Adam Rosen is the Email Outreach Company co-founder, Founder of Acquired Startup, an entrepreneur with extensive experience in cold email strategies. We spoke about the evolving landscape of cold emailing, its challenges, and techniques for success. Adam brings a wealth of knowledge from founding and running businesses that leverage cold email to secure high-profile clients and significant business deals.
During the conversation, Adam debunked the myth that cold email is a relic of the past. He provided insights into how cold email has transformed, stating, "Cold email is a whole new ballgame than it was in the old days." His approach shifts away from mass emailing to a more refined, targeted strategy to navigate the tightened regulations and filters of modern email platforms.
A significant portion of our discussion centered on best practices for crafting effective cold emails. Adam emphasizes the importance of infrastructure, like setting up multiple domains and managing email volume to avoid spam filters. He shared a compelling tip about email personalization: "The best subject line that we've seen is just 'Hi' and then the first name of the recipient."
Adam also touched on the broader implications of cold emailing for business development, revealing that about "50% of them have come from cold email," referring to his current customer base. This statistic underlines the effectiveness of cold emailing when executed correctly.
Furthermore, Adam shared his personal journey and philosophy as an entrepreneur. He highlighted the importance of perseverance and a positive mindset, recalling a quote that drives him: "Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages." His narrative extended beyond business strategies to include his experiences as a traveling entrepreneur, underscoring his belief in living an inspiring life while running a successful business.
Listeners will come away with a deep understanding of:
- The nuanced strategies required for successful cold emailing today.
- Practical tips for setting up an email outreach infrastructure.
- The importance of personalization and how to craft emails that get responses.
- Adam's holistic view on entrepreneurship and lifestyle.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to refine their outreach strategies or seeking inspiration on integrating life and work into a coherent and fulfilling vision.
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[Music] 21st Century Entrepreneurship with Martin Piskaric. [Music] As an entrepreneur, we all know how important it is to get more sales opportunities. [Music] Every company is only as good as their top of the funnel. And the way that's always worked best for me and the different companies that I founded and I run is through cold email. [Music] So today we're going to talk about the burning question. Is cold email dead? And hopefully over the next 20 or 30 minutes, I'll prove to you why cold email is not dead. Why it can work for you better than ever and how you can get more sales through cold email starting today. [Music] My name is Adam Rosen and I'm the founder of Email Outreach Company. Now, before I started Email Outreach Company about three years ago, I had a tech startup for about five years. I ended up selling that company now back in 2019. And the reason why I burned that up is because how we got just about every customer. And a lot of these are big brands. Like Think of America, Amazon, Apple, Goldman, Disney, all these big brands we got through cold email. So when I sold the company, I started to do a lot of work with different companies. And again, as we all know, we all need more sales appointments. We all need more sales opportunities. If we don't have a top of the funnel, we don't feel like we have any hope within our business. So I was mentoring and working with a tech startup and that tech startup said to me, "Hey, man, can you talk to me ahead of sales?" She's struggling to get meetings on the books. I talked to her and I saw there was a big gap with what they were not doing when it comes to cold email. So we ended up starting the company. I called up my co-founder, my previous tech startup. That led us to starting Email Outreach Company. And now we're three years in working with over 100 customers from all across the United States and some very big brands as well to help them get more sales. And again, our specialty is cold email. [MUSIC] People always ask me, "So how can I use cold email? What is the purpose of cold email?" The way I like to boil it down is cold email is a way of connecting person A to person B. Now, who can person B be? Right? Like, who is person B? Well, for me, we use cold email in my first tech startup to raise money. So we found our anchor investor from cold email. As I mentioned earlier, how we got just about every customer of ours was through cold email. How I found the company that ended up buying my previous tech startup, that was from a cold email. How I've been on so many podcasts, a lot of that is from cold emailing. How I've developed some great partnerships from cold email. My current business email outreach company, I just French the numbers yesterday of all of our customers and how we got them. About 50% of them have come from cold email. We would have a fraction of the business we currently have today if we did not cold email. So again, whoever is listening to this, you can leverage cold email to get more customers. As long as there's an email list you can get for your ideal customer, I promise you cold email can be a great avenue to get more customers for you. And more customers for you and your business. ♪♪♪ ♪ I don't know if it's me or me ♪♪♪ ♪ We miss the hero I will pick up your car ♪♪♪ ♪ It's been falling out and