← Liftoff with Keith: Conversations with Super Founders and Growth Experts sharing useful insights
Liftoff with Keith: Conversations with Super Founders and Growth Experts sharing useful insights
Why Cold Email Still Wins in 2025 (And How to Do It Right)
00:29:27
Loading summary
Transcript54 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:06]
B
This episode is brought to you by the outstanding team at Compass Strategic Advisors, your trusted partner in driving strategic growth. Whether it's expanding into new territories, launching products, rebranding, or hiring key staff and board members, they offer the expert guidance every step of the way. With a versatile approach and a proven track record, Compass is the go to resource for both startups and established companies looking to scale with confidence. Thanks and show your support for this podcast by sharing some sponsor appreciation. Check these guys out@bww.compass-strategic-advisors.com okay. And we are live with Liftoff with our special guest today, AJ Cassada from Revenue Boost. He's the co founder and That's a hot B2B marketing consulting company and agency and agents. AJ is a master of cold outreach, one of the truly unique skills necessary to compete effectively in the market today. Aj, welcome to Liftoff. Thanks so much for joining.
- [01:07]
A
Yeah, Keith, thanks for having me. Excited to dive into the topic today.
- [01:11]
B
We are going to have some fun and I obviously I've been following you and watching you and learning from you for a while and I normally start with a lot of backstory and you've got a colorful one, I will give you that, but I want to just dive right in if that's okay with you.
- [01:29]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [01:30]
B
I, I got a hot cup of coffee and I think it's a hot topic and you're such a, a transparent and, and, and, and feature forward kind of a guest that I have. I mean, you speak in terms of, of things that are really happening and what's working and what's not. So I'm just going to come right out and ask you, is email still an effective tool to drive marketing, to drive B2B marketing, to drive lead generation today?
- [02:04]
A
Yeah, absolutely. It is still effective, but it has changed a lot over the last couple years, which is why some companies, some marketers are struggling with it because really like the way that you would do it a couple years ago just doesn't work very well anymore. And speaking speaking strictly about cold email, which is what my business does. So we do outbound campaigns, you know, cold email prospecting, LinkedIn outreach, et cetera, cold calling, basically just reaching like new leads that haven't already heard of your company. And that's really been a lot more challenging than normal the last couple of years. So it still works because like really what happened is the channel got just, you know, a little bit saturated and busy, which every marketing channel does over time. Right. As marketing channel grows and popularity more Companies get onto just starts to get more noisy and more busy, Right? The same thing happened with Facebook, right? Like 10 years ago, you could run Facebook ads and all you could do is just put your credit card in and you'd be guaranteed to, like, make money. But now it's very competitive, so a lot of people have a harder time with it. So same thing happened with cold email. It just means that when more people are doing something, it's a good thing because it's validated. It means, like, all these companies wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work, if it didn't make money for them, if it wasn't profitable, right? But because more people are doing it because it's very busy, because your prospects are now seeing, you know, 20 email pitches a day from people with similar offers as you, it just means that you have to be better, right? You just have to try harder to stand out. So it's not that it doesn't work. It just means the bar has raised and you have to kind of approach a little bit differently and just not send the same kind of, like, templated type of copy and campaigns that your competitors might be sending.
- [03:33]
B
So before, you used to just have to be in the game. Today, you have to become a master of the game. So let's talk about mastery. That's really your jam, right? I would. I again, we've talked and shared some of this stuff, but we speak the same language. It starts with building a great list. I mean, having a goal, having a great list. Who are you sending this to? And having that proper intention.
- [03:56]
A
Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. There's. There's like five factors that we can go through all five today. These are, like the five things that we look at when we're trying to, let's say, diagnose an underperforming campaign and figure out what we need to change or just kind of build like a new system from scratch. Right? The five factors are the email deliverability, the list, the offer, the copy, and then the volume, like sending enough outreach. And that's an order of importance so we can walk through that in further detail. But yeah, the second. The second most important piece is. Is the list, like you said.
