Cold Emails: Is That Even a Strategy?

Surprise! It sure is. When we kicked off promoting our SaaS product, Inspectah, we were new to the whole SaaS marketing scene and had to learn from the gurus overseas. To our surprise, 7 out of 10 marketers swore by cold emails—if you do it right. This caught our attention, especially since cold emailing isn’t something you hear much about here in New Zealand. The stigma is real – cold emails are often seen as spammy, risky, and, to be honest, a bit dodgy. But we were keen to give it a go.

We started by searching for advice from LinkedIn connections, scouring social platforms, and digging around on Google. Unfortunately, we didn’t find much guidance locally. So, we decided to roll up our sleeves and figure it out ourselves. The process was a bit more involved than we expected.

First off, we created multiple domain names – five, to be exact. Then, we had to “warm them up” (a new term for us too), which basically means easing the system into believing we’re not spamming anyone. Next, we chose our leads using Apollo, although there are plenty of other tools out there that scrape contacts from LinkedIn, social platforms, and Google My Business. After that, we filtered these emails to make sure they were still active – another tool in the process. To reduce spam and protect our domain rating, we used a special IP through SendGrid for sending the emails.

Finally, the emails were ready to go. We started slowly, sending 50 to 100 emails a day across our five different domain names. We kept a close eye on the traffic and visitors, gradually increasing the number of emails while monitoring the health rating of each domain. If something didn’t look right, we adjusted and carried on.

A month in, we had a steady flow of 100 visitors daily from all over the world. Two months later, we hit 2000+ downloads—just from the cold email campaign. We’re still working out how to fully capitalize on this traffic, but if you’re wondering if it worked – the answer is a big yes.

So, don’t be put off by the idea of cold emails. We’re not claiming to be experts, but we figured it out ourselves and are happy to guide you through it. If you think your product has potential beyond your local area, cold emails could be a powerful tool. Flick us a message and we’ll help you out!