Joe Troyer 1:03
So we talked about some cool marketing messages. Any other big cold email tips talking about ad 20? What are the top things you see working right now?
Matt McQuinn 1:16
Yeah, top things that I see working in cold email, or this, I'll tell you something that I don't see working as often and that probably a lot of people are doing right now. And that is this, a lot of people are used to being able to send or being taught that they can send 3000 emails out to 3000 companies and grow their business. And this is this is a twilight of of opportunity, it's closing. And it's getting darker and harder to do. Because every cold, every email platform provider is working harder to eliminate that feasibility. And so agencies if you're listening to this, and that's what you're doing for your clients, you should be scrambling to figure out what you're going to do next year, because it was two years ago, it was getting harder this year, they cracked down again, and it's just going to keep happening because blasting spam is not something that's good for platforms.
So if we do that at scale, that's something that's really hurting people and the people that are coming up with these crazy campaigns. And it's probably not what everybody wants to hear. But it's actually the people that are doing the things that aren't super scalable. When you actually look at what those scripts are that are doing very well. They went and did the things that we've been talking about. They went and found something common ground, they had somebody research and it's genuine. And it's more than one point of common ground. And and there's so much going on there that you just can't can't deny the reason to communicate with that other party. And if you can find that compelling reason, it doesn't matter what it is, those of the people out there that are getting more results, like two years ago, if you were to say personalization is going to put you way ahead, I would have agreed.
Right? It did initially. But that's because everybody was generic and spamming. And now we all get the generic personalizations. So now what's going to happen? Like what's the next horizon for cold outreach, and it's actually genuine connections with people, especially as we move into an era of AI and web three, where people are wearing their technology.
And there's computers that are hard to tell, apart from people like there is an ever growing need to be genuine and form valuable relationships in a way that might not seem scalable to you. But the difference is guys, and I think this is something everybody seems to forget. Just because in the past, we had to send a whole bunch of contacts ahead to do a whole bunch of something to get a result doesn't mean the value of what you're doing has changed, it's actually increased drastically that if you can still do that and get results Well good for you, you're probably super high margin, because you're not doing the super unscalable things.
But the reality is if you can produce results in a way that other people can't, and it's getting harder and harder to the value of your service goes up with that. So don't sleep on the fact that if you're delivering results where other people can't, you're providing a service and doing something that's worth more than 1000 bucks a month, like don't just set your bar and say I'm this is what I'm worth, you need to know that what you're doing is something difficult if you're winning with cold email you're doing something 99% of the other agencies are failing at and gave up and said it doesn't work or never even tried. So you need to value what you're doing and understand just how much of a catalyst this can be for you and your clients to Don't Don't sleep on them.
Joe Troyer 4:23
And I love the the blasting of the emails like so agree with you. For me, like I've always found even when I when I make the copy work, and I start blasting, I get too much response I can't keep up with I can't make the most of it. And then like my marketing's like this too, right? So after me they're flooded with way too many appointments. I can't keep up with the demand of too many conversations. I'm not managing it well. And so I don't like the blasts, right like they're they're uncomfortable, right like So I like easy going, I don't want to know what to expect. And I want consistency, right? I don't want like feast and famine. So in my marketing agency, I'm always working on building a campaign that works. And I'm looking at building it with no volume, right? Like super small lists really small, really tight, get proof of concept, get three, four, follow up emails in there, make it work really, really well. And then I can work with somebody like you and just say, all right, like, literally every week, I need to do the math, I need 30 prospects every week that fit this criteria. And I need you to, you know, build this list for me.
And then I'm gonna dump it in the front of it and out the back every week, like clockwork, it's gonna give me seven or eight appointments. Yeah. And then like, go to the next campaign like, and then I'm done. Like, I got, I got my SDR answering the emails, I just show up to the sales call, or I get a sales guy to, and then I go do what I'm good at. I go dream up the next campaign. And I think so many people, like are just blasting all the time and trying to figure out what's next. What's next. What's next. Like, there's never they don't ever sustain anything? That's right.