- [04:23]
B
Yeah, I think creating those. So how do I build the right list? Let's just start there, A.J.
- [04:29]
A
Yeah. So before thinking, like, usually people, the first thing people ask me is, hey, like, what's the best tool? Or what's the best database? But that's not the most important question to ask because I always like marketers Especially like to obsess over the best tools. But to me, I think anything you're doing, not even just in marketing, but in your business, it's like 5% of tools and 95% like the actual strategy and the underlying approach you're trying to take. Right? So we could definitely talk about like the databases we use and where, like what's good, you know, good price to value, whatnot. But really it's first about understanding like what is my go to market plan, right? Let's say I have like a marketing agency that I'm building a campaign for, right? Maybe it's a company that does like SEO and web development services and ads. Well, that market agency might serve a lot of different businesses from a lot of different industries, right? So before thinking about the actual list, first we have to think about like what are my key target markets, right? So what are the types of companies I want to go after? And then what are the contacts at those companies, right? And you might have a few. And if you don't know, if you, if you are the type of company that does have a pretty like wide range of clients, you really have to do like a client audit, right? And the best thing you can do is just look back at however long you've been in business, look back at all of your clients. And if you've been been doing in business for 20 years, maybe just look back at the last few, right? But honestly, this data is so valuable, right? So you can pull data from your CRM or if you're like a newer startup and you're not that fancy yet, just at least write down on a pen and paper the last, you know, like not just all of your clients, but just the best clients you've had. And think in terms of who is the easiest to close, right? Who just like really understood the value of your offer right away, who paid you the most, who is the most profitable, right? And really who brought the most lifetime value to your business? Because it's like not all of your clients are equal. Some of your clients would have generated more profit for you with, with less headaches, right? So think in terms of who were your best clients. And then you have to think about, you know, what are the common traits. And I like to think in terms of company size and, and industry. Like those are the two most important things where you have to really nail when you're building a list. And the main reason for that is because that's how you want to group your campaigns. Like if you have a lot of different types of businesses you work with. You shouldn't be putting everyone in one campaign because then you're going to have to send very generic messaging that doesn't really speak to one icp. Right. So like, industry and company size is at a minimum, how you should be segmenting lists because you shouldn't send the same email or the same marketing message to two businesses in totally different industries because they would just have very different problems and ways that they explain things. Right. So start to understand, like, who are your best customers in terms of company size, industry, who do you work the best with? Is it small businesses? Is it like gyms? Is it like solo gyms or gym franchises? Right. And then you understand that the context. Right. You know, who was the person that actually hopped on a call with you? Because the goal of Outbound is just to get people on calls. Right. So who's the best, like way into the company? Is it the owner? A lot of time, if you're dealing.
- [07:14]
B
With smaller business, now you're in the job title, right?
- [07:16]
A
Yeah, now. Yeah, now we're going into job titles. Right. So before you build the list, you have to be clear on who's the ideal company I want to work with. Yes. And then who's the ideal job title that I want to send my email to to actually, you know, pitch my services and get them on a call with me.
- [07:29]
B
Right, got it. And that, that leads right into that copy point. So, you know, you're trying to, in the copy, quickly understand the problem that they might be facing or the, the solution that you're offering. Whether it's a actual problem or something that they should think about, it's an opportunity. How do you start to, you know, create that, that copy path for that outreach?
- [07:55]
A
Yeah, really good question. Because, I mean, even me, like, I received so many cold emails, which is funny because I'm a cold email agency. So I think everyone targeting me is really like, already off to a bad start. They don't realize that they're actually selling the same thing I do. Right. So they're definitely drawn, they're targeting down. But even me as an, as someone who sells this service and probably gets less than most people, I receive like 10, you know, 20 a day. So the copy is really important to standing out. But honestly, if you just do the first part right, which is build a really good list, the copy becomes a lot easier. So I think the more that you do market research and the more that you work on, like your targeting and really laser into one specific type of person, type of company, the copy almost writes itself because you start to like, it's just much easier to talk to one person. Right. It's the same thing with like social media content. If you have a hard time writing content, it's often because you're trying to write content for everybody rather than like, if you think of one specific person, one specific problem, they're happening. It's really just like describing that person in that problem. It doesn't really take a whole lot of like, creativity. But we could talk about some frameworks as well.
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, let me, let me push, let me push back at least as a devil's advocate and say I understand that it's easy to write the copy. Especially today we have AI tools, we have all kinds of experiences, right? But how do I break through the noise and get somebody to actually open it, much less respond and engage and book a call? Because I got a ton of people offering to save my problems every time I open up my email. So what is you, what are you finding that that gets the, that signal through all that noise? And then secondly, how many times do I need to email before I would expect some kind of response?
- [09:29]
A
Yeah, definitely. So I would say with copy, there's definitely, it's kind of a handful of things, right. It's not like just have this one thing, right. But there's a couple of key things we do every time. The first one I already mentioned, which is specificity, because if I'm going to run a campaign to, you know, gym franchises in California, I can describe like really specific things about problems they might be facing. And I can use industry terminology that's already going to set me aside from like, let's say every other marketing agency was, in that example was targeting those gyms. They might just be saying, hey, we can run SEO, we can run social media, we can run Google Ads, but because they're targeting everybody. But if you're targeting a very, very specific market segment, you'll already stand up by talking about like gym specific terminology and, and maybe a case study of another gym you helped. Right? So that's kind of like the first thing that, that really sets you up for success, right? Beyond that, short and sweet is key because if you have really long emails, first of all, they, they just don't get read. Right? Like when people are in their email inbox, it's not like they're on social media and they're like, they have time to waste. It's usually, I'm a business owner, I'm trying to get it out of my. Inbox quickly. Just like filter my emails. So they're not really gonna prioritize a long sales email. Like you're kind of at the bottom of their list. Right. So just make it really easy for them to read and respond to. Short and sweet is key. And like you said, hey, if I get a lot of emails from similar services you like, why am I going to respond to your message? What's going to make you catch my attention? Right. Two things. One is social proof, right. So if someone's like emailing you.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, I totally agree. Yep.
- [10:50]
A
Like all they have is you as a stranger emailing them in their inbox. Right. It's not like they can, it's not like they're going to, you know, watch a 20 minute video about you. Or it's not like if they reach out to you on LinkedIn and you can actually look at their profile and see their clients. Like you're literally just an email on a page. Right. So you're coming in really cold and they have no kind of like background to you. So you have to really make the case for, you know, why should I believe you? Like every marketer is going to promise the same claims when they reach out to your potential clients. Everyone's going to say, oh, we can grow your business or we can save you money or save you time or increase efficiency, blah blah, blah, blah. So most of your competitors are making the same claim. So everyone's always skeptical, like, okay, I've heard this before, but why should I believe you? So case study, social proof that could be big name clients you've worked with. If you don't have those, it's fine. It could also be the number of clients you work with. Like I'll give you an example. So I'll give you like a couple of bullet points that I would say if I was pitching my services in app on agency, I would say I've been doing outbound lead generation for 12 years. I would say we've run over 600 campaigns, we've helped over 400 clients, we've worked with dozens of B2B niches, we've worked with brands like Instantly and Clay. So that's like a five different types of social proof. Right? I mentioned like an aggregate number of clients we've helped. I've mentioned like experience like in like years in the game. I've mentioned big name clients. So you can kind of like work with whatever social proof you have, but you have to have some sort of like some sort of line to address the why should I believe you now, you could still have a good claim, you know, a good offer and, and social proof and still kind of blend in and sound like everyone else. Right? So the next part is, you know, what's unique about what you're doing. A lot of people don't think they do anything unique unless you already are, like, inherently a unique company because you offer like a software tool that's like, innovative and no one else is doing. But assuming that you're like most people listening and you have competitors, you might not think you have anything unique. But if you really dive into your process and like the steps you take to serve your customers, there's probably more things you're doing that might seem normal to you because it's your everyday work, but actually are unique and actually bring a lot of value to your clients. Right? Because we all have unique things about our background. Right. We all have our own life experience that we're drawing on, our own work experience, our own personality, our own opinions, our own, like, ways of doing things and just methods we've developed over the years. So if you're not clear on what makes you unique, you really have to start there. Because anytime you're doing cold marketing in a competitive industry, again, you really have to dial that in. Now if you're targeting an industry that doesn't receive a lot of pitches like yours, like, let's say that your business that works with some sort of like, obscure manufacturing company that isn't getting prospected every day by people like you, you don't really have to, like, work too hard on the copy, then you just have to kind of be there, show up. At least you get your email like, open and delivered and just make a direct claim. So it always depends on the market you're in. Like, generally, the more competitive a market you're in, the more you have to focus on differentiation. But if you, but if you could just find like a pocket of the market that's less competitive and there isn't a lot of other people playing in that space, you could again, like, you don't have to really try too hard on like, the differentiation, which is also nice. So that's another thing.
