Cold outreach 101

Cold outreach can be tough — you're contacting someone who may have never heard of your product and may ignore your message entirely.

That said, cold outreach can also be an invaluable tool for startups and small businesses with limited marketing budgets. All you need to do is convince the right person that they need your product or service.


In this guide to cold outreach, we'll explain how to perform outreach that is efficient, effective, and friendly. That way, you can engage new prospects and open the door to scheduling the sales presentations that will grow your business. Let's get started:

What is cold outreach?

Cold outreach is any kind of digital communication between you and a prospect that creates the first contact. This used to be done over the phone, but you can now get in touch via email, social media, or other channels. In fact, 70% of B2B decision makers today prefer remote communication anyway.

Here are three quick tips for effective cold messaging:

• Make yourself known - If you're a small or new company, cold outreach can help you build brand awareness.
• Make a good impression - Leave a mark with your outreach. Demonstrate how you are unique.
• Leave the ball in their court - Give them something worth following up on, so you can eventually present more product features.
  

The importance of cold outreach

So, if there are several ways to get on a customer's radar, what makes cold outreach so special? Here are a few of the key reasons:

• It costs less - No paid ad spend or design agency. Just send a message and wait for their response.
• Anyone can do it - You don't need special contacts or skills. Anyone can do cold outreach.
• You can start right now - There's nothing stopping you from reading this guide and implementing all the tips right away. Talk about instant results.
  

Those are just some of the benefits of cold outreach over other sales methods. But you may be wondering about the downside, such as potentially annoying your prospects:

Is cold outreach spam?

Cold outreach is most often done with email, LinkedIn, or other social messaging. And in today's day and age, most of us get more spam than we care to deal with. Like anything else, cold outreach can be spam — if it's done the wrong way.

Follow these six tips to avoid spamming your contacts:

1. Focus on the prospect

Far too many companies focus on themselves when communicating with prospects. They start their messages off with "my company" or "our product" instead of speaking about the customer. With every cold outreach campaign, keep it focused on the prospect. Talk about their problems, their situation, and what you can do for them. After all, everyone's favorite subject is themselves — your prospects are no different.

2. Stay professional

It is vital to keep all of your outreach communication professional. This is not the time to act like your prospect's best friend. While certain levels of rapport and informality are understandable at other sales stages, play it safe for now.

Your prospects are much more likely to take you seriously if you have an officially incorporated company, so that should be the first step. Secondly, make sure your email signature includes all of the necessary contact information, as well as some links to your website so the prospect can conduct further research.

3. Offer value

What does your product or startup bring to the table that others don't? Ultimately, that is the question you must answer in the mind of your prospect. When conducting cold outreach, aim to provide value right away. This can come in the form of:

• Information - Tease some important information, such as the state of the industry or a new strategy for unlocking business results.
• A free demo - Offer to show your solution to them free of cost, and with no obligation.
• Promising a solution - Be the one salesperson that finally has the solution to your prospects' most pressing challenges.
  

And much more. Focus on bringing value, and your message is much more likely to get their attention.

4. Personalize

Personalization is much more than mentioning your prospect by name. To personalize your outreach efforts, spend some time researching them beforehand. Even 10 minutes of research can provide you with an idea of their role, affinities, accomplishments, and personal interests. These all create great segues into making it clear that you didn't just copy and paste your outreach.

5. Systemize your approach

After seeing all the important customization and thinking it takes to do cold outreach, you might be concerned about the time commitment. That's exactly why it's important to systemize your outreach.

Use cold email templates, for instance. These help you create consistently effective outreach without reinventing the wheel. Simply change out a few words such as the prospect's name and company, and you're off to the races.

6. Automate cold outreach with Mailshake

Mailshake is an excellent tool that helps founders scale their cold outreach. It provides an automated way to implement all of the tips above — turning prospects into leads across email and other channels. Mailshake's cold email outreach features include:

• Lead catcher - Identify your best leads, most likely to convert based on engagement metrics.
• Split testing - Identify which cold outreach emails perform the best by pitting them head to head.
• Social outreach - Prospects are everywhere, and Mailshake allows you to reach them with a multi-touch approach.
• Phone dialer - Reach out to prospects via phone with one click, thanks to a built in Mailshake dialer.

• Campaign automation - Perform cold outreach at scale with custom campaigns, max deliverability, and follow up sequences proven to convert.

• Engagement tracking - See which prospects open emails and click on links to continue the conversation at exactly the right time.
• Seamless integrations - Mailshake syncs with popular CRMs such as Hubspot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive. And using Zapier connects you with over 1,000 additional powerful integrations.
  

Mailshake works with every popular email provider, enabling your team to streamline cold outreach and focus on higher lever prospecting strategies. Schedule a Mailshake demo today to learn more about maximizing your outreach process.

Final thoughts

Companies need to get smarter about the ways they are contacting potential customers. The business world has become too crowded otherwise, and you won't stand out. That means you need a proven strategy to perform cold outreach. With cold outreach, you can contact decision-makers, make a great impression, and take them through the next step of your sales funnel. Of course, you shouldn't just jump in and start sending messages. Instead, use the guide above to make sure you're sending the right messages at the right time. That way, you can generate a wealth of new leads and customers for your startup.

Sujan Patel, Founder of Mailshake
‍
Sujan Patel is the founder of Mailshake, a sales engagement software used by 38,000 sales and marketing professionals. He has over 15 years of marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like Salesforce, Mint, Intuit, and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies.