How this cold email landed me my first client

Author

Xavier Caffrey
May 22, 2023

🥶

Hey you, it’s me, Xavier Caffrey.

For our first official email of this miserable, cold news letter, I figured it would be poetic, to share with you the cold email that landed me my first client.

^ me when I signed my first client

PS: For those of you who don’t know, I started my agency about a year ago. At first it was a mix between marketing and sales, now it’s purely focused on helping early stage companies book more qualified meetings.

DISCLAIMER

The following email breaks A LOT of the cold copywriting/email rules, but if you keep reading, you’ll understand why this worked.

Also, rules are meant to be broken so what ever.

The Email

The Response

Breakdown

Subject line:

Just finished reading everything on your website

I don’t know about you but that’s a pretty powerful statement to make no?

This breaks the general rule of keeping subject lines short, but I think this worked because the founder that I reached out to is a technical founder.

I find that most cold messaging rules are meant for non-technical people.

But any way, this subject line was the perfect set-up for the preview line of the email which was

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"If you provide value to the world, the world will provide value to you"

Jason

This is a quote I got from one of his blogs that he wrote on his personal website.

Do you see what I did there?

In just ONE line, I have communicated to the prospect that

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I AM HIM

Xavier Caffrey

I let it be known that I’m not like the majority of sales people that are bombarding him with emails.

I wanted it to be very clear that I did my research on him.

I wanted it to be very clear that I had skin in the game.

Cool, I have now earned Jason’s attention, so he continues to read my email.

The Body:

There’s a lot happening here to be honest, if I were to do this again, I’d write a shorter email.

Nevertheless, the body of this email that I want to focus on is this part:

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I recently decided to switch from big tech, 9-5 to full-time helping people solve Business Development and Marketing problems. I've been heavily relying on Notion for project management and Super to create my website and showcase my work.

I wanted to reach out to:

a) Say thank you for building Super, it has been a seamless experience on the platform thus far and has been the perfect solution to my problem.

b) See if there's any need on your end for Business Development and/or Marketing help.

In this text I was vulnerable and showcased that I’m a user of his service. (2 things that most people never do in their outreach)

That worked really well for me in the beginning of my journey, I was only reaching out to founders who built product I had been using, because I thought it would be so easy to sell a product I already use and like.

The rest of the email is a bit cringe so you can re-read that part yourself but the last thing I want to mention is that:

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

After signing Jason and working with him, I realized that Timing was my biggest ally.

I sent him that email at the same time he was looking for help.

I basically took a shot in the dark and it worked, so I got VERY lucky here.

In future emails you’ll see how I ( and other rockstar salespeople) make our own luck by leveraging buying triggers and other pretty cool strategies.

Takeaways

  • Dig deep on your prospect to find information to personalize your outreach

  • If you’re just starting out your own agency, reach out to founders who built products you like, it’s a lot easier to write emails for those prospects

  • Timing is the most important variable in your outreach