- [13:51]
B
And just to establish your thought process here, A.J. you're not talking about sending eight and email one. You're talking about a regular sequence or campaign that's structured and all created at once and then scheduled and at a certain, you know, time break. Or do you send one and see what happens? How, how does, how do you look at building that strategy out in that, in that Campaign.
- [14:16]
A
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. That's really important. So once you have the basics in place, you have a really good list, you've got a copy that has a, you know, it's specific, it has a useful offer, you have social proof, you have some differentiation. Then it's about how do I actually send this out? Usually we'll do a sequence of like two to four emails scheduled over two weeks. So I'm not saying that people listening should go sit there and hand write, you know, 100 emails a day to 100 different prospects. Really what you want to do is you want to write one sequence and you pre schedule it in a tool. We can talk about tools as well, but there's tons of cold email softwares. You pre schedule it. So essentially you would like take a list of, let's say 2000 businesses, upload it to a tool, pre write your sequence, your cadence, upload the same tool, and then it would kind of send it for you one by one to each person on the list in the background. That way you can have like an autopilot system just, you know, generating leads, which is pretty, pretty awesome. But generally we go for two to four follow ups because as you know, like a lot of times people just, they need to be, need to hear from you a couple of times they need to kind of build that trust. And most people might just miss the first email. Right. It might just like get completely missed by them.
- [15:17]
B
I like it. So there's a campaign that gets all that story out of, here's who we are, here's what we saw, here's how we can help, here's our social proof, here's some case studies, here's some metrics and maybe another why to buy message in number four or five email. But how do I then go back and try to follow up constructively? And should I start to use other media besides the email channel? Do I follow up with some kind of text or phone call or other type of outreach?
- [15:48]
A
Yeah. So I would say the answer is both. The best practice is use other channels. But also I'm aware that, you know, maybe if someone's trying this on their own rather than hiring a company, maybe it could be overwhelming to do all that and maybe they just want to like do one thing. So if you use email alone, you will get results. But yes, you can also get better results if you layer in LinkedIn or giving a call. Because at the end of the day everyone's different, right? Like I never answer random phone calls. I haven't like literally in years. I'm also like overseas right now I'm in Asia. So I don't like if someone calls me, it's happening at like 2am and my phone's off. So I don't answer cold calls, but I do answer emails all the time. And then people are different. Like some people might answer a call from a stranger, but they just don't respond to cold emails. Right? So when you do multiple channels, first of all, you'll kind of show up in the same place for the same person. They'll start to kind of recognize your company name and build that trust. But also again, some people just only might be reachable on one channel. So that's also really useful.
- [16:41]
B
Do you have any secrets aj Any of your special hacks that you can describe that's not in the traditional email marketing 101 or 201 handbook?