Matt McQuinn 6:13
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of sustainability, something that I see often is a ton of technical questions around the setup process and all that and to be honest, it's it bores the hell out of me. It's just not exciting stuff. Like I didn't get into networking for a reason. Like network marketing, maybe, but not networking and computers. And that's what it takes to kind of figure out the right and wrong and some of the you know, SPF DK and like, all that stuff means nothing to anybody. But there's a couple things that I can tell you that are that are kind of some of the nuggets here, that took me a long time to figure out. So when you first launch a campaign, you might have asked, Can I put a link in this email? Can I put multiple links in this email? And initially, when you first start, the answer is a big fat.
No, you should not be linking a lot of stuff in the beginning until your domain is warmed up, your email accounts are established. And then you can come in with all the links that you should have that are relevant and important. But early on, you want to do the things with a new campaign or a new account, that really bode well for at first. So you may spend some of that initial time for that client or for yourself sending emails that do get responses, but they aren't super profitable. And that can be a defeating process.
Because you can't do things like send pictures and videos, and a bunch of links and PDFs. Like if you do that right out of the gate, you're bound to get spam filtered the heck unless you're sending like two or three emails, right. And so that's something to keep in mind is like this whole email weren't like what's the best email warm up and all that it's really like, they're just trying to figure out if you're a spammer, dude, that's what that's what people are trying to do. They want to know if you're a waste of everybody else's time when it comes to emails, right.
And so I'm sorry if that's what the internet told you, you were, but it just means you're learning and you need to get better. And here's what you need to do is like Don't jump too many steps ahead, warm up those accounts, do the things you got to do to make sure you're getting healthy engagement. One of the other bits of low hanging fruit you can do to signal in to your inbox that your inbox is is a real one is subscribe to thing, subscribe to newsletters, every email inbox, your inbox, yo my inbox has stuff we need to go on Subscribe. As soon as we get off this call, the best thing we could do for ourselves would not be open another one from from smart marketer.com And just like unsubscribe it, you wouldn't get HubSpot emails for years and we didn't unsubscribe, but like that's normal inbox activity. So tell your email provider, your normal email user, and subscribe to a few of those for those campaigns and those email accounts that exist solely for marketing purposes, because you're just trying to make it as natural as possible.
So those are a couple of things that took me a long time to figure out what's right, what's wrong. And there's no you know, cut and dry answer to it, but scale into things and do things to signal to the automation that your your real person. Yeah
Joe Troyer 8:56
those are some really good tips. Like whenever we start doing a cold email campaign on an on a new account, I mean, I always go slow anyways, because again, I want to, I don't want to blow through all the contacts and leads that I have, I want to make sure I got a message that works before I scale it. So by me starting slow, I can I can not do the best job on all the deliverability things and I still get good deliverability because I'm just not gunning and racking the system, let's go let's go let's go no, don't slow. I'm taking it easy and getting good open rates. But the other thing is is like I call them reply campaigns, like instead of putting my Calendly link in there, instead of putting the call to action in there, like all that I'm asking for like is if I can help them or they want to jump on a call let me know like so commercial intent looks really really low.
And my response rate is like really really high. So like the the mailbox is they love me right? Like because I got a 30 plus percent open rate on every email that I send and I got a 15% reply rate. Right like they're like this this fantastic. SEC like there's nothing for them to not like so yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. You said something a little bit ago and make sure we capture before. Before. Before we're too far past that completely forget it, as you said, like don't forget, like real value in connection, right? Like, that's always what's going to drive response and engagement and being able to delight deliver results, right where others can like, again, I think it comes back to like, again, you know, don't forget your human like you said, but also like Todd Brown's, you know, market sophistication.
Like, if you're going to an audience, and you're giving them something that they don't value, like, what do you expect the results gonna be? Right? Like, Oh, I did this outreach campaign, I emailed these 30,000 people, and I didn't get one appointment. It's like, well, what do you send down low? I sent him the spammy house message. Well, yeah, man, like, what do you expect? Like, I asked them if they wanted any web design and web development, and we're an outsourcing company, and we only charge $13 an hour. And here's a list of our services. Who hasn't got 15 of those today for the last 10 years? Right, like?
