In this guide, I’ll share my approach to how I use experimentation to build scalable campaigns by explaining several steps:

• Define my target customers
• Build a target customer lists
• Write compelling copy (and offer value)
• Measure what worked and what didn’t
• Double-down on what’s working

My response rate varies on the campaign. But, I aim for 50%. I’ve had particularly well-targeted campaigns yield 80% (and even 100% every so often). 

Before building any product or service, I focus heavily on understanding my target customer and what I want to help them to achieve.

• If you’re a founder who has a product or service with a well-defined customer and value proposition, this article’s for you.
• If you’re a startup founder who hasn't defined their customer and value proposition, I’d love to help you to get started.

Many of the founders we work with are hesitant to use cold outreach because they’re received so many bad messages. You probably have, too.

Most attempts are irrelevant to me. 

A lot of attempts have basic spelling or grammatical mistakes. 

A lot of attempts ask me to “hop on a call”.

I think that so many startup founders avoid it because they haven’t been recipients of effective campaigns themselves. But, it’s my hope that by the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll think that cold email can also be cool email.

For the sake of specificity, I’ll share how a Maine startup we work with has used cold outreach quite effectively to drive sales. 

Tree Free Fire is a Maine-based startup that sells portable campfires. Tree Free Fire's primary wholesale customers are boutiques, gift shops, natural food stores, and businesses that want customized gifts for clients and employees.

I begin all campaigns with defining target customer groups and building outreach lists. With the Tree Free Fire cold outreach campaign, I targeted several customer groups in Maine:

• Natural food stores
• Gift shops
• General stores
• Patio stores
• Brands with custom gift needs

I usually try to find 25 target customers from each target customer group. This seems to be enough messages in order for me to understand whether a customer group cares about the product or service I’m selling. 

Building target customer lists can be tedious, which is why I always start my search by looking for a “target customer gold mine”. A target customer gold mine is place where I can find the names and email addresses of a lot of target customers at once. It's usually a nicely organized list or database.

Finding a target customer gold mine saves me a tremendous amount of time. A quick Google search led me to find a variety of natural food store lists and databases for my Tree Free Fire campaign. This particular target customer gold mine resulted in dozens of new customers and tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

I use a few different tools to find the contact information of target customers when I'm building target customer lists:

• Skrapp: An email finder. Skrapp is a Google Chrome extension that connects to LinkedIn and easily allows me to build target customer lists. Skrapp helps me to find real email addresses for professionals at any company.
• Hunter: Another email finder that has a few features that Skrapp doesn’t have. Hunter helps me to find the email address formatting of any company, find the email address of article authors, or verify any email address.

Once I have defined target customer groups and built target customer lists, I write my copy. While there isn’t a single right way to write cold outreach copy, I try to focus on a few things:

• Get straight to the point. You should focus on brevity whenever writing copy. 
• Personalize your message. The recipient should feel like the message was meant specifically for them.

The purpose of my initial message isn’t to make a sale, it’s to get a reply. So, I want to make sure that the effort for target customers to reply is as low as possible. Sure, it might be ideal for me to “hop on a call” with a customer. But, as a target customer, I’m taking a big risk by scheduling a call.

I always conclude cold outreach messages by asking if I can offer some value. That way, a customer can decide on their own terms whether my product or service is right for them. I first learned about this tip from Marketing Examples (a tremendous resource that I’ve learned a lot from). Some examples:

• When I built a Tree Free Fire campaign for businesses buying custom gifts, I wanted target customers to see a preview of their order. In this campaign, I asked, “Can I send you an image of what our portable campfires will look like with your branding?”
• When I built a Maine Crisp campaign to new stores, I offered to mail a sample pack. That way, the target customer could eat the product themselves and decide whether they wanted to stock it or not. In this campaign, I asked, “So that you can taste for yourself, can I mail you a sample bag of our product?”
• Eariously is an app that turns newsletters into podcast episodes. When I built an Eariously campaign, I wanted target customers to hear what their newsletter would sound like. In this campaign, I asked, “So that you can listen for yourself, can I turn your latest newsletter into a podcast episode?”

Offering to provide value is the ultimate version of showing (not telling). Not only does offering value help your target customer understand whether your product or service is right for them, it also helps you to:

• Build a relationship with the target customer. Because my foot’s in the door, my conversation with a target customer can go beneath a surface level back-and-forth.
• Hone your value proposition. As you experiment with different customer groups, an offer of value helps to determine which customers care most about your product or service. 
• Measure (easily) which customer groups care. It’s easy to measure which customer groups respond most positively instead of relying on vanity metrics.

After beginning my initial cold outreach to Tree Free Fire customers, 10-15% of all customer targets were converting to customers.

Then something interesting started happening.

I found some traction amongst business owners in Maine who wanted to see image previews of personalized portable campfires. Particularly, funded startups. Not only were these customers interested, but their average order value (AOV) was significantly higher than natural food stores, gift shops, and general stores.

Why? 

It seems so obvious now. This target customer was flush with cash and looking for a way to celebrate their clients and employees with a unique gift. A portable campfire was a gift that clients and employees were excited to get and use.

The custom campaign was converting, but finding the contact information for funded startups was time-intensive. 

Could I find a target customer gold mine? 

I eventually stumbled upon GrowthList thanks to Twitter. GrowthList sends a list of funded startups every Monday morning, which includes the contact information of the CEO. This target customer gold mine offered me the ability to run a repeatable and scalable campaign.

When I discover that a campaign is proving to be particularly effective, I work to make it repeatable and scalable.

• I move from a manual system in Google Sheets to Klenty. Klenty is an affordable cold email outreach tool that helps me to send personalized sales emails and automate my follow-ups.
• I offload list building to someone on Fiverr or Upwork. That way, I can focus my effort on improving copy, measuring the results, and improving the system.

Many of the startup founders we work with are wary of sending follow-up messages in their campaigns. Sending follow-ups can be anxiety-inducing, but following up is critical to success. Your target customers are busy. It’s unlikely that your first message will reach your target customer at the right time. But, your second or third attempt might.

I generally send two followup messages during a campaign, and I try to space out the messages effectively. I don’t want to be annoying, of course. 

I’ve found Loom to be a highly effective method of increasing the likelihood of follow-up responses. A short Loom video allows me to say hello directly to a target customer, share my value proposition, and repeat my offer of value. I can even embed a personalized video thumbnail in the body of the email.

After setting a campaign in motion, it’s vital for you to measure outcomes in order to improve your next campaign. When I’m running a campaign, I’m focused on measuring just a few key metrics:

• Replies to my offer of value. I want to know whether my call-to-action piqued the interest of my target customers. Which customer groups cared most about my offer of value?
• Sales earned. Did my offer of value interest customers enough to cause a reaction in order to earn a sale?

As I’m running a campaign, I’m also focused on collecting objections and questions. I segment objections and questions by target customer groups in order to spot possible patterns. The information that I gather from responses helps me to do two things:

• Improve my next campaign. When I get questions or objections, I can preempt them by including the answers in improved copy.
• Make content. I might take a question and turn it into a social media post. I might turn an objection into a blog post. Ideally, I can answer an objection before it's broached.

After measuring, I double-down on what’s working and stop sending messages to target customer groups that do not respond to my campaign.

Cold outreach is effort intensive. But, after running hundreds of campaigns, it remains my favorite sales channel. If you’ve got a well-defined customer and value proposition, cold outreach might be an ideal sales channel for your startup. If you need a hand getting started with your cold outreach campaign, I’d love to help you get started.