Cold email for small firms

Most small firms live on referrals. Studios, consultancies, software companies, suppliers: the first clients come from people who know you, and then from people who know them. It works until it doesn't. A good year ends, two clients go quiet at once, and there is nothing in the pipeline because nobody was ever building one.

That was me. KILN. is a one-person web studio, and for a long time every client came from someone who knew someone. Cold email was the first thing I tried that let me choose who I worked with next. Here is what I learned, with my own numbers. The firm is a studio, but none of this is studio-only.

My numbers

• 1,910 emails sent to small firms over a few weeks
• 21 replies, a 1.1% reply rate
• 14 people who wanted to talk
• 1 signed project: a new website for a 24-year-old creative agency, S$3,000 for the build and S$1,000 more for an editor they could update themselves
• about US$52 spent on sending

The best audience was creative agencies, at a 2.0% reply rate. They were the firms that looked most like my past clients. That is the lesson that carries over to any business.

Who to write to

Start from your own customers, not from a list.

Look at your last few clients and write down what they have in common: their industry, their size, what was going on when they bought. For me it was firms of 10 to 50 people that sell their own expertise. For a software company it might be clinics with more than one site. For a consultant it might be engineering firms that just grew fast.

Then find more firms like that. The fit matters more than the size of the list. A list of 300 firms that look like your past clients will beat 3,000 random businesses every time.

Write to the person who decides. At a small firm that is the founder or managing director. At a bigger one, the head of the team that would use what you sell. A generic info@ inbox rarely reaches someone who can say yes.

What to say

The emails that got replies were all short. Under 90 words. They had four parts:

• One true thing about them. Something the firm says about itself on its own site: a recent project, a new office, a hire, how long they have been around. Never a comment on their website or how they run things.
• What you do, in a line. "I build websites for agencies like yours." "We run staff rotas for physio groups." "I'm a part-time finance lead for engineering firms."
• Proof. One link or one fact about work you did for a firm like theirs.
• One easy ask. A question they can answer in a word.

The easiest ask is an offer of something small and useful for free: a short video of how a similar firm uses your product, a one-page note, a quick mockup. It costs them nothing to say yes. Only make it once they say yes, though. Doing free work up front for people who never asked is how small firms burn out.

What not to do

• Don't send from the address your clients use. Cold email needs its own mailboxes, or your real address ends up in spam. I learned this when my studio's address started landing in spam after 92 cold emails.
• Don't send hundreds a day from one mailbox. A few dozen a day per mailbox, warmed up over weeks, keeps you out of spam.
• Don't promise a meeting time or a price in a cold email. Wait until they reply.
• Don't give up after one email. About half of replies come from a follow-up.

How long it takes

Doing all of this by hand is slow. Finding a firm, reading its site, finding the right person and their address, then writing an email that opens on something real about them took me about five minutes each. For 500 emails a month that is around 40 hours: a week of your time spent finding work instead of doing it.

That is why I built Gako, and why it runs on its own. You give it your website. It reads what you sell and who you have sold it to, suggests the kinds of firms that fit, finds the person who decides at each one, and writes each email opening on something the firm says about itself. It sends a few a day from your own mailbox and the rest from warmed mailboxes it looks after, follows up twice, and sorts the replies so you only see the people who want to talk.

It was tuned on agencies and studios, because that is what I sell to. It works for any small firm that sells to other firms, and people use it to reach partners and press as well as clients.

It costs 4 cents for each email sent, so 500 emails is US$20. There is no subscription and no seat fee, and the trial is US$15 of sending for US$1. Try it on your own website.