Why every founder should learn cold email (and some fundamentals) | by Andrew Elsakr | Jul, 2021

The 3 stages of the founding journey I’ve experienced are:

1. Idea stage — goal = getting validation
2. Post-MVP stage — goal = getting early user feedback
3. Product-Customer fit — product clearly solves an urgent need , so now goal = sell, sell, sell

I don’t think I would have succeeded at any of these without cold outreach.

So I wanted to share what I’ve learned. This is not a step-by-step guide, but rather the key principles, considerations, and tools we use at Lyne.ai to start new relationships with large clients and with early users for new products.

1. Getting the right message (copywriting)
2. To the right people (list building)
3. Without going to spam (deliverability)

1. Copywriting
   a. is my message personalized to the recipient?
   b. does my offer solve a burning need? (if already selling)
   c. is there something they could gain from replying (if not already selling)
   d. is my email short and easily digestible?
2. List building
   a. am I emailing companies who actually have the need I solve?
   b. am I emailing the right job title at the company?
3. Deliverability
   a. am I sending to valid email addresses?
   b. is my own email domain properly warmed up?

1. Copywriting
   a. to automate the “personalization” portion of your emails, we use our own tool, Lyne.ai, which researches each of your prospects and writes a personalized compliment for each of them that you can plug into your cold emails at scale
2. List building
   a. you can use tools like Texau or Phantombuster to scrape leads from Linkedin searches, or…
   b. tools like Apollo.io that allow you to search for your leads from a database instead
3. Deliverability
   a. to reduce bounces, you should verify your lists through a tool like Usebouncer.com or Clearout.io
   b. to warm up your domains before your campaigns (at least 2 weeks of warmup time is best), you can use a paid tool like WarmupInbox.com or Lemwarm, or a free tool like Gmass’
   c. to send your campaign, you should use a tool specifically designed for cold email, like SmartReach.io

Hope this helps! Let me know if you’d like to see something more step-by-step. And free to shoot me a message on Linkedin (linkedin.com/in/coldemail) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/ElsakrAndrew) if you ever want to chat about cold email.