How to Double Your Conversion Rate on Cold Outreach – Laura Lopuch – MicroConf Starter 2019

0:00[Music] [Music] anybody raise your hand if you've ever written or sent a cold email before anybody oh wow like almost all of you awesome and how many of you have sent a cold email with the expectation that writing it and sending it would be easy anybody okay a couple of you cool how many of you sent a cold email and it wasn't easy writing it or sending it ah ha okay cool so the expectation may be we good okay okay cool maybe the sound system needs coffee who knows so um that expectation and that tendency to like write a cold email and send it using the

1:02same tactics and techniques that you use to send normal emails or onboarding emails or an email to your team or your assistant or even your wife or your significant other that idea that you need to use those same techniques to write a cold email is actually a lie and you've been you've been sold this fairy tale and I've been part of it that sending and writing cold emails is easy like there's a ton of shares on this this article that I wrote and I'm part of that group that's been that's been selling you this this lie but the truth is that cold emails are a different

1:46beast and there's a lot of hard work that goes into writing one that converts and today I'm gonna show you how to actually write a cold email that converts I'm gonna show you the bad stuff the hard stuff the stuff that nobody talks about the stuff that's behind the fairy tale glare because that's the stuff that actually makes a difference because you see there is a lot of hard work and there's truth behind the glitter so first of all who am I to tell you about cold emails well it was four years ago I was working as a paralegal in a law firm and I was going

2:32to trials and helping my attorneys and I realized I quit my job came back to my job I reeled me back in and I realized I am really not a good employee so I ended up quitting to chase my dream of running my own business right like you guys but I didn't want to use any of that network any of those referrals or people that I had met in that law firm world and I also didn't have any budget so I couldn't run ads what I did have was a skill of email writing so I hit it hard and I sent it started sending cold emails within about four months my

3:13business had grown fourteen hundred percent and I'd signed 120 thousand dollar client from sending just one cold email along the way I've been fortunate to connect with some amazing people because of cold emails like Joanna Wiebe if you guys are here for the growth conference you probably heard her talk I've connected with sue John Patel of male shake and even Rob I realized the other night that I'd sent him a cold email like a year and a half ago so cold emails do work and today I'm gonna show you how to write one and we're actually going to write an email together an actual cold sales email okay so how many

3:57of you guys have been to Costco okay cool how many of you guys have been to Costco on the days where they're handing out those free products the samples yep yep my toddler he's three he makes me hit like every single one so we get a lot of them have you ever wondered why they only hand out one sample per little booth okay so Sheena Iyengar she's a professor business I Columbia University she's the reason why Costco only hands out one sample per booth few years back she went to a grocery store at second to study she laid out a display of like 24 jams and then after a couple hours

4:42for people to sample after a couple hours she swapped him out for a display of six jams and at the end of her time at the grocery store she measured how many people converted or bought jam out of the people who sampled the jams at that big display of 24 only 3% of the people who sampled actually bought a jar but out of that smaller little display of six jams thirty that's one in three people who sampled but a jar of jam I need more coffee ah so keep this study in the back of your head as we kind of go through this talk but really what does Jam have to do

5:27with emails so the first step in writing in this three-part strategy to write a converting cold email is you have to be clear your email has to be clear you have to let your reader know why it is you're emailing them and it sounds so simple right be clear but really it's not and you've probably had this problem if like well actually last week my husband and I were gonna go and get lunch we get in the car I'm driving driving the Olive Garden I'm like so what are you gonna order at all of garden he's like we're not going to Olive Garden we're gonna go get pizza I

6:13was like um were you not there like 15 minutes ago when we were talking about lunch it's hard to be clear even in just conversation with the people that you see and know every day but whenever you're unclear in your email you're actually putting up roadblocks to prevent your reader from saying yes and any sort of doubt or uncertainty or question like did she mean what does she mean by marketing what'd she mean by sales what does saving time like look like like are you gonna save me like an hour a day and it saved me like 30 hours a week like does that mean like $3,000 in my

