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Ask HN: Best cold email practices for MVP-stage startups?

8 points by michael45 ↗ HN
What have you found to work when sending cold emails to potential customers as a new, still incomplete product startup?

I've found that taking the more humble, "hey we're still developing it but we'd love for you to try it" to have more success on Reddit & Twitter.

We've been trying it on email but seems like it's not working. We're getting 30% open rate but no responses. We're going to test the more hard sell, value-prop based approach but I wanted to ask here to help further pinpoint if it's a messaging or lead-quality issue.

Thanks

7 comments

[ 11.5 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] thread
chiefalchemist
Where does your email list come from? Are they not willing to try it? Or are you trying to sell water to fish? Have you tried different copy? What about some sort of incentive (e.g., ".. And be entered to win a $50 gift card to...")?
michael45
Thanks for the response.

Our users are Youtubers so we manually collected emails of creators that fit the profile of our current users.

We're trying different copy as the post mentioned, going from humble to more salesy. We just sent another round of emails. It's too early to call it but our updated language does seem better.

Haven't tried incentives! Will test that later.

hnshatup
Stop spamming people.
dhruvkar
That's just noy how the world works.

Can't stop contacting people, just because you might offend them in some nebulous way.

maxisaurus
Aligned with the humble way. Have you tried the user research angle like "hey I'm building XXX, thought it might be useful for you because YYY. Would you be open to try it and give us your feedback"? I've been doing this for a dev tool for data analysts and works pretty well. Anyway keep trying and good luck, been there and it's not easy.
new2this
The reason that email is different than Reddit or Twitter is because you're interrupting the person's day. That means that if you're asking for something from them, people will disregard it. Try offering something valuable instead.

Your call to action should be along the lines of "we're working on solving X problem for people like you, and I'd love to show you what we've built so far. Maybe you'll find it useful".

If you do this, then schedule a 30 minute call where you have a 10-15 minute demo rehearsed that goes over the problem, and why your product exists. After your demo, you can open up into more discovery about their challenges or what they would want to see in your product.

I've built sales teams at startups, and it's a very different outreach process than my current BigCo- your process is more about education and being opinionated.

Email me if you want to chat more.