Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups • Hacker News Board

Re: Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups

#61

Post by asafira » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

philh wrote: post #43

asafira wrote: post #37

The author here takes the average of the conversion rates from different websites. Am I wrong in saying that isn't quite right? Shouldn't the "average conversion rate" be just the sum total of users that go to Toggl and sign up over the total number of users that went to Toggl? It's obviously still useful to break it down by the referring website, it just seems like an opportunity to inflate your conversion rate numb…

> The author here takes the average of the conversion rates from different websites. Am I wrong in saying that isn't quite right? Yes. It gives too much weight to sites that referred a smaller number of people, and too little to sites that referred a larger number. > Shouldn't the "average conversion rate" be just the sum total of users that go to Toggl and sign up over the total number of users that went to Toggl? N…

Yep! I agree with everything you mentioned, and should have been more clear in my description of what I meant by a fairer way to average the results.

Re: Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups

#62

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

Reminds me of two emails that I got that tried to look like "cold emails."

One email promised to give our company access to one of our major customers... That we show prominently on our web page as a major customer. They also promised to give us access to our previous parent company that still held a minority stake in the company, and who we still sell package deals with.

Another email was from someone who went through my linkedin and was trying to sell me something. I wasn't sure what it is and I was too busy to take the 20 minutes to figure out what it was and why it was useful. I think the email was hand-written, but as I couldn't figure out why this was useful, it was easier to ignore than engage.

Re: Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups

#63

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

CoVar wrote: post #36

On the same subject, here are some tips I gleamed from Heather at SalesFolk: One email, one focus. Send 8 different emails to every prospect. Four days apart. 30% responses come from email 5-8. Keep it conversational, in first person. Create benefit driven messages. How your product can help solve their problems? Cold emails should be 2-5 sentences. Again keep it conversational. Keep words and sentences bare minimum.…

I flag all these emails as SPAM.

Re: Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups

#64

Post by fecak » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #56

fecak wrote: post #25

As someone who coaches job seekers, I couldn't help but notice that these are identical tips I give to my clients when sending out a contact to a potential new employer. Most "cold" email techniques can be boiled down to "just don't make them feel cold ".

As someone that gets a ton of recruiter emails, I really dislike when they try acting like they're my friend or try relating to me. I can see right through those as the person being fake.

Funny enough, I'm a recruiter by trade. We walk an impossible line with candidates, particularly when demand is so high (candidates care a lot less when the economy is down, and I used to get job seekers acting like my best friend in the early 2000s).

If it's "too generic" the recruiter is dismissed as being lazy and spamming - "too personal" and the recruiter is fake.

I do understand what you mean and have seen recruiters that try to get a bit too chummy. By relating to someone, I might mention if we went to the same college or if I know people from their company or group they belong to. I'm not going to ask about their kids or spouse unless it's someone I know well.

Re: Cold email tips I used to get 60K signups

#65

Post by philh » Tue, Mar 14, 2017, 11:47 AM UTC

fecak wrote: post #64

dawnerd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that gets a ton of recruiter emails, I really dislike when they try acting like they're my friend or try relating to me. I can see right through those as the person being fake.

Funny enough, I'm a recruiter by trade. We walk an impossible line with candidates, particularly when demand is so high (candidates care a lot less when the economy is down, and I used to get job seekers acting like my best friend in the early 2000s). If it's "too generic" the recruiter is dismissed as being lazy and spamming - "too personal" and the recruiter is fake. I do understand what you mean and have seen recr…

Naively, it seems to me that the thing to do here is to mention something about the person's work.

I would dislike someone saying they went to the same university as me, because I don't care - I recognise that others differ, but to me, it seems fake and try-hard.

But I would like something like "your $project on github is interesting", or "I liked your blog post about".

(Attempting to fake this can go wrong. I've had emails that said things like "we were impressed by your github portfolio, particularly in Python and C", which sounds spammy because you could easily generate that by scraping Github, and I barely use C.)

You know your job better than me, but that's how I would think to avoid seeming either too spammy or too chummy.