How to Get Clients for Your Agency with Cold Email

An artistic representation of acquiring clients through cold emailing techniques.

Cold email is a quick and cost-effective way to get new clients for your agency. You can easily set up and start a “cold email for agencies” campaign in a single day. All you need to do is find prospects and create a contact list, write an outreach email, and start the campaign.

Cold email is also a very affordable solution for generating new business for your agency. You can send unlimited emails and generate hundreds of leads by spending just a couple hundred dollars a month.

Sounds good? We’ll guide you through starting your first cold email campaign and generating new clients for your agency.

Find prospects

The first thing you’ll need to do is find prospects so that you can create a contact list for your email campaign. Depending on the type of businesses you’d like to target, there are plenty of places where you can find prospects. Here are just a few:

Job boards – Websites such as Indeed and We Work Remotely are filled with job postings from companies that are your potential clients. Since these companies are already looking for help with what you’re selling, it will be much easier to convert them into clients.

Directories – Directories such as Clutch and Capterra list plenty of companies that you can contact to offer your agency’s services. If you’re looking to sell your services to startups, check out AngelList. If, on the other hand, you’re interested in selling your services to local businesses, you can use Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google Maps to find prospects.

LinkedIn – The business-oriented social network is perfect for finding leads. It allows you to search for prospects based on the company they work at, their job title, and more.

Wavo – Apart from running an amazing cold email platform for agencies, we also create custom contact lists at very affordable prices.

While finding prospects’ email addresses can sometimes be a time-consuming process, you can speed it up by using a tool such as Clearbit Connect or Hunter.io. Alternatively, you can hire a virtual assistant to help you gather all the information you need to create your contact list.

Write a great outreach email

The success of your cold email campaign will depend, for the most part, on your outreach email. This is why it’s crucial to take the time to make it just right. The four main things you’ll need to pay attention to when writing your email are personalization, the subject line, email length, and the call-to-action (CTA).

Personalization is key

The key to writing great cold outreach emails is personalization. Personalized emails have a higher open rate than non-personalized ones, and have been shown to result in improved click-through rates and conversions.

Try to include 2-3 personalizations per email. Anything more than that would make your prospect feel uneasy.

Vague, impersonal emails will very rarely generate any significant results. That’s why you need to find ways to personalize your outreach for each prospect.

Here are some ways to personalize your emails:

Find shared interests

People are more likely to trust those they consider similar to them, so finding something that you share with your prospect is a great way to personalize your outreach.  Perhaps you went to the same school or attended the same conference. Check out your prospect’s LinkedIn or Twitter account and see if you share any interests that you could mention in the email.

Use mutual connections

A great way to get in touch with your prospect is to have a mutual connection introduce you. If you share any connections with your prospect, ask your mutual acquaintance to introduce you by sending the outreach email for you and including you on the CC line.

The prospect is more likely to trust you and be open to your suggestions if they’re introduced to you by an acquaintance.

Use the prospect’s name

Start your email by addressing the prospect by their name. Use their name in the email multiple times. Apart from using the prospect’s name in the email, you can also mention their job title or role, company name, or industry data.

Your subject line matters

Your email’s subject line will be the first thing that the prospect notices about your “cold email for agencies”. You should use it to let your prospects know that your email is not spam and that you know who they are and what their business does.

Your subject line also needs to be compelling enough to make prospects open your email. Remember, your email will be competing for attention with potentially hundreds of other emails in the prospects’ inbox.

The best way to find the perfect subject line for your campaign will always be to test many different subject lines until you find the best-performing one. However, there are certain best practices that you can use to help you.

You should keep your subject line fairly short, at around 4 to 5 words, and consider adding a form of personalization such as your prospect’s name or company name. Write as you normally would and avoid using cliches or slogans.

Keep it short and focus on the CTA

Most people don’t have time to read long emails, especially when it comes to cold emails for agencies. That’s why you need to make sure to get to the point as quickly as possible. Try to keep your emails under five sentences.

Finally, if you don’t tell the prospect what you want them to do, how can you expect them to do it? It’s crucial that you let the prospect know what the next step is at the end of the email.

The call-to-action in your email’s closing line is the most important part of your email. It will have the greatest impact on your click-through and reply rates.

Remember to split test your emails

We’ve mentioned some best practices regarding cold emailing throughout this guide, but in the end, you’ll certainly need to split test your emails to find out which ones will provide you with the best results.

The three metrics you’ll want to focus on include:

Open rate – The percentage of sent emails that were opened by prospects. To improve your open rate, you should focus on tweaking your subject line.

Click-through rate – Indicates the percentage of people who’ve opened your email and clicked on a link. A low click-through rate usually means that you need to work on your email copy.

Reply rate – The percentage of people that replied to your email. While your entire email copy will influence your reply rate, the CTA is what will make the most impact. If you’re getting a lot of opens and click-throughs but very few replies, try changing up your CTA.

Always split test one thing at a time. If you’re testing different subject lines, make sure to keep the email body and CTA identical across all emails. This will allow you to pinpoint the changes that made a difference in your results.

Once you find the best subject line, start split testing different versions of email copy and CTAs until you find out which combination of a subject line, copy, and CTA gives the best results.

Make sure to follow up

Your prospects are probably getting at least 20+ emails every day, including cold emails for agencies, and it’s hard for them to reply to everyone on time. If you don’t get a reply in a few days, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not interested.

You should always send a follow-up email to see if the prospect is indeed interested. When writing a follow-up email, make sure to add some new information instead of repeating what you said in your initial message.

Try to provide value to your prospects with each follow-up email you send. Use your follow-up emails to gain credibility, show empathy and understanding, or put a smile on your prospect’s face. Consider your prospect’s pain points and challenges and let them know how you can help them.

Stop at two follow-ups if the prospect never replies. If, on the other hand, you get a reply and the prospect shows some interest, keep following up until you get a Yes or a No. It’s important to be persistent with prospects who show interest because it’s been shown that it can take 9 follow-ups or more to get a reply from a prospect and close a deal.

Cold email templates

We’ve listed our two favorite cold email templates below to help you get started. Please note that you shouldn’t copy these templates word-for-word. Most prospects can spot templated emails from a mile away. These templates should simply serve as inspiration and a starting point for crafting your own cold emails.

Template #1

“Hey [First Name],

I saw you on Yelp and was impressed by your 4-star rating for home care.

We help home care businesses increase revenue by 50%.

Love to send you our top 10 ways to do that.

Are you the best person to pass this information over to?

Sincerely,
[Your Name]”

Why it works: This email checks a lot of boxes: it’s personalized (by using the prospect’s first name), it shows that you’ve researched their company (mentioning their Yelp rating), includes a potential benefit of working with your company (increase revenue by 50%), and promises additional free value (in the form of a guide on how to increase revenue).

Template #2

“Hey [First Name],

[Your Name] from [Your Company Name] here. Hope you don’t mind me reaching out 🙂

We help businesses like [Client 1] and [Client 2] to grow their email lists and traffic.

I’m curious who might be best to speak with about email marketing at your company?

Cheers,
[Your Name]”

Why it works: Apart from personalizing the email and introducing yourself and your company, this template lets the prospects know about other businesses in their industry that have had success with using your services. If you’re able to point the prospect to case studies you’ve done featuring businesses in their industry, that would be even better.

Use Wavo to get more clients for your agency

Are you ready to use cold email to get new clients for your agency? You can start today by using Wavo, our cold email platform for agencies.

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