Cold Outreach 101

A template for thoughtful and relevant first touch messages

William Holden avatar
Written by William Holden
Updated over a week ago

Let's start with an example email a SaaS business might send to a product manager 👇


"Hey Kate 👋

A lot of them tell me that users often churn after about 5-7 days if not properly product activated, and as a result they've an inefficient model for acquisition and end up paying way more than they want per engaged user.

Push messaging used to help, but it hasn’t for a while.

I’m curious, what’s your perspective on this, and how much of it do you experience yourself?

Reason I ask:

I think we might have a way to help your team hold on to more users, at a higher LTV, and do it with fewer resources than you might be using right now.

How:

We're not relying on servers to control and manage in-app push deliverability.

We deliver messaging locally, originating from the user's devices, bypassing many of the structures that ruin deliverability and lose you money.


Prove it:

Last half, both Twitter and Hasbro increased LTV by 12-18% using these tactics alone.

Is it worth us spending 20 mins to learn about some of the strategies these companies are using, and figure out if it’d be helpful for us to keep chatting?

Best,

Ahmed"


So where do you begin when creating this email?
Before we start telling folks all about our amazing products, we need to think about our prospects: their needs and challenges, the value we deliver, and why they’d honestly care about anything we have to say at all.

Questions to answer before messaging

  • What is this type prospect/persona most likely challenged by?

  • Where do these challenges show up as a measurable impact?

  • How do we create value in context of these challenges?

  • Where does this value show up as a measurable impact?

  • Can we prove it?

Without this knowledge/context, you're buying a one-way ticket to spam land.

Sure, you might get a few responses for every hundred messages you send, but remember that any increase in response/engagement at the top of the funnel: it can have huge impact downstream.

Take your time to get this right - your pipeline will thank you for it.

When (and only when) you've answered these questions, you can use a suitable template to help you make more of your time when speaking to prospects 😉 👇


Cold outreach template:

"Hey {{first_name}},

{{title}}s I’ve been working with recently tell me they’re focused on {{high level value}}.

They also mention {{challenges and impact of challenges}}.

I’m curious, what’s your perspective on this, and how much of it do you experience yourself?

Reason I ask:

I think we might have a way to help your team {{impact of your solution}}


How:

{{how you create value}}


Prove it:

We’re helping companies like {{relevant references}}, {{measurable impact}}, {{proof}}

Is it worth us spending 20 mins to learn about some of the tactics these companies are using, and figure out if it’d be helpful for us to keep chatting?

Cheers,

{{My.first_name}}"

Did this answer your question?