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How To Convert Customers With Cold Emails | Startup School

32:46 recording · AUTO · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

Cold emails convert when founders target well, personalize deeply, and send them at funnel-driven volume.

  1. Warm intros convert two to three times betterTurn over every rock in your network before you go in cold.
  2. Work backwards from the customer to the send volumeWith his sample rates it takes 800 emails to get one customer, so dozens a day is the floor.
  3. Targeting beats volume and beats great copy100 targeted emails outperform a thousand untargeted ones, and no wording saves a wrong recipient.
Executive Summary AI
  • Aaron Epstein, Group Partner at YC, opens with the best outreach hack of all: get a warm intro, which converts two to three times better than a cold email, and mine LinkedIn, coworkers, school and employer alumni networks to find one.
  • He works a sample B2B funnel backwards from one customer: 10% demo-to-customer means 10 demos, 25% response-to-demo means 40 responses, 10% open-to-response means 400 opens, and 50% sent-to-open means 800 emails sent for a single customer, so founders should send dozens and possibly 50 emails a day, manually before automating.
  • Open rates come mainly from better targeting, plus a personal name in the from field and a short, unsalesy subject like "Hey, quick question" or "Can I get your advice", with email generally beating LinkedIn and texts only with explicit permission.
  • He lays out seven principles of effective email copy: one focused goal, be human, personalize, keep it short, establish credibility, make it about the reader, and end with a clear call to action, then follow up manually two to four times with a few days between.
  • Real emails from his inbox illustrate the rules, from an untargeted shipping pitch to a company selling only digital downloads, to the "go Terps" LinkedIn note that won a reply by naming Van Munching Hall, and the smoothie startup whose rewritten free-smoothie-party email made it a no-brainer for recipients.
Key Quote
“Get a warm intro.”
— Aaron Epstein
Key Quote
“most cold emails are actually terrible.”
— Aaron Epstein
Key Quote
“basically what that means is you need to send 800 emails in order to get one customer conversion.”
— Aaron Epstein