- [16:53]
A
Yeah, there's, there's a lot we do. I mean I think one thing we do is we personalize the emails. So I'll give you two really good things. One is we personalize the emails. So let's say that you were going to hand write 20 emails a day to your ideal prospects and send them out manually rather than like use an automated tool. The benefit of that would be that you could customize every single email to the prospect. You could research their business, maybe you could see like some news that's happening at their company on their social media and maybe you could like make an observation and tie that into like, hey, I saw that this is happening and this is why, you know, I think we should work together. So those emails would work better if they were custom written because again like the person's gonna feel like you did your homework and it's not just a random email. Right? Like would you agree with that or do you, do you have any thoughts on that?
- [17:38]
B
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah. So that would work better, right? Most people would know that they'd be more likely to respond if it felt like this person really took 10 minutes to again like take the effort. However, that's going to be very, very time consuming. So now you can use AI to do that for you. So we'll, we'll pre write a sequence but then we'll use an AI tool like clay.com and we'll actually have every email. That's so again it's a pre written cadence that we just write once but then we're using an AI agent that's going out to customize that email to each prospect based on like whatever research we want to tell to do. Right. So for example, one time we were helping a E commerce marketing agency, like a marketing company that helps E commerce and retail brands. And we were basically having the AI agents go to each E commerce store that we were reaching out to and find the name of their best selling product and then mention that in the subject line of the email. Again, something that a salesperson would do if they were taking the time to like really just, you know, manually like craft these emails and send them out. But now we can have AI do it. So that's really cool because now we can get.
- [18:38]
B
That's a great example. Thank you. That's a fantastic example. How else are you using AI? I meant to ask you that too because obviously GPT, Gemini, whatever your flavor, can do a lot of the writing for you and really help you build that sequence. But where do you inject and start building out agents to manage all this for you? How do you look at the human in the middle process? Is that still relevant in terms of, of looking at each and every email before it gets sent?
- [19:09]
A
Yeah, definitely. It's funny, I've been, I've been doing a loaded podcast recently and AI comes at every. In everyone. Right. But it should, because like, this is really the future. Like I've been using it and it's so helpful and I think like, if you're not using it at all, like you have to, otherwise it's going to be like not using the Internet, you know, 10 years ago. Yeah, so we do use a lot of AI, maybe a little bit too much because we spent 300 just today on OpenAI credits. The day's not even halfway over yet.
- [19:33]
B
But I have a feeling you're making a good return on that though, aj.
- [19:37]
A
Yeah, definitely. It brings our clients better results, so that's, it's worth it. But basically, yeah, so one common use case of AI is what I just said. So we, you know, we, we have our emails go out that actually we research the prospect and we customize the emails as a way to stand out. That's one. It's also great for the initial copywriting. So I think if, if anyone's listening to this and hasn't done any cold outbound before, like any cold outreach, emails, scripts, etc. It's great to use ChatGPT or ideally Claude. It's kind of a little bit better for writing to write your initial script. I'm not just going into cloud and having it write all of our scripts because we're also a professional Agency. So we have like the skill to do ourselves, but we do use it to kind of like speed up the process and write drafts. But if you're a beginner, you're better off kind of just like, at least if you're just starting from zero, use it to help you write the initial scripts because then you'll kind of just see like what a good script looks like and you'll start to kind of like be able to write those yourself. Right? So, yeah, my feeling is almost like.
- [20:31]
B
My feeling is I get almost like an 80, 20 rule where it can start with 80% of the copywriting, but then you apply the 20% to really customize, personalize, and inject that insight. And I think that's a huge differentiator. If you really put that 20% in.
- [20:46]
A
I think you have to, because, I mean, we use AI across a lot of areas in our business, not just like the email and the lead generation we do for our clients, but in our operations and finance. And our rule is we always check AI's work because you, you've probably seen it just make up things before, right? It just, like, sometimes it just likes to lie, right? It hallucinates. So if you're, if you're doing work and you're just trusting the AI to do it correctly, it's in my opinion, like, irresponsible because it's not at the point yet where it has 100 accuracy. I even saw something recently, it was actually in Australia where like McKinsey was selling, producing a report to, for the Australian government, and it charged like $400,000 for the report. And the government found like, AI making up things in it. And then they were like, I think they sued him or they got a refund or something. So you can't just like, you can't just let it do its thing. You have to always check it.