So I think, you know, look for ways to stand out look for ways to be unique, you know, in your prospecting, in your in your list building, and then in what you're offering to like, how can you add real value to the person? And how can you do it in a way that maybe they haven't seen before? Right, like what that others can't, like you said, so that you can build a relationship, you have an opportunity to build a relationship, instead of it just being purely transactional, just, you know, hey, I want you to become a client, here's, you know, here's, here's the link for 1000 bucks a month, you know, let's just start.Matt McQuinn 11:47 And you know, what, something's something you guys can do to give yourself an edge here, especially for newer agencies, this is Uber true. And if you're an older agency, and you're not doing social proof, and you're not doing that stuff very well, then, when you do cold outreach, maybe cold outreach is new to you, but you have an established agency, you're going to feel like a new agency, because people are looking for that stuff, whether you realize it or not.
And so something you can do, let's say you're brand new, you've hardly done any of this stuff in the past, or maybe you've done it, but you've never done it under your own name or your own brand, the best thing you can do is basically sell yourself short initially, to just get that, that credibility established and do something to be somebody and hopefully, you can transition that initial relationship where you probably like, you were probably working for four bucks an hour that month.
But hopefully you turn into 40 bucks an hour next month, and then you grow from there, because there's proof in the pudding. Right. But initially, I think a lot of young agencies come out and I see this all the time, they're really frustrated that nobody wants to pay them two grand a month. But I look at their website, and it's a one page website, and there's nothing, there's no pride, like, there's nothing telling me that this is somebody I should trust, when there's 30 other agencies in that group that haven't posted anything to sell themselves, and they've got a fuck ton of social proof. So I'm just going to talk to that guy, right?
Like, this is what some of your prospects are doing, especially if you blast them. There's two sales, right and cold email. And in any environment, it's first the concept of your solution. And then it's your solution. So people that you're reaching out to halftime have never even considered a marketing agency. So if you have to first sell them on the idea of an agency, you're not going to do it with a one page website that says nothing about anything other than buy my shit, right? Like you need to tell somebody, here's all the places we've been, here's all the things we've done for people, here's the tangible walk away results that you get by being part of this and you're missing out if you're not doing it. That is a very different message, then, you know, we'll hopefully we drum up some business for you. And we don't have anything to show for it.
Right. So initially, your give like our giveth, call that X on that campaign, if you get that script from us, we gave out 100 contacts for free to call that x. And we paid through the nose for a little while running that campaign. But it had momentum and it built inertia. And we said fuck it, you know what it's worth it. Now we don't give out any. And when we did 25 for why we did a trial, and it didn't convert. And we just saw that there was a lot more tire kickers that wanted the you know, the the free deal for life $5 million credits that they wanted to spam people with.
And we said, Okay, so that's not how we talk to people that value value what they're doing. And so in the beginning, guys, we took we took a little bit of a loss on stuff and then but we never were state of state Bootstrap. So we didn't you know, we were poor. We didn't lose our houses, but we felt like it some days. And then we said, hey, now we've got something on paper. Let's go put that on our website right away. Let's screenshot that email where somebody thanked us, let's screenshot whatever and just take whatever you can and put that up there to validate yourself because that's going to give you one of those ad 20s In cold outreach that other people aren't doing.
Joe Troyer 14:43
Yeah, I think to say what you said and maybe a little bit of a different way or one of the things there was a bunch of nuggets there. But like if there's an elephant in the room, address the elephant, right fall on your own sword addressing the elephant and like, like you said, like, almost undersell yourself, right? If you have to, so that you don't blend in, right? So if you're a new marketer, you have no testimonials, you have no social proof, like, just address it. Right? Like, tell the story, tell the story that you can and address it. I'm a new digital marketing agency, right? And then give something to give them some confidence. I've been going through this training program, and this is what the results that they have. That's why I think I can help you or at my previous job, I was a marketing director, and these were the results that we got, you know, at that company. Don't just don't give anything, right. Like, you gotta you gotta lead with something. Otherwise, you know, you're definitely not going to get results. Yeah, you got to, you got to address the elephant in the room for sure.
Matt McQuinn 15:49
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the biggest thing, people get deceived by in the cold email spaces that there's a shortcut with cold email. And sometimes there is like, sometimes you send a campaign and you see something crazy happen, and you'll try to replicate it, you'll never be able to do it, because it was just, you know, right place, right time. Like there is that aspect of life, that those things do happen to people. And that may be your experience. I hope it is, I wish everybody on this podcast that happens to you. But for most of us, we don't get that right away.
