How many Indies do cold outreach?
Insight from IndieHackers podcast:
"How many indiehackers do cold outreach?"🤔
Common sense:
Most indies work in their stealth caves.🐱👤
Many successful entrepreneurs:
"Cold outreach essential!"📞💌
Can any business be successful without cold outreach?
What do you think?
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We've tried it a couple of times and it's never worked for us.
Not to say it won't work for some businesses, though.
You tried cold outreach several times?
How often?
How long?
How many people?
Which ways?
Over the course of the company about 4 separate occasions, the longest experiment running for 2 months sending emails to around 2,000 people. Zero sign-ups.
What was your conclusion?
And do you still run the same company (profitably)?
Well we stopped doing it. Spent our time on other efforts. I'm not saying cold email will never work, but it never worked for us as an email marketing platform. I can see it working better in other spaces, such as sourcing interviews or people for your Podcast – there's a lot more give than take in those scenarios.
We still run the same company, it does a few million USD in ARR and continues to grow. Proudly bootstrapped and profitable. We just don't do any sales or cold email.
Just curious to know if cold email did not work for you then how did you get your first 10 or 20 or 100 users?
We launched on Reddit, as a completely free product. That brought in around 2,000 users – then we later monetised it and adding pricing. Slowly grew through a combination of converting some of those users, word of mouth and posts on Quora.
Thank your for sharing these insights!
I am happy that you succeed anyway.
And I wouldn't limit cold outreach to emails.
From my point of view there is a lot of power in DM's on social platforms and phone calls as well.
But even just talking to people personally on the right events can have a huge effect!
Cold outreach is definitely a powerful technique when done right.
How to do it right ??, Any resources?
Agreed!
Nevertheless very few indie hackers make use of (cold) outreach at all.
And even fewer do it consistently.
Did you try it yourself already?
Most people don't talk about it too much as it's not as cool as marketing tricks. But yes, cold outreach works really well. I guess the exception is B2C products, but even then it can work to get your first few customers and validate ideas.
I've written a few blogpost about this and a guide on how to validate ideas and get your first customers. Check it out if you're interested in getting started / better at cold outreach: https://blog.wobaka.com/how-to-validate-ideas-and-get-your-first-customers/
Thank you for pointing out potential differences between B2B and B2C, Fredrik!
I also have the feeling that cold reach may work better for B2B since businesses are rather willing to invest in products which save them time or increase their revenue.
Therefore these are two very valuable problems to solve (which can be done with numerous products in endless niches🙌).
Do you focus mostly on email outreach or do you also reach out to people personally?
Reach out to people personally, on email :).
I think all outreach should be personal and thoughtful. Don't spam, it doesn't work.
Oh yes, I rather wanted to write manually instead of personally.
And I agree very much that there's a lot of value in individual 1:1 communication.
This is the way to go from my point of view - no matter if we are talking about email, phone or social media.
Agree! Yeah, I spend time writing personal emails, but then I schedule automated follow-ups. They're also personal, but automating/scheduling the sending helps a lot since keeping track of all outreach becomes a huge mess unless you have a system for it.
Disclaimer: I'm also founder of Wobaka, CRM and cold email SaaS :).
For what do you use such emails mainly?
To get customers, partners or collaborations?
Well, I run a few newsletters so I contact people who I think would be interesting in sponsoring. I also write to potential customers and follow up with contacts and people who cancelled their subscription.
For B2C do you think social media will be more effective compared to cold emails?
Interesting question.
I think you are right.
Building rather personal connections on Twitter or so is probably more effective with B2C.
Did you try it?
Only thing makes me successful is cold outreach! Because I am building nureply.com 😂
Jokes aside, I have sent more than 50k emails so far and closed a lot of deals and most recent was yesterday night!
I know most of the indie hackers think it is spammy but it doesn't have to be. You are sending those emails for real business interest and if your tool is helpful, they solve their problem and you earned a customer!
There are hundreds of use cases for cold outreach. Even for idea validation!
Let me know if you have any questions and you can write me on the live chat at Nureply's website!
How long does it take on average before getting a reply? And how many never replied?
It depends on how good your copy and target is. But I can say most of the replies comes after the first follow up, which is around day 4 or 5.
How many people reply certainly depends on the people you message and on the general topic.
I know that it's very hard to plan and conduct proper, scalable email outreach to thousands of emails without getting blacklisted - which means you'll always just be in peoples junk.
But as far as I know nureply.com has very good systems, which ensure that this doesn't happen - so that it helps you to do email marketing campaigns at scale.
This is pretty awesome, Onur. How did you gather so many email ids?
And, was it generally sending newsletters about your product?
There are public data which you can scrape business databases you can find information.
It is not a newsletter at all. This is directly targeted email like:
"Hey Sneha,
Saw your tool at IndieHackers and it is looking awesome but seems like you don't have enough traction for it.
Do you need help for reaching more potential customers? I can help you with that!"
This is overly simplified example but you got the point :)
I'm surprised your mailserver hasn't shut you down, Mailchimp and similar have policies against that type of email gathering.
What's your rate of getting marked as spam?
Because it is different for all recipients and we are not spamming.
It is really different than regular newsletters.
which you can scrape business databases you can find information. That's definitely on the spectrum. Reputable mailservers require stating where your list came from in their TOS. If you're following CAN-SPAM rules at least (your physical address+opt-out link) and providing the newsletter as the cold email for value it should cut down on spam flagging by recipients.
Onurs business is basically about email marketing.
He helps businesses to setup their email marketing campaigns as far as I know.👌
This is why it fits here perfectly!🙌
It's something which is of huge value because it's useful for people - Onur simply makes money by helping people to make money!
This is probably the reason why Onur is comparatively successful as an indie hacker.
He understood that providing either monetary value or value in terms of time are the two most valuable actions around which you can build a business!
However there are tons of ways to do cold outreach!
Any further ideas?😁
That is so true, Samuel. Adding value to even one person's business or personal life goals is what will help make a business worthwhile. Value in terms of time or money is so accurately stated.
Yes, cold outreach has no playbook. I recall when I was targeting college students for an idea, I attended campus tours of schools in New York to meet students :)
Exactly!
You see.
That's the magic: You simply get creative!
If you really want to succeed and if you really put in the required work, cold outreach can get you skyrocket!
This is really cool Onur!
I am happy that I have the chance to talk about this with you soon!🤗
Since I am actually amazed by the great opportunities after I realized that this is not only a Gary Vee thing - but that reaching out consistently seems just to be the freaking essence of every successful business story!
The most recent success story through cold outreach which I've heard is the one from @dashbarkhuss'
I believe cold outreach (consistently) is one of the most underrated actions in any business - especially among indie hackers!
Been cold emailing and calling for almost a month now. Got several conversations going- but not a lot beyond that yet. Although I don't love it, it definitely feels like one of the most productive ways to use my time at this stage.
Cold calling? How do you get contact number? From contact Us page? But many websites only have support email on that page. Any tool which you are using for contact number?
My target market is churches, so their numbers are very accessible
This is an interesting insight!
You don't like it but it still feels productive - how come?
It is a repetitive task, and it can be discouraging to reach out to so many people in a day and then hear nothing back. But I know it