- [21:35]
B
AJ, you're big into B2B and SaaS, and obviously I play a lot in that area as well. What are you seeing on the customer side? Where are they saying, hey, this was really successful. I want to hear a good success story. And then I may ask a horror story as well.
- [21:50]
A
But yeah, yeah, we can definitely, definitely cover both. So, I mean, yeah, we do work with a lot of stats. That's like our main, main target market, main client based at the moment. Recently we worked with like a fin, A fintech and like financial service company. And one cool success story was that pretty much in the first week we got them 10 booked demos. Most of our clients, if they get 10 calls a month. They're happy because, you know, let's say they're paying 300, 400 bucks a call for a good quality meeting. That's. That's worth it, right? So just in the first week, we got him 10 booked calls, which was really awesome because.
- [22:25]
B
Yes.
- [22:26]
A
You know, like, a lot of times, whenever you launch any new marketing channel, you shouldn't expect in the first couple weeks, it's going to do much because you kind of have to, like, tweak it and test it and play around. But. So what was kind of, what was.
- [22:34]
B
The key to getting the 10? Obviously your process, but was there anything special about that offer?
- [22:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, in general, our process is pretty refined by now, but one new thing we tried for that client was back to the whole customizing each email. We customized the first line based on the country the prospect was in. So in their space, because they're in the financial space, they're selling a service to international, like all different countries. And depending on the country they sell to, that country has different, like, regulatory problems they have to deal with. Right?
- [23:06]
B
Yeah.
- [23:07]
A
So what we did, we uploaded like a big knowledge base about the regulatory financial issues in their space in every country and how this product solves that. So then the first line of every email is saying, hey, I saw that you're in Singapore, and I'm sure that as you're expanding your business, you're probably dealing with X, Y and Z. We help solve that. Right. So again, we're really starting the email showing that not only do we understand their problem, but we're building a lot of credibility because we're saying, like, I research your business, I know that you're dealing with this. And we helped another company solve this, so I think that was a big part to do with it as well. And they also just had, like, a great offer and great social presence too, which helps. Not necessarily social, but just like, digital or like, they had a good website. And that's a big thing too. Like, if we take on a client and we see that they have, like, zero online presence, of course, we can still get some leads with outbound and marketing, but, you know, people are going to look you up if they receive a good email from you. So it's important that you also have, like, at least the bases covered and have some content out online too.
- [23:59]
B
Right. So Speaking of that, A.J. you're focusing on email at least for this conversation. But, you know, in terms of marketing, people are spending money more on social channels, they're spending money on website SEO, AEO kind of activities. They're doing paid ads. What are you seeing in terms of emails effectiveness? Is it going up, down? How does it compare in terms of roi?
- [24:28]
A
Yeah, I mean the ROI is great because when you're doing outbound, all you do is you pay for let's like labor and software, right? Whereas let's say you're going to pay for ads, you have to pay for labor software, which would usually be like.