6:54pocket like what does that mean those are all questions and those are all roadblocks in your readers mind that prevent them from saying yes when you're unclear okay so that cold sales email that I promised we'd write this is actually based on a cold sales email that I wrote for a client it got a 33% uplift and positive replies that was the conversion we're after and I swapped out the names to protect privacy so you might see a familiar face here this is Leslie Knope of the Parks and Rec Department anybody watched that show cool okay love that show so she's a good representation of who we

7:34were cold emailing she's into landscape she's into community she's into parks so we'll get right into it okay first off subject line Pawnee parks department save 20 or 30 percent on your next project boom she knows exactly why we're emailing we're being very clear we're talking about the Pawnee parks department her place of work we're talking about how she can be better at her job and we're putting specific numbers in there to help her envision it we're not being general like save a good deal of money on your next project that's not very specific we're being specific hi Leslie love what you did with Morningstar opening up with a compliment is a killer

8:24way to start a cold email and the more specific you can be the better it warms up your audience and suddenly like we're friends oh I like you you like me this is cool landscape is how people can use space to engage your something it's not just about plants or hardscape it's how they all fit together again we're being very clear we're explaining what landscape looks like but this is not our view this is not my view of landscape this is not my clients view of landscape this is Leslie's view of landscape we're helping her see that we understand her point of view and we're being very clear about it

9:06we're not saying landscape is you know putting up some trees and calling it good we're being specific okay so what about if you're not writing a cold say okay I'm not email what about then here's an actual cold email that I got from Benjamin at activecampaign and he was asking me to contribute to an article he was writing and he's been very clear about opening with a compliments again warm me up why not it works and then he moves on to explain why he's emailing me why should I care he's answering that question in my head what's in it for me and it's a universal question I was talking about this in my

9:52roundtables yesterday so if you were there this sounds familiar you need to answer that question in your readers head and the easiest way to do that is to be clear and tell them and then he goes on and he has he explains why he's emailing and then he asks what he wants me to do he does is ask right the only critique that I would have about this email is a the meaty double stuffed chalupa it's in like the middle paragraph that really confused me to be honest with you I was like are we talking about lunch are you asking me to go get lunch suddenly I'm hungry ah maybe like a taco

10:36does sound good for lunch so if he had said I'm putting together an ultimate roundup or the ultimate you know amazing article on you know email subject lines that kind of thing I'd have a better idea in my head of what he's asking me to do and how I fit in to like his whole grand scheme of things and that's actually why it took me like a week to reply to him because I got really confused and then distracted and then I walked away so again be clear that's the first strategy I saw a couple are you taking pictures that's totally cool please take pictures but I did put together all of

11:22these email examples and and some plug-and-play templates based on these emails into this resource for you so if you go to this link and grab it it's right there for you okay so the second step of the strategy is micro yeses and what this means is we're gonna go back to high school for a minute you remember those essays that your teacher used to have you write ya hypothesis back up your points you know paragraph by paragraph repeat your hypothesis ya ringing any bells you guys still with me cool cool okay so that is in essence what you're doing with a cold email only you're not

12:06starting off with the hypothesis likely you're starting off with a compliment because we've seen it works really well but you need each line each sentence in your email to have your email reader nodding along with you so you need them to be buying into the arguments that you're making and helping them not along because this sets the stage for them to say yes at the end of the email where you're making that ask and it helps them to say yes because they've been nodding along and anytime that they say no suddenly you've lost them they've hit delete moving on to the next email maybe social media they're gone so let's see

12:54what this looks like in the email that we're writing to Leslie so now we're getting into the meat of the email you know builders have a financial background they don't understand how landscapes go together this is all Leslie's problem she's nodding along with me if I was to save you right now hey do you guys need more coffee and you drink some you know exercise some sunshine you'd be like yeah yeah I do actually help me wake up it's the late night last night that's what you're looking for in your cold email reader for them to be not with you and that's what Leslie's doing because we are reflecting her problem

13:34back to her to show her that we understand and then we finally finally introduced ourselves but it's a really quick introduction and how we describe what we do is still in terms of her problem so we're still driving for that micro yes of we're helping you solve your problem we help landscape architects answer that question and how you can save money and look pretty cool and keep an eye on your budget save 20 30 percent and put in a really strong system two extra so Leslie is primed we've set the stage nicely for her to say yes at the end all right so what is what does this look like in an email