solving for weeks ♪♪♪ ♪ The stars are pretty when you start falling ♪♪♪ ♪ Don't you worry ♪♪♪ One of the things I hear a lot about now is does cold email still work? A lot of people tell me, hey, I just keep going to spam or why is nobody getting back to me or my domain might be blacklisted. What's going on? And the reality is today cold email is a whole new ballgame than it was in the old days. And when I say old days, I'm not talking about 10 years ago, I'm talking about last year. Cold email has changed significantly. A lot of people know about Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and some of the restrictions that a lot of these providers are putting in place. AI has, of course, played a pivotal role. There have been a lot of things that have led up to cold email becoming a lot more difficult to get results from. So for example, in the old days when we work with our customers, we would create one domain that you would send from and a few email accounts that we would send from. Because even then you should never cold email. You should never mass email off your main domain. It's too risky. But in the old days, again, we could get away with one domain and a few emails. Now we have some customers with as many as a hundred or three, four hundred domains that we're sending from. We have customers with as many as a thousand email accounts that we're sending from because Google and Yahoo and these different providers have gotten so strict with what they're allowing into the inbox. So if you don't do A through Z right, the truth is you won't get results through cold email. If you're not going to learn the art of it, you might as well not do it because you're not going to get results anymore. However, if you do it right, you can get better results than ever. You know, my company, for example, we booked more appointments in the last few months than we have in the history of our company, even back in the gold, you know, the golden days of cold email. So it does still work, but it is getting harder and harder to get results. [Music] Yes, it's getting harder, but of course, what are the solutions? How can we solve those problems? And the good news is, again, it can work, but you have to do A through Z right. So what are some things that anyone can use today to get better results? Number one, your infrastructure is more important than ever. So setting up your domain, setting up the DNS records, basically like your registration stickers, your DKM, your DNS, your SPF, you've got to set up your backend correctly. Then you have to set up your email accounts. We set up three email accounts per domain. You can only send about 20 emails per inbox per day. Any more than that raises the spam triggers, so you want to make sure you stay within 20 emails per inbox per day. So if you want to send a thousand emails in a day through the math, you need to have that many inboxes set up. So you've got to set up your infrastructure. Now what's important, copy. So how do we get good copy? Out of all the copy that works best, and this subject line used to make my stomach turn, because I didn't like it. But look, I'm a data guy. The data will tell me what works and what does work. The market will tell you what works and what doesn't work. The best subject line that we've seen, and again, we're sending over a million emails every single month, is just high and then the first name of the recipient. Now in terms of the body of the email, and anyone who emails may, I'll give you this free GPT prompt to help you with your copywriting. But a simple way of looking at it is the body of an email. One line, what's the purpose of your email? Next line, what's the problem you solve? Next line, what's your solution? Next line, what's your social proof? So I've worked with companies, A, B, and C. I've been featured in outlets, D, E, and F that have written about me. Then finally, what's your call to actually? What's your ask? Hey, can I have 15 minutes of your time? So purpose, problem, solution, social proof in your ask. All on one line, all simple. So that's a basic way of looking at copy. Now there are tools out there because personalization is so important. Now more than ever because of AI. We're all inundated with emails right now. A lot of those emails are not high quality, they're not personalized. They don't feel like they're meant for the recipient. So there's phenomenal tools out there. If you're someone who's a little more advanced, like a clay.com, that allows you to send at scale, highly personalized emails where it seems like you were just on that person's website for 30 minutes writing a highly personalized email. So that's, that's the basics on copy. When it comes to list building, the good news for everybody out there lists are nowhere near as expensive as they used to be. In the old days out of people telling me over and over and over again, they're paying a buck or more a dollar or more per contact or a zoom info. That is not the case anymore. You can get high quality contacts through an amazing website that we love and we use a lot of instantly.ai where you can get emails for, you know, a few pennies of contact. It has become so much, so much cheaper, so much easier to get access to high quality contacts without having to pay the excessive prices that used to have to pay in the market. So those are just some of the basics. Of course, the technology is really important that that we should all be using. Again, we love a tool called instantly.ai, but those are some of the basics in terms of the infrastructure, the copy in the list building. I can't wait. Life will teach me. Jumping out. I'm falling free. There's no escape from my own walls. I'm ready now to feel it all. I don't know why I'm in the