- [24:39]
B
Hiring agencies and instantly aren't free by the way.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So you're, you're always going to pay, but at least with there's like one less variable to pay for, right? You're not, you're not, you're not paying for software, an agency and also paying, you know, whatever, 3,5k month to like, for Facebook to actually run the ads. So I, I like it because I like that it's a very low cost channel to kind of test new things for like a low, for like less upfront capital. So once you get it working, the ROI is pretty high. You're not always going to expect like anything. You shouldn't expect an ROI on day one or even in month one, but definitely within the first couple months you should start seeing a pretty good roi. How it compares I don't look at. So like our business as you know, just does exclusively outbound. But I don't think that every business should only do outbound. I think every business should also be doing paid ads and the things you mentioned, because to me they all play a different part, right? They play a part in the ecosystem, right? Like if you have a good website, if you have good content, well then when you do outbound or you run a Facebook ad, people will see that and then they'll be more likely to work with you, right? Or you know, if you have an email newsletter or a YouTube channel or a podcast like this, and let's say you email someone with cold email or you cold call them and they don't sign with your company. Well if they're following your podcast or YouTube, well then that's going to nurture them and then maybe they'll come back and then maybe they receive another email from you 12 months later and then now that was the trigger to get them to buy. So to me I see marketing as like an ecosystem where over time you should build all of these out. But I do think if you have nothing built out in terms of lead generation and all of your leads just come from referrals and organic and you're kind of looking at like, what's the first channel I should build out? I would recommend Outbound just because it's going to work a little bit faster and it's going, it's going to cost a little bit less upfront than if you were to go into like paid, paid ads.
- [26:25]
B
I like that. So in wrapping up a little bit, AJ and let you get back to your day or, or evening actually, I don't know where.
- [26:31]
A
Yeah, evening. It's 11 over 11pm here.
- [26:34]
B
What, what do you see for email? Do you target that to fill top of funnel? Is that to get people interested in the product? Will it be ready to buy middle funnel activity? How, how are you seeing that? Or is it maybe a combination as well? And then when you kick off these email campaigns, is it sequenced accordingly?
- [26:53]
A
Yeah, good question. So we're primarily doing it for top of funnel. So in terms of the whole cold outreach space, we're doing it to fill the top of the funnel. That's just really what our clients are hiring us for. I mean you could really use it for anything. But in terms of what we're mostly using it for having success with is filling the top of funnel, taking a cold list, you know, building a list of ideal companies and prospects for a business and then just reaching out to them and saying, hey, would you like to book an appointment? So we mostly deal with companies that like have like a book a demo to see their SaaS or book like a sales call and that's really what you want to do. You don't want to try to use email to like bring them down the whole funnel and like sell the offer. It's really just to kind of like get them in the funnel and then move them to whatever the next step in your sales process is, which is usually like an appointment. Right. So really just that initial step. But you can also use it for middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel. I think a lot of companies, they'll get leads from the top of funnel and then if those leads don't convert, they won't really do much with them. Right. But if you just took your like list of people that have had sales calls with you in the last year but never signed and sent them an email, you probably get, you probably get a lot of them to pretty quickly like rebook with you or sign up or if you've had leads that have like, sometimes we'll work with like a warm list. Like maybe a client of ours has had leads that maybe sign up for a webinar or downloaded a free thing but they just never ended up converting or like speaking with the sales team. Those are great leads to, to do outreach to. So honestly, if you have these warm sources, you know, existing leads that haven't converted, I would probably start there before doing the cold stuff because that's where they're going to be your low hanging fruit. If you're not really giving attention to your existing leads, definitely start there because again, they've already heard you. They just maybe need another nudge to, to like pull the trigger. Right. But beyond that, obviously you'll tap that out at some point. So beyond that, you know, cold is where you want to go top of funnel to just keep bringing more people in.
- [28:37]
B
Wow, fantastic. What you got tons of takeaways there, folks. This is AJ Cassada from Revenue Boost, a hot website, a hot marketing agency, master of cold outreach. He's got a podcast, obviously a cool website sign up. So you get his emails too. He's a great read. What else can I say, aj, I really appreciate you taking the time and it's a great way out in California to get fired up for the day and yeah, we owe that to you. Thank you.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah, thanks, Keith. I hope this brought a lot of value to the listeners. I'm happy to connect with anyone on social or by email if they want to like ask any follow up questions or get any more help.
- [29:16]
B
Great. I'll drop some of those links into our show notes. And again, thanks for taking the time. It was great.
- [29:21]
A
Yeah, awesome. Let's do it again sometime.
- [29:23]
B
Absolutely.