And it's that persistence, you know, of everybody that's ever been successful. Persistence is an underlying factor here. And it's so true of cold email as well. When I first was told to send cold emails and was taught the process. I was like, Dude, this has been dead for 10 years, for sure. Little did I know if years later, I'd be opening a business that fuels those campaigns that I would have laughed my ass off. If you told me that I'm like, There's no way man, I'm gonna mow lawns for us my life. That's not true. But that was the fact of the matter. So you can do it that way you will but be persistent.
Joe Troyer 16:51
And like, again, you've said this, but I'll say it in a different way. Like don't forget the human aspect, right at the end of the day, like that's so important. And sometimes we overlook it. Right? A coaching student of mine, he's in one of my masterminds. We meet every month, a small group. And we we worked like we're like on each other's boards basically, is how it works. So like, everybody has a chance to speak talk about a problem they're having in their business, and ask the group, not just me, like, how would you handle this? Right? Do you have any direct experience? Or if you were in my shoes, what would you do? And he's like, he's like one of the guys in the group that's like known for cold email. He's built his business on cold email. And during COVID, like everything just wants to hell in a handbasket, in his in his outreach campaigns. And he's like, it's just not working.
We all gave him multiple feedback over a couple of months. And it's just like, he's like, Man, I'm like, I'm gonna toss my hands up, like, this just isn't working. And what had happened is, again, we're all marketers just thinking about marketing, we're not thinking about the business that he's going after and what they're thinking about. And dude, he's going after weight loss clinics, and they're all closed because of COVID. Right, he's sending out messages about, you know, marketing their Google My Business and getting it on the first page of Google and they're like, Who fucking cares? Nobody was going to a medical clinic right now to you know, to get help with weight loss.
Yeah. Right. Like, and that's so easy. But, you know, even a group of, you know, we'll say, smart marketers, right? It's nice to figure that out. Like, so don't forget the human element. Like what's what, why isn't your prospect responding? Right. You know, even if you got a cool marketing message, and a good hook and a good angle, you know, put yourself in their shoes.
Matt McQuinn 18:36
Yeah, yeah. And it's humbling. Sometimes you'll get replies back or like, an auto reply, which this one always gets me. You ever see, like so and so we're, we regret to in front of this person has passed away. And it like, sometimes you see that email, come back in and I'm like, wow, like, you know, I'm emailing this guy sounds like he's not even here to get the email. And like, that's a real, that's a wake up call right there. So if you take the human aspect out of it, you miss something. And you have to remember, like, these are all people on the other end, too. So maybe there's something within that human aspect that you can speak to that's relevant to that, to that audience on the other side. Yeah, I mean, it's really bizarre when you see those come in your inbox kind of throws you off a little bit, and I've probably seen that I'm gonna say, maybe half a dozen to a dozen times and every time it's just stops me right in my tracks and like, man, like what a humbling email to get that, like, I'm grateful that I could that I could send that and see that back today, like other people have bigger problems than I do clearly than cold email today.
Joe Troyer 19:32
So if somebody wants to do some business with you guys, they just go to cold Linux DICOM
Matt McQuinn 19:37
Yep, you can make a free account, click around and never come back. If you don't like what you see. Or you can sign up on one of the paid plans. You can just go to top right corner, click Account Settings, and you can see our different plan options from there.
Joe Troyer 19:49
Who man in in zooming out? Is there anything you think we should have touched today? Or we'd be remissed there, look back on today and be like, Man, you know, Matt and I, Joe and I wait We really should have talked about this. Is there anything you think we missed? It's been a really good call. I feel like we could probably go on for another hour. But for sake of brevity, and everybody being able to get through the interview, I try to make it as concise as possible.
Matt McQuinn 20:14
Yeah, I think the biggest message, I drive this home, every chance I get to talk to people or have an ear with somebody is just get out there and do it. Just go out there and send the emails, if you take nothing away from this, if you don't remember any of the strategies, or the great stuff, Joe, or I said, like, just go send an email. And there's no way to learn how to fight like when your backs up against the wall. And if you get yourself in that position with cold email, and you start some fires, you pissed some people off, you'll learn more than everybody else who's studying it and not doing it. So just go out there, take action. If nothing else, guys, be persistent and take action, you will learn more, get further faster, people come up from the dust and have incredible success just from being persistent and trial by fire. So those are the two things that I'd recommend above everything else we talked about to just get out there and grind and do it and learn something from it.