14:26that's different like and outreach email so validate your idea so I got this email from Etienne at get highlights and it is fantastic oh my gosh so he starts off with a compliment again I like him right off the bat I want to say yes I think my LinkedIn description was pretty stellar - thank you and then he explains why he's writing and he ties it back to me so already like I optimized emails yeah I'm with you I want to hear more I could maybe help you I'm okay with that and he's not looking to sell anything so he's alleviating the risk he's making me

15:10feel better like because I'm not really looking to buy anything Thanks and then he explains like email conversion copy is your expertise and I'm like hell yeah it is actually and he wants to get my advice and he sets it up so each line has that micro yes built in so that when he finally asks would you have time for a quick chat I say yeah actually I do let's set it up and I replied to him right then in there the final goal in this strategy this the final step in this strategy is that your email has to have one goal so in other words there's one action that

15:54you want your reader to take I see a lot of emails that they're like hey go to this body this podcast listen my new podcast check out my new blog check it out the new like PR release and by the way our new launch is coming up get on the waitlist your readers like mmm what do you want me to do I did this not very well at the beginning I was sending cold emails littered with questions usually the question kind of indicates the goal or the action you want them to take because it creates like that that open loop where you gotta get the itch

16:35scratched by by clicking on the link and seem the answer that kind of thing or hitting reply and saying yeah actually I have that problem please help me out but in the beginning I was asking my cold email readers like oh hey how was your weekend hey I saw you have this cute dog and you posted the picture on Twitter and oh my gosh she's so cute like what's his name and oh I saw you living in Indianapolis how's the weather and then I'd say hey let's get on a call and they were like what do you want me to do this way out way over here down there didn't

17:14work so well I didn't get any conversions so your email needs to have one goal to make it super easy for your reader to take that action and again going back to step number one be clear and step number two like set the stage for that big yes so here's what it looks like in the email that we're writing to Leslie would you have a 15-time for a 15 minute phone call we're being very clear in our ask we're saying it's 15 minutes I'm not gonna take up you know half an hour I'm not gonna take up an hour she knows how it's gonna be conducted

17:50phone call I'm not gonna be asking you for a coffee date where you have to like get in your car and plan all this extra time not gonna be like a zoom web conference call where you have to get all pretty change out of your jammies wash your face she knows exactly what to expect so we're being very clear and it's one goal so if she doesn't reply we know there's a problem in our ask that one goal makes it super easy to go to optimize your emails all right so what does this look like in a different kind of cold outreach email this is a customer interview email that

18:37I usually use for conducting my own client research a lot like what Liana was talking about yesterday you've got to talk to your customers just swipe the words out of their mouth that helps a lot in writing copy and it's my favorite way to get the messaging and and really cut down my writing time like let's be honest so here anybody noticed I actually have two questions in this email which seems like I'm breaking my own rule right your question should be your goal so it kind of looks like I have two goals in this email actually I don't the first question is a micro yes

19:19disguised as a question so I'm assuming they're gonna say yes to me I'm assuming the yes in that first question would you be willing to chat with me I've helped them see why they should chat with me and now this is just the polite way almost an out if they took it don't think that they will of them of me giving them an out insane and asking their permission would you chat with me but I'm assuming the yes and my real goal is get them out of phone call so I can talk to them so in conclusion your outreach email needs to hit three strategies you need

20:05to be clear you need to make sure that the words that you're using or clear and the easiest way to do this make sure you're being clear is to read the email out loud or have someone else who's not as familiar with your business read the email I use my mom because she doesn't quite understand how I make money online so she's a good one but and then ask them do you know like what do I want you to do with us what's the next step and see what they say if they're like mmm then maybe you have a problem with the clarity and then the second one is you

20:46need to get those micro yeses and make sure that you're building in studying the stage helping them to say yes at the end where it really matters and where you need them to say yes the last thing is you need to have one goal or one action that you want your reader to take not 5 like I used to do just one and be clear about what that looks like to help them get past that uncertainty or the fear of taking the next step again I put together a resource it's here at this link yeah I want to leave you with one idea which is every fairy tale has a