darkness. There's two primary ways to work with our customers. So one way is they don't need to do anything. They just show up to the meeting. So we do everything. We create the whole infrastructure, the domains, the emails, we get the list, we write the copy, we send the emails, we manage the inboxes, and then we just book the meetings on our customers' calendars. So it's hands off. It's easy. You just get meetings booked. You show up to the meetings. In a way, I'm a customer of my own company. And I love it because I just see a meeting got booked to my calendar. My team sends me the thread, showing who I'm speaking with, all the context of it. I show up to the meeting. I don't need to do anything there. So that's our premier way of working with customers. Our second way, which we launched back in last September, September of 2023, is a hybrid of our full service with our DIY where basically we build out the whole infrastructure. I talked a lot earlier about how important it is to build out your infrastructure domains and your emails. So we build all that out for you. We train you on what technology to use, how to use it, how to get the best results. We help you with copy, we hold their hands through the process. And then they are the ones that are sending the emails. So it's great for any entrepreneurs out there. If you have a VA on your team, or if you have a marketing person on your team, that can invest a couple hours. It could be a great way to get meetings booked while paying significantly less money than you would in our premier offering. When I started my first tech startup, I was, you know, a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed entrepreneur. I started three weeks before I graduated from my one-year MBA program I was doing at the time. And the way I ran my first company is very different than how I run it today. We were based in Boston and the reality was I was in the office pretty much every week, seven days a week. It was the way I thought you had to live if you wanted to build a successful business. And while we did get acquired, it wasn't some glamorous exit that any of us dream of when you start the company. It was the best learning I've ever had. I wouldn't be wearing it today without it, but it was not some massive success that had me retired as a 27-year-old, you know, moving out to the beaches. Now, I bring that up because when I sold that company, I moved out to Hawaii, and I lived out there for about a year before moving to the Northeast when I worked on some real estate projects. And then again, I started my company email outreach company. But the reason why I bring that up is because the lifestyle I live today and have been living now since November of 2021 is the opposite of what it was during my first tech startup. So I actually live my life as a full-time traveling entrepreneur. So I live basically out of my suitcase at this point. And my co-founder and I, we both travel full-time. We travel about half the year together, and we were talking off air. We were talking more and about how I spent two months in Montenegro last year and spending time in Croatia. Because for me, what I'm trying to prove out here is, can I have my cake and eat it too? You know, can I build a successful business, which is very important to me, service, phenomenal customers, and also do it in the most beautiful place in the world. So for me, you know, over the last three years, I've spent significant time, you know, five weeks in Pozetano, Italy on the Amalte Coast or three weeks in Lake Como in Italy, or, like I said, Montenegro, Paris, London, four months every year in Hawaii. The list goes on and not south of France. Like, for me, I want to build a successful business. That's what's most important to me. But I want to do it from places that inspire me, where I can learn from their cultures. I can learn from the aspects of traveling that you can only learn from if you actually do the traveling, where I want to grow as a human, while also growing as a business professional. So, for me, you're catching me right now. I'm visiting my mother for the, for the next few days. So it's great. I get to spend some time with her in New York, which is where I am right now during the time of this recording. But it's, it's inspiring for me to be able to travel to different parts of the world while I build my business. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a fun run and we'll see, we'll see how much longer I continue with this lifestyle. Yeah, my imagination I go higher, higher, lot afraid to touch and break. I'm ready for something new. Having the persistence and having the perseverance is so key for any of us because as an entrepreneur, as we all know, especially when you're taking your first crack or your first few cracks at it, there's going to be a lot more lows in there are highs. And one of my favorite quotes is by George Washington's perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages. Whereas an entrepreneur, I'm a big believer, you can persevere through all the crap that we are all going to have to go through as humans period, but especially when you take a risk like being an entrepreneur, and you can carry a good attitude, and you don't get negative and you don't stoop down to being mean or angry or jealous of other people. If you can keep a good attitude and persevere through things, I'm a big believer you will be successful. You know, of course, health being number one, most important. If you have your health, you got everything. So that's important. And when traveling, it could be a challenge, right? Like, look, traveling from different to different parts of the world, adjusting to new time zones, adjusting to even like, hey, what's my new cafe to