Joe Troyer 21:07
Completely agree and don't jump from one thing to another right? Finish out that marketing initiative cold up, finish on that cold email before you start a cold calling campaign, right? Do one thing, focus, get good at it, figure it out, you know, figure out how to make it work, you know, then start to systematize it, outsource it, pull yourself out. And then you can go work on the next one. But not until then. Right? Don't be the agency that's running five outbound marketing campaigns. They're all half assed they're not all not generating any results.
And wondering why. So good stuff. Love that man. And in wrapping it up, instead of asking you to recommend three books, I do something I feel like every podcast, does that do something a little different. I asked like, what's the one book as you look at your business, you look at your life that's kind of made a big impact. And the reason I asked that is really simple. Like, I get to have a lot of really cool people like yourself on the podcast, I get to bend their ear. So I want to know, but also, like, selfishly, like, I just gave myself permission to stop reading books, if I don't like it to be able to put it down. And man that has made all the difference in life I have read or tried to read way too many shitty books. And I need more good books, books that I actually can finish. And I'm intrigued by I'm an avid learner, I do enjoy books. But yeah, I put down more more books halfway through then then I finish.
Matt McQuinn 22:32
Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's all about valuing your time and you're gonna learn more by moving to the next thing, if it's not right for you, right now, I'm kind of trying to get out of that guilty conscious thing, the same way that like, I don't have to finish a bad book. Nobody's nobody's checking, right? It's just me. So I'll give you two books, once one was foundational, and then one gave me leverage later. The first one, I'll preface this by saying the gentleman wrote this book, I think in the 1920s, his name is Claude C. Hopkins. And if you know who this is, you already know what I'm about to say. But I definitely don't probably back the disposition He takes on life or women or relationships. And it's pretty 1920s. But the content of the book around marketing is exceptional. And it's called Scientific Advertising. And there is everything that you need in there to hear to really give your head a shake as a marketer and wonder why you're not doing better. And it'll just tell you really fundamentally that you have no excuses than to take what has been done by so many people before you and learn from it and apply it and implement it. And there's so many golden nuggets in there. So that was one that from copywriting to strategy, like I revert back to things that stayed with me from that book all the time.
And the other one is by Perry Marshall. It's called 8020 sales and marketing. I thought I knew at 20. And the concept was in my head, there was no like, no more, no more, you could build on on exponential growth. But when I read this book, it really did stay with me, he makes this marketing stuff scientific. And if you guys can really get through even just a couple chapters of that book, you'll be you'll be further ahead to realize that most of us, probably almost 100% of people on this earth spend their time focusing on the wrong areas. And if you can figure out where those places are that if you just point your direction a little bit north or a little bit south, you're gonna get to the right place a lot faster than you weren't going way up and down these Mount Everest that you're trying to climb by doing something the wrong way. So those would be my two books
.Joe Troyer 24:27
Awesome man. fully endorse both of those have read both of them. The first is an absolute classic and definitely worth a read. I know exactly what you're talking about with some of those comments. But, but nonetheless, I think just like a foundational book, right, like a classic and something that everybody needs to read if you're at all interested in marketing and advertising. And copywriting is just such a skill that everybody should take up and learn and it's gonna help you everywhere in life, not just copywriting, but being able to convince people to do what you want them to do and that's what life is ultimately. So, great suggestions. I'll definitely put those in the show notes. And, Matt, if somebody wants to reach out to you personally, what's the best way to do that?
Matt McQuinn 25:11
You guys shoot me shoot me a cold email. It's Matthew at cold linux.com. And if it hits the spam filter, I promise you, I get all kinds of cold emails, that's your first sign on what you need to improve.
Joe Troyer 25:22
Because you probably have a rule with an auto response to anybody that goes to spam to automatically respond to them and you know, give them a little tip rightMatt McQuinn 25:31 after this by the time you send me an email, that's what's happening. Yes.
Joe Troyer 25:36
You ended up in my spam folder. Look, I do cold email for a living. Here's a couple of tips for you. Yeah. Hi, Matt. Man been awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Definitely keep up with you guys. super interested in what you guys are doing. And if you're a digital marketing agency, and you need help with your cold email, definitely check out probiotics. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
