Cold Email Outreach - Is The Technique Sleazy or Super Effective?

What is cold email outreach? Is it a necessary technique or a spammy annoyance? And how do you even do it? Let's talk about the ins and outs of cold outreach emails. Are they really as icy as people think? Not if you do it right... So let's find out!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:23) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (4:28) Check out our sponsor ZeroBounce. (6:17) A chilly introduction - what is cold email outreach?(7:55) Is cold email outreach the same as spam?(8:54) Why cold email outreach isn't as 'frosty' as you think.(11:29) Why do cold emails sometimes feel sleazy?(13:43) Cold outreach done wrong.(16:08) Using social proof in your cold outreach emails. (17:44) What's the difference between inbound marketing and cold outreach? (19:38) Running cold outreach to a lead magnet.(23:51) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]
A chilly introduction - what is cold email outreach? A lot of people ask us about cold email outreach. And the truth is that this technique isn't really email marketing. With cold outreach, people aren't joining your list - you're emailing them out of the blue (i.e. cold). It's a type of prospecting and email lead generation. It’s about finding people you want to work with or who will buy from you.We believe that this practice only fits a certain type of business – certainly, we wouldn’t use cold outreach to try and sell a $37 course about how to send daily emails! However, we would use it (and have used it) for something specific - like being invited to speak on a podcast.Is cold email outreach the same as spam?Spam refers to unsolicited emails sent out by some sort of automation programme to people who were not expecting or wanted your email. And to be fair, the practice of cold outreach seems to fit all those parameters! Because effectively, you're taking a bunch of people, dropping them into some sort of automation system (doing it manually sounds like a lot of work and effort), and then sending them a series of emails (let's say 3-7) that they weren't expecting.And to make matters worse, there's probably no 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom because this isn't an email list they joined. If people aren’t interested in what you have to sell, you simply ask them to hit reply and let you know so you can take them out of the automation. So that's how cold email outreach works.Why cold email outreach isn't as 'frosty' as you think Despite all this, cold outreach isn’t as big of a problem as you may think. It doesn’t have to be as 'frosty' as receiving a DM from someone offering help with something that’s completely irrelevant to you!And while we’re not cold email outreach experts, we have used this technique in a specific way in order to get booked on podcasts and do training in other people’s communities. Otherwise, we use referral introductions and our network of friends and contacts we've made from being part of various groups and masterminds. It's also worth pointing out that, when we do cold outreach, we don't use our existing email marketing platform - we use a specific cold outreach email automation tool. Why? Because email marketing platforms are opt-in systems. That means that if you start loading a bunch of email addresses and send emails to people out of the blue, you'll definitely hurt your own email deliverability. So we use a specialist outreach tool and then ask people to opt into our list.Effectively, we think of outreach as another ads channel – it’s the same methodology as running Facebook or Yo