Email Outreach Strategy for Innovative Startups

You have a life-changing offer that you want to get out there for the benefit of you and your clients. With the mass of noise online coming from all directions, how do you get heard? And how do you do it your way, with innovation front of mind?

I recently had the pleasure of working with ASPIRE who are all about focusing on the What Next. Born out of Rainmaking Innovation, ASPIRE helps companies eager for innovative growth to think like a VC and build like a startup. Clearly, they have an amazing message and ideas for how to get it out there but they just didn’t have the capacity to execute it.

Introducing the humble freelance copywriter (ME!) who can fill in the gaps as and when you find them. I worked with them on their email outreach campaign and you can find out what they thought of our partnership by scrolling to the end of this article.

But first, let’s talk strategy.

What is email outreach?

We can split it into its two words - using email to reach out to new prospects so they become familiar with your brand. This is more than one email because the fortune is in the follow-up. You can’t interact with someone once and expect them to become your best customer.

In this case, they wanted to use cold email outreach. This is when you take email addresses in the public domain for people who are relevant to what you offer and introduce yourself.

Pros and cons of cold emailing

I’ll be honest with you, cold outreach doesn’t have super high conversion rates. Triggered email sequences do have higher metrics.

By triggered sequences, I mean emailing someone after they have signed up for your event or to receive a free download. They’ve given you their email in exchange for something.

However, triggered sequences aren’t self-sufficient. They require you to send traffic to the landing page to get sign-ups. Considering ASPIRE’s target market, they wanted to get in touch with C-suite professionals.

They aren’t the type of people who have time to be signing up for freebies and ASPIRE as a start-up would have to do a lot of marketing to get any freebie in front of them. Their ideal client wants to get straight to the point which is easier to do with cold outreach.

How do you write an effective email outreach sequence as a startup?

This is the killer question. Here are my top 6 tips when considering this type of marketing campaign.

1 Drop the boardroom talk

Yes, you want to come across as professional, especially when talking to the big guns, but the Queen’s English isn’t the easiest to understand quickly. You don’t have time to be faffing around. You literally have seconds as a stranger in their inbox to convince them to read your email and take action.

Focus on keeping it concise, rather than overly formal. Content that is skimmable and scannable is essential in this day and age.

2 Make it personal

On both ends! While I created an email sequence for ASPIRE, I left gaps where they could put in personal information about the recipient before sending it out.

This extra effort goes a long way as your prospect could be receiving hundreds of emails a day. It also allows you to be super specific about why you would be a good fit for them, only adding to the power of the email.

And what about your end? See an email sequence as a relationship-building exercise. Personal connection trumps all. So ditching the over-formalities and writing as an individual, not a conglomerate, is a good path to take. We want to work with people, not corporate entities.

3 Lead with value

In any marketing campaign, leading with value is a good shout. Before you ask, give. That’s even more important in cold outreach. They didn’t ask you to get in contact with them so give them a reason to keep entertaining you.

It’s an exercise of proving yourself really. Articles, white papers and recordings of talks are all good resources to mention in those initial emails. Chances are they’ll find it useful and at the same time they get to know you better. It builds authority which leads to a greater chance of your relationship continuing.

4 Gradually increase the emphasis on the goal of the campaign

ASPIRE wanted to get more people on calls with their salespeople so that was a key call to action in the email campaign. But as we started with giving value, it wasn’t the only call to action. It was mentioned from the beginning, just not focused on as much.

As the email sequence went on and the recipient had more time to get to know them and decide whether booking a call was a good idea for them, I gave more space to this call to action, taking it from a sentence to a paragraph.

Following the ‘give first, ask second’ principle, you can get an idea of how much time you should be spending convincing them to follow the call to action directly.

5 Cut it, cut it and when you think it's short enough cut it some more

Harkening back to my first point, people just don’t have time these days. So writing a whole essay on why they should work with you just isn’t going to do you any favours. Keep it as short as possible with concise paragraphs and simple sentences.

I love to write and write and write but in this context, it just doesn’t work. If you’re unsure about length, create two versions of your email sequence and see which one does the best. Testing is how you get confident.

6 Say goodbye

No lead ever should just drop off a cliff. It’s called a sales pipeline for a reason. Now I know you can’t keep emailing people forever (I recommend 6-7 emails). I’m just saying, don’t stop emailing them out of the blue. Kindly tell them you’re going to stop emailing them and let them know how they can continue interacting you with in the future if they’d like.

It shows professionalism and politeness while also giving a kick up the butt to anyone who’s been thinking of following your call to action but just hasn’t gotten round to it. There’s nothing like a goodbye message to get people to take action.

The results

I could go on about email sequences forever. I love writing them because I can take people on a journey and that brings out the storyteller in me. Instead, let’s have a final word from the ASPIRE team themselves about the email outreach sequence I wrote for them.

“We wanted to build a cold sales outreach email campaign with a quick turnaround but didn’t have the capacity in our team to do so.

Rebecca stepped in and managed to come up with an email campaign strategy and copy quickly and efficiently.

Since we are a startup, we are still trying to find the right tone of voice for our market. I have to say that Rebecca has set our tone of voice just right and we are now taking a lot of inspiration from what she has written for us for other campaigns and content.

It has been a pleasure working with such a professional talent.”

— ASPIRE

Sounds tempting? Let’s chat about how I could step in to create a powerful email sequence for your business. Just follow this link to book a no-strings-attached pick-my-brain call.