980 Because the key is it doesn't,

00:08:41.260 you don't want it to sound like a pitch email.

00:08:43.220 It needs to come from a place of service, okay?

00:08:45.920 If you can get in that mindset that you're not emailing to try

00:08:48.320 to get something from somebody, you're emailing to help serve

00:08:51.320 and support somebody else, it changes the frame,

00:08:53.720 it changes the language and it changes the structure of the

00:08:56.520 email and how it's felt by the recipient.

00:08:58.820 That is my challenge to you.

00:08:59.820 Post it below and I'll see you next Monday.

00:09:02.120 Cheers.

00:09:03.220 If you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel

00:09:05.380 for other SaaS sales videos.

00:09:07.520 I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter for free training,

00:09:10.420 exclusive contests and other private events that I'm hosting.

00:09:13.920 And if you're ready to get going,

00:09:14.920 I've got two videos queued up for you right now,

00:09:17.000 and I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - October 23, 2017

How To Write Your Outbound Cold Email Template That Gets Responses

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