21:28nugget of truth buried inside of it and the nugget of truth here is I've seen cold emails work so well in my own business and for my clients businesses the truth is that you do have to put in some hard work but if you follow the strategy I laid out for you your emails will be better than you expected thank you hey Laura thank you for the presentation that was really well executed really polished and I really appreciated the content from it so thank you so much this question might seem a bit skeptical and I hope we're all in a safe space and I don't mean this is in

22:11any you know take it for what it's worth when I read some of your emails or some of your strategies or your tactics it comes off as a bit aggressive to me and I wonder if you ever got that since yourself or if you ever had any pushback from people about it or if maybe I'm just wide of the mark that's cool thanks Jacob can I ask what parts are aggressive yeah alright the really the thing that okay so the thing that compelled the the aspect of your email that compelled me to ask this question what's the last email where you said do you have a time

22:42to chat here are two particular hour slots where I presume that you will look at your calendar and confirm that my calendar is appropriate for you so to me because I've been this position and I naturally I'm like I've heard people say click on my calendar link and select a time on my schedule that works for you which actually when I think about it when I try to be honest with it it's like that's kind of a slap in the face that's saying my calendar is more important than yours why don't you go do some work for me so that I can pick your brains yeah which you know isn't the

23:16worst thing that we can do to a person tasks for some of their time but it does seem aggressive to me so I wonder if you feel comfortable dismissing that out of hand or if maybe I don't know alright there's your answer I withdraw my time I've I've heard that question a lot a lot of people have that question um it pops up in my first workshop anybody who was there yesterday with me yeah yep and we talked a lot about it and there is a strategy behind that which is I it's a bit of a micro yes I'm definitely assuming that they're gonna say yes but

23:55I'm also helping them over the hurdle of looking at their calendar because who here hates scheduling first off yep I mean - okay so we all hate scheduling so I'm helping them like by looking at their calendar and I'm giving them specific times because I'm assuming that they're gonna say yes just right off the bat that might be cocky that might be aggressive take it where you want but I'm also assuming that they're gonna look at those times and those dates that I suggested and if it doesn't work then they're gonna tell me and maybe suggest other dates and times and I've had this half where I've suggested specific dates and

24:37times and they're like that doesn't work for me I'm busy but how about next Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. and I'm like cool I got a meeting BAM so you can test it with your audience and see if that works my problem with the calendar Glee link is that suddenly I'm making you do my scheduling and I hate that feeling like I don't want to schedule so if I'm suggesting dates and times then all of a sudden we're kind of on the same playing field where I'm looking at my calendar I did a little legwork to make it a little bit easier for you by suggesting dates

25:12and times and I'm kind of expecting the same in return that you can afford me a little bit of time to look at your calendar and now we're doing the same thing and does that make sense you're welcome so quick feedback on that yeah when when when I read your email and I saw the word wood yeah I thought that that was not aggressive enough oh really what would you think I I would just say are you available are you are you so I mean I I have a different reaction than him so what I've died and I've seen thousands of cold emails okay when yeah the question the first line

25:54with a compliment if I'm sending so many and I often these people I don't know them at all how what is what's the easy way to get that like if this person is completely unknown to me they they are a decision maker or someone to get to a decision maker at a business that is one that I'm targeting in the industry any hints to help with that first line yeah so in that case I would recommend doing a little bit more research into who your cold emailing and looking like quite a bit of research and you're not gonna like that but because it does take time

26:30but what you're looking for are themes between each of the people that you're cold emailing so that you can kind of make generalized statements about them kind of like if you think about the email rewriting to Leslie how we were talking about landscape and how we were reflecting back what she thinks about landscape if you can find themes about the people that you're emailing and say like boy it must be like really hard to work with such a high pressured person and maybe have to be on the go and kind of empathize a little bit and show them that you understand what a hard spot they're in I don't know if you guys ever

27:10do this but I do this a lot with customer service reps especially like credit card companies when I'm calling it like maybe get a late fee reversed like be a person be human don't like chitchat them up like I've totally used my kid as a excuse for me base not paying a credit card on time like if you guys have toddlers whoo yeah so I asked the customer service rep like do you have kids can you relate and that will help you figure out what to say in that first line as kind of an opening cuz really what you want to do is like warm them up and get them to like you but you

