How we doubled our customers in 1 week with cold email
Spoiler - we're now at 2 customers, up from 1 last week (sorry for the clickbait!)
Two weeks ago my Co-founder and I launched our bootstrapped startup ColdClicks, and last week I posted about how we got our first customer through cold email .
This week we hit our goal of acquiring 1 new customer every week for the next few weeks!
How we did it
ColdClicks is an AI based cold email personalization tool. We've been using the tool to market the tool (toolception).
Our process is simple, we generate leads in our target market from a good lead source - Apollo.io. Then, we upload the leads to our tool which researches each lead then uses AI to write the first line of the email. This makes each email hyper-personalized, and relevant to the recipient, which improves your chances of getting a positive reply.
Once the personalizations are generated, we export them into our email sending tool - Instantly.ai and send away!
The results
This week we acquired our second customer and we're excited to continue hitting our goal of 1 new customer every week.
Not only has cold email driven sign-ups but it's allowed us to book calls, learn about our customers, hear feedback, and grow brand awareness. Yesterday we ran a product demo, and booked 5 additional demos for next week.
Cold email to drive revenue
For a long time we've believed that cold email is an amazing growth channel, and using ColdClicks to grow ColdClicks has been great validation.
From our conversations with founders, it's clear that many have yet to explore email as a marketing channel, with lots of bootstrapped startups not using it at all.
However a recent tweet from Neil patel (founder of Ubersuggest) showed a breakdown of which marketing channels are generating the most revenue for 118 businesses making a minimum of $100 million per year. For these businesses, email is in the top 4 highest revenue generating channels, at 12.7% after ads, other, and SEO.
These are very big companies who can invest millions in marketing, so it makes sense that ads, for example, is high up in the list - this is a channel that often only works well with a significant amount of capital, and isn't necessarily so profitable for the little guys. However email is accessible to businesses of all sizes. All that is needed is an email address.
Of course, once you find a process that works, you'll want to scale up and send more emails, but this is equally as cost-effective, making email an incredible growth channel for bootstrapped startups.
I posted a brief guide on how to get started with cold email. If you're a founder who has yet to explore cold email, I'd be excited to hear your thoughts, let me know in the comments!
Actionable goals for every day, and week, is the way to go 100%
Agreed!
I heard once from an email marketing expert a super easy hack to have a 99% open rate: just send emails with empty subject.
Love it, will definitely be giving this a go
why not using apollo.io to send the emails?
Matter of preference
I'll try.
Thanks for the strategy.
Ok awesome, interested to hear how you get on. Would you be promoting ServBay?
I will take this strategy into account when I launch my next project soon. Thx
by the way if you need any pointers I'd be happy to connect more on this, just shoot me a DM https://twitter.com/3dperils
Awesome, if you're starting a new project email would be a brilliant way to book calls with prospective customers, and get early product validation.
By crafting personalized and compelling cold email campaigns, we captured the attention of potential customers, highlighting the unique value propositions of our product. Leveraging targeted outreach lists and A/B testing subject lines and messaging, we optimized our email engagement rates. Implementing follow-up sequences and timely responses to inquiries ensured maximum conversion opportunities. Through strategic refinement and persistence, we successfully doubled our customer base within just one week.
What's been the most surprising lesson you've learned so far?
Good question, I'd say the importance of finding a co-founder that shares your drive and vision
How did you find one?
The thing I like best about this you can basically used your product to market your self. its a 2 in one win.
----
You goal is to onboard 1 client for week. How many emails are you sending to get to that?
---
I've noticed that you already have integrations for instantly, beehiiv, lemlist and hubspot. And are planning to expand that to 8 more.
I would caution you on that. The integrations aren't the problem now, you have enough. Each platform you are integrating attract different types of users. Focus on trying to get success in the few you have before you spread yourselves too thin.
People that use lemlist and instatly are marketers that do cold email
beehiiv is more for newsletters
and hubspot is for SMB's.
They would require a different strategy.
I would focus on one then expand.
---
I wonder what prospect are you currently target? If it were me I would go for the cold email lead gen agencies first.
Maybe offer a smma community in skool a deal on your software.
Thanks for the feedback! Definitely planning on getting some examples on the landing page soon to show how the copy looks.
Very good points about integrations, and different audiences. I hadn't considered Skool communities but will check it out asap.
Thanks again.
You were able to make an AI agent that can do research for you, then personalize a gold email based on that?
How well does it work?
I think that's one of the friction points when it comes to AI writers. Does the copy they write actually that good or nonsense.
I think a visual of this would be great way to get prospects more confident about your product.
Basically show me the copy it writes, given the inputs (niche, keywords, value prop).
Better if you can show me the research results of the AI and how it decided to used that to make personalized copy.
Mentioned this in the other comment, but great point - super important to prove/provide value as early as possible. Will be making these changes soon.
Thanks for sharing
Quite amazing that you're celebrating 2 small sales by cold email. :) you can do it over social media chat too or pretty much in any other way as long as you do some volume.
Most of sales from my B2B SaaS come from chat on social platforms, mostly Facebook.
Also very easy to get booked to speak on podcasts
Thanks Bruno, what does your process look like for reaching out to prospects over Facebook chat?
I use FlowChat for this, automate liking 1 post + friend request + 1st msg.
Then up to 2 follow ups if they don't respond.
Same thing on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
Will check it out thank you
Interesting article! I may use this strategy when it comes to selling my product. Btw, what is your experience with emails being tagged as SPAM? I usually don't get to read offers due to this reason. Thank you!
Good to hear -- emails can get sent to spam for a few reasons, poor sending domain reputation, recipients marking as spam, and bulk emails not being unique enough. So it's important to warmup your sending email accounts and not exceed daily max send rate. Can avoid being marked as spam by doing targeted outreach and having an offer that's genuinely valuable to the the prospect, and emails can be made more unique with personalization - one of the benefits of ColdClicks.
Great info about email marketing. Thanks!
Twice as many customers as me still ahaha. Thanks for the great Tips. Will try :)
1 is infinitely more than 0! Thanks man
😂 🫡
Impressive strategy! Doubling customers in just one week with cold email showcases effective targeting and compelling messaging. Well done!
Unsure if AI but thanks!
I've notice that the website either has a case of bots or enthusiastic chatgpt users.
Funny that its not just me that can spot it right away.