get my morning coffee or, hey, where should I go to dinner or not understanding their language, not speaking their language of some of the places you go. Like, having those adjustment periods is how quickly can you adjust because losing a day, that could be, that could be a setback for any business. So how do you bounce back quickly? One of the things that I do that keeps me on track is, and I've been doing this now shoot for probably four, five years at this point is journaling every night. So I have a spreadsheet on my computer that tracks different things throughout my day. You know, what I love about the day. What did I learn? What can I improve upon? You know, what are some thoughts I have about the day and then a question that I ask myself as well at the end of every night. And that helps me to one stay on track. It helps me flex my discipline muscle every day. And also, it allows me to relive some of these experiences because time moves so fast and we think we're going to remember everything but of course we can. Where I can go back and say, Hey, what was I thinking? What was I doing on October 2nd, 2019. Or what was I thinking on April 1st, 2022. And how can I soak up all those learnings that we all get every single day, but we'll just pass us by. If we don't, if we don't make note of them, if we don't highlight them. So that's been great. And then of course, you know, eating well and working out exercising is so important for my mental health. I need when I don't work out for a few days, I'd start to not feel well if I'm not eating well if I'm not taking care of my health. That also brings me down. I'm not as sharp as I need to be. So those are just some basic things that I try to do every day, no matter where I am. One of the things that I do miss about living in a specific location is being connected to local charities like when I was living in Boston. I was a part of the advisory board for the Ronald McDonald House, which cares for children that are sick and need support from, especially that the Boston, the Great Boston Hospital. That was just a 20 minute drive from from the Boston location there. And it was great, like it was great to be around the kids and their families and I actually ran the Boston Marathon for the Ronald McDonald House, which was an amazing experience and something that is still one of my favorite experiences I've ever had and one of my coolest experiences where I got to raise, I think it was over $12,000 for that charity and also be able to run the Boston Marathon, which is a big deal, especially in Boston. And one thing that we do actually as a company is, and this is actually another cold email tip that anyone can take. It's a win-win for everybody. But we've had this at this point, and we're actually about to do another big donation now on behalf of my company is we donate every month to a dog charity to feed dogs, and we also donate to plant trees. So one of the things we put as a PS in almost all of our emails is, hey, domain health is important to us. So if you reply to this email, we will donate five bowls of dog food to a local shelter. Replies help our domain health, better domain health, better deliverability, more people can see your emails, more meetings can get booked from it. So every month we donate, depending on how many replies we get, a certain number of bowls of dog food. So we've already donated over 60,000 bowls of dog food. And again, when I make the donation that I have to do later today for the month of July, we're going to be up probably to 90,000, we might be pushing 100,000 bowls of dog food, because we had a very good month. So that's one way we support and then like I said, we also donate trees. One of our customers is has a climate initiative. So we support that climate initiative by doing the same type of thing, but with donating to trees. So that's some of the stuff we're doing now in my previous tech startup. We, we had, we built a platform for college student organizations, connecting them to employers for jobs and internships primarily. One of the things we did for the student organizations that signed up for our platform is we would pay their, their student group money. So in the five years we ran the business, we actually gave away to these student groups all across the country over $300,000. So we gave away over $300,000 to these student groups to support them in their initiative. So those are some of the things that we've done and that we're currently doing. Anyone who's interested, you could check us out at EOC works.com. On social media, I'm most active on Instagram. It's at Adam, I rose in. On LinkedIn, it's just backslash in backslash, Adam, I rose in. And then my emails, Adam at EOC works.com. So if you have any questions around cold email, feel free to email me. If you want our chat GPT prompt that help you rewrite your emails, email me, I'll send that over to you for free. And again, if you have any questions, I, I'm a big believer and I appreciate people that have an issue. So the fact that you guys are listening to this podcast, that tells me you have a great level of initiative. I know a lot of you are entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs. So again, if I can help in any way, any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I'd be happy to help. 21st century entrepreneurship with Martin P. Skorick. Imagine a space where triumphs, trials and tales of entrepreneurship come alive. Welcome to the 21st century entrepreneurship podcast, a gold awarded journey hosted by Martin P. Skorick, connecting with listeners in 95 countries and ranking in the top 0.5% of all podcasts. Join our exclusive community, elevate your perspective and embark on the path to success. (dramatic music)
