“If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business”

- Mark Cuban (I think)

If you’re a B2B business owner, you probably know how difficult it can be to land new customers consistently. And without someone specifically dedicated to finding new business, you’re in a real pickle.

Luckily, in today’s world there are many tactics to create an automated machine that goes out and finds you new clients, consistently.

One of the best ways I’ve found for B2B services businesses is a tactic called “cold email.” Cold email is exactly what it sounds like: emailing someone who doesn’t know you, who isn’t expecting your email, and isn’t looking to do business with you. Yet.

It's build off of a traditional method of communication, leveraged in a way that can give you great reach and scalability. Email wasn't built for marketing, but it sure has become one of the best tools for it.

And if you're thinking "will this work for my business?" - don't worry, I’ve seen this tactic work for businesses of all sizes - even down to businesses who have just launched.

In this blog, I’ll be talking about cold email as a marketing strategy, how to do it, and why it’s so darn effective.

What is Cold Email?

It’s simple: cold email is the process of sending an email to someone you’ve never spoken to before. It’s the same as if you or I opened up Gmail, found someone's contact information, and sent them an email. You just automate it.

The best part is, it’s one of the most personal ways to reach out to someone who you’ve never met before. It’s direct, straight to the point, and ensures they actually see your message.

And that's what is so great: with the proper setup, they will actually see your message. No more guessing and waiting, you'll know! Few marketing strategies offer this.

Why Use Cold Email in Your Business?

Targeting

Most sales and marketing channels make it difficult to target individuals. You can't individually choose who sees your message and you can't ensure they actually receive it.

For example, you can pay for a Google Ad that’s targeted at people who are 25-40 years old and live in a particular city, or who are searching for a specific keyword. But, you can’t control who eventually sees and clicks on your ads.

Or you can show up to a tradeshow, but you can’t really decide who comes up to your booth. Instead, you hope that your ideal customer shows up, which is hard to control.

With cold email, you can specifically choose the specific people you want to reach out to.

Want to target the CEO of a Fortune 500 software company? You can want to find commercial contractors in Louisiana with 1-10 employees? It's doable.

This is truly the beauty of it: You decide who you market to and cut all the fat out of it. It’s hard to do that with most other marketing tactics which cause you to spend 30% on junk to hit the 70% you want.

There are few other channels that give you this level of control over your targeting.

Cost effectiveness

Also, when compared to most tactics, email is a low-cost sales and marketing channel. It’s been around forever and isn’t all that expensive.

The main costs involved are:

• Paying for a cold email domain to send emails from, which can be as low as $6 per month with Google Workspace

• Cold email software to automate your email-sending process, which is affordable compared to most other channels – only about $50 per month.

• Leads lists - which can be sourced for only a few cents each throughout various databases online.

Compare that to online advertising, direct mail, or tradeshows. You typically need to spend thousands of dollars per month to even scratch the surface.

And with email, you can start small and build. You don’t have to go all-in at the start.

Personalization

Since you know who you’re targeting, you can add content within the message about the person. Know that they live in Colorado? You can state it to them directly so it resonates better.

Personalization is the best way to show your prospects that you’re serious about your request. You’ve done your research into them, and you’re confident that they’ll be interested in what you have to say.

Where most marketing goes wrong is the inability to speak directly to your prospect. Because you’re speaking broadly, it’s very difficult to narrow down your message to the exact person you’re trying to speak to.

What Kind of Results Can You Get with Cold Email?

Cold email boasts incredible results compared to most marketing. Because it’s so directly targeted, it’s metrics are pretty astounding.

Depending on your industry, you can get responses from your prospects for extremely cheap, and meetings and jobs for typically 10-15% less than you’d pay to get them elsewhere. At least this is what I’ve seen in my experience.

Take my client for example, GNR Electric Inc, a commercial electrical service business with operations throughout California.

Owner and Founder Ruben Ceballos was looking to find new commercial contractors and builders in the region to book new jobs with.

We worked with Ruben to create a customized message and target owners of commercial building companies in Southern California, offering to partner up.

In just a matter of a week, the campaign was on fire: generating 20 responses in the first week from highly qualified builders and contractors asking for more information.

From there, Ruben was able to quickly follow up and sell them on his services, landing multiple new jobs and building relationships that would last years after the campaign ended.

By the time the campaign was completed after 4 weeks, Ruben had landed 4 new commercial jobs valued at multiple tens of thousands of dollars each.

All we did was spend about $250 dollars and we had jobs in less than a month. Ruben paid me directly for the positive responses at a standard cost per lead (totaling just a few hundred dollars) and he had multi-thousand dollar jobs booked.

Pretty good ROI, right?

Learn more about Ruben and GNR Electric at gnrelectric.com

Want to work with me to do cold email for your business?

Visit chewningdigital.com/cold-email