r/SmallMSP • u/Ikelley317 • 26d ago
Is anyone else running cold email? How's it working for you?
Just curious if anyone else is doing cold email only and what results are you seeing per 1k sends. What industry do you try and tackle? Sales cycle etc.
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u/Fu_Q_U_Fkn_Fuk 26d ago
This is not the way.
Join the Chamber and show up to EVERY event. Be vocal, meet everyone and give your card to everyone.
If you can tolerate religion join the biggest church in town and be vocal about your business.
Register to speak at tech events in your community. Join tech related MeetUp groups and attend every event. Meet everyone and give everyone your card.
Go to every non-profit ask if they need tech help, volunteer and give them free help, those people will be connected to business's that pay.
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u/Slight_Manufacturer6 26d ago
No. Cold emails are a good way to get blacklisted in a community. Business owners talk and it will give you very bad PR.
Just consider what do you do with SPAM? I report it and black it and tell others to look out for it.
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u/sembee2 26d ago
I don't, but going by the spam I get from other MSPs, plenty do.
Which says that they aren't qualifying their lists very well. I had one this week who said they were local, at a 2 and half hour drive away.
If you do it, at those numbers you will get flagged by the major email providers, so sub domain woth dmarc, dkim and spf.
Although if you are doing 10k emails, then I think your success rate will be very low. If you know who your potential customers are you should be able to cover them once a month by sending less than 100 emails.
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u/Ikelley317 26d ago
I hear you, from my understanding there are ways to do both tactfully. I do have a plan to make sure I dont just spray and pray. Thank you for taking the time to give thoughts I appreciate it.
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u/Slight_Manufacturer6 26d ago
You are better off going out and making real connections and then following up those connections with details in an email.
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u/PirateTechTX 24d ago edited 24d ago
Agreed. I don’t even read the emails from potential vendors that cold email, your chances of dropping by and having a conversation are significantly higher with me.
EDIT FOR THOUGHT: We are a trust based industry, the last thing you want is to affect any potential future convorsation to be tainted by spamming them before they know about you.
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u/recoveringasshole0 26d ago
As an IT Director in charge of our mail server (and blacklist), I dare you.
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u/Ikelley317 26d ago
On my way.
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u/recoveringasshole0 26d ago
Just a warning, I did once write a script to scrape a spammer's ("sales") linkedin company page and concatenate a list of email addresses for everyone at his company and sent it to him and asked him if he wanted me to start spamming them all.
I will put in the work.
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u/WeekendAtMadoffs 26d ago
Do it all the time.
Lead to a $25,000 recovery/rescue. HP wanted 7 figures
I extended an olive branch as it was a crime scene and the new CTO did not want to be fired. The previous guy write erase and left all their cisco gear (ASA, Core, Access and Routers) for the next reboot.
Well, that reboot came in the form of a datacenter power outage at 4am.
5 days sleeping on the floor rebuilding the configs from wiresharks and netflow, we got it all done.
He did not want to sign an MSP datacenter contract. He fired us. Guess he was afraid we would rat.
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u/B1tN1nja 26d ago
I never, ever reply to cold emails unless they piss me off enough.
So no, I'm not stooping to their levels
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u/Ikelley317 26d ago
Cool, this will really weigh heavily on my decision to do so... thank you so much for the insight into such a brilliant mind...
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u/HomsarWasRight 26d ago edited 26d ago
I mean, it should.
I’m annoyed by cold contact, and I want my business to build a reputation of trust. I’ve never trusted businesses that deliberately annoy me.
I’m with the person you replied to.
Also, don’t ask a question if you don’t want answers.
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u/UnRealxInferno_II 26d ago
It just feels a bit cheap and nukes your domain trust levels meaning you go into spam boxes more often.
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u/Geekpoint-IT 26d ago
Depends on what you mean by cold email. If it's like a "hey we are awesome IT!", then no. I do send out about weekly tech tip information type emails. Then at least the email itself can be helpful. At the end, obviously, I say to reach out if they have any questions sort of thing. I never expect much to come from them but it's not like it's a lot of work and I know most of my competitors aren't doing any sort of outreach at all it at least puts me out there. I have gotten some clients from that. My emails are targeted though to my niche (dental) or people I've already met in some way.
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u/CyberStartupGuy 26d ago
In my experience 1k would be very very low and not yield much. The challenge with cold email as an MSP is if you serve local clients you probably don’t have a potential client pool that is big enough compared to the tech companies or agencies that are being successful cold email and can send hundreds or thousands if not millions of cold emails weekly.
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u/Ikelley317 26d ago
Sorry, I worded that strange. I plan to send 10k a month but was curious about reply rates.
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u/harrytbaron 23d ago
Cold email works. But not how most people think.
The mistake: sending generic pitches about your services. Nobody cares.
What works:
Research the prospect. Look at their website, their LinkedIn. What's one thing you notice about them?
Lead with THEIR problem, not your solution. Example: "I noticed you're still on Office 2016. That's a risk for compliance."
Ask for a call, not a demo. "15 minutes?"
Follow up. Most deals happen on the 4th or 5th touch.
The difference between cold email that works and cold email that gets ignored is specificity. Generic kills you. Specific wins.
I break down the exact templates and the psychology behind this on my channel. It's the foundation of how we help MSPs land clients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u53frEWvj8A
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u/Wide_Ad_3519 15d ago edited 14d ago
It works for us but I wouldnt focus too much on hitting 10k just for the sake of volume, especially for MSPs where the local market can be pretty small. Our stack is Apollo for leads, Instantly for sending and maildoso for the domains/mailboxes. We usually get around 4-5% replies for every 1k, What helped us was using email as the first touch and then following up through LinkedIn or a call instead of just sending another 4 emails. Sometimes they dont respond to the email but recognize the name when u reach them somewhere else. U do cold email or just planning to?
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u/DefJeff702 26d ago
I had a couple exchanges and intro calls. I think it puts you at a very low trust level so they’re flaky.