27:50first got to understand like what are the challenges that this person is probably facing that you're emailing to get them to warm up make sense cool hey Laura my name is Jason um my question is somewhat related to the last question but how do you balance or do you focus on personalizing some of the emails versus the bulk copy and where do you fall in that perspective tell me what you mean by personalization for a more individual like like names like using names and company name um even reading each individual's LinkedIn thing like one thing I've done in the past yeah which is a lot of legwork but it's

28:30converted really highly is build a spreadsheet with a column that is the personalized text and then I look up everyone's LinkedIn or their website and write one sentence there and then I put it into male shake with with the replacements there and we do a lot more legwork do you think it's worth it you what do you think I mean am I better off saving the time and sending bulk emails where do you fall that's an awesome question like caught between a rock and a hard spot really I would say always go for the personalization it's always going to convert better like you found and if you feel like

29:05you're using a lot of time I had clients who actually use VA s and show them your process teach them maybe use like loom videos to like walk them step-by-step screen share invest a little upfront time to show them how you're doing it and then set them off and let them run with it that's that will work really well and then like you really shouldn't be doing all that kind of admin link work cuz your genius lies somewhere else so as soon as you can hand that task off you're better off for it but personalization is always going to convert better because if you think about the cold emails that you get in

29:44your inbox they're all crap all of them dear sir/madam we are an SEO firm who would like to get you into soft top ranking spot and Google so the bars that really low which is good for us but you do have to put a little bit of personalization in it to make to help it feel warm so it's like an acquaintance or a colleague of a colleague emailing versus like I'm a stranger right make sense cool hey Laura What's Up Girl hey hey I have a question so I'm looking at your emails yeah and I'm snapping pictures anyway cool before I my confusion is because I'm getting a lot of Intel from

30:27everywhere blogs and everything I'm looking at the length of your email so I noticed that a lot of times within the micro community that is it's a long cell like a long cell page and long emails and then at the same time China is sale to sales folks sales reps and also founders so when I hear information from salespeople it's like it's all about short emails like I've been practicing and trying to get my emails down to late three line sentences okay so I'm confused as like I see how much information you can relay with the length of your email but I'm like how can I relate that amount of information

31:09in like three sentences because I'm noticing that depending on the segment if it was a long email they're not going there my back or even open yeah that makes sense if you don't mind sharing can you tell me how well those cold emails that you're sending the short ones are doing so either way I sell so but I gotten more opens with the short I mean how can I say it I got more I get opens with cuz I tried to have with my subject line I try to have the name and three words and I try to have a verb in the subject line so since doing that I got way more opens

31:56okay even stop even measuring that but with the short emails I do get repeat opens mm-hmm okay so I don't get the replies so I'm trying to like and that's what you're after that's the action you want that's the action okay I mean something cuz I'm broke I didn't eat something okay so because your emails are getting opened that means keep your subject line because your subject line is doing its job it's getting them open that's the only job that it's supposed to do it doesn't have to do anything else but if your email isn't getting open then nobody can take the action that you want it to take so first of all

32:34you're doing a good job with that keep the subject line but if nobody's doing the action that you want them to take likely it's because maybe you're being confusing maybe short isn't what they need maybe they need a little bit more help to cross the finish line maybe you got to go over and give him a hand and I would encourage you to test out longer emails like I hear all the time like your emails are so long but then I get replies and you guys saw like I included other examples of other people's cold emails and they weren't short three four paragraphs so I would encourage you to

33:12test out longer emails see if they work they might and people don't trip cuz you ask them for 15 minutes but I even dropped me to five minutes like if he try that out to test that out like you really won't know the winning in cold emails comes from the testing like I literally spent four months like every single day sending cold emails in the beginning and I was giving nothing it was like sending stuff out and a black void and there's not even like a burp and reply like nothing so take that as a learning opportunity try something else experiment be willing to fail a little

33:56bit cuz really right now honestly like it's not like you're getting any clients off the email so there's no harm in trying yeah but yeah I would say like try something else try like a longer email see if you can help them get to that yes give them some more reasons that they yeah yeah good question you