Ramen Road #4: Crafting Cold Emails That Convert

Welcome back to Ramen Road, where we analyze, comment and experiment strategies to get traction in early-stage projects.

Today we’re exploring cold emails, a controversial yet effective strategy. We’ll be diving in to what’s usually wrong and how to fix it.

🥢 Slurp-worthy Strategy of the Week: Cold Emails

Cold email gets a bad rep.

I get at least 10 cold emails a week and I hate most of them. Most are low-quality with no clear value proposition:

Why would I open this email? What do they do?

It’s filled with “sales-speak” and it’s hard to understand. It’s long with no clear call-to-action.

But that doesn't mean cold emails are a bad way to get first customers. In fact, when done right, cold emails can be an effective strategy for early-stage projects to gain traction.

Prevent landing in the spam folder

Don’t waste too much time on this, but here are some basic tips to get started.

Consider using a similar but different domain for cold emails (e.g., my-domain.co instead of my-domain.com). This will prevent harming your regular domain and email.

You can also add SPF and DKIM records to your email provider. Maybe even give an email warmup service like mailflow.io to build domain reputation.

This is only relevant once you want to scale, but you don’t want to hurt your domain forever.

Generate quality leads

Half the battle is reaching the right person.

It’s key to avoid generic email addresses like "contact@" or "info@" since they’ll end up in spam and hurt your future emails. Instead, look to target executives or budget managers directly. Some hire freelancers, others use services like Lusha.

Andrew from xo.capital even targeted YC-founders directly using https://ycdb.co. He began reaching out to buid case studies to get validation within the niche. Afterwards, take advantage of word-of-mouth and start charging for your product.

Craft compelling messages

Once you get into the right person’s inbox, it’s time to convert. How?

Personal emails at the start. Do your research and craft something that’s actually useful for the person that is receiving the email.

Look at Andrew’s email:

Notice how short straightforward the email is. Clear value proposition, a why and a sense of urgency.

Craft something similar for your business.

How do you know if it’s working? Track your key actions (conversions, meetings, etc.).

Then focus on A/B testing headlines, intros and call-to-actions. Anything that you can test with enough volume, do it. Maybe even give email sequences a try.

Only try to scale you approach once you find channel-market fit.

It doesn’t have to scale, but cold emailing is a simple, cheap strategy to get early-traction and your first customers.

🍥 Startup Showcase: Fresh Flavors in the Tech Scene

Listing Cat 

• Creator: Andrei Hudovich (@AndreiHudovich)

• Description: a list of directories to boost your domain rating and get organic traffic

• Noteworthy: focus on getting to the top directories easily and boost your SEO

Uneed Directories 

• Creator: Thomas Sanlis (@T_Zahil)

• Description: a directory of directories

• Noteworthy: similar to Listing Cat, directories are a great way to get your initial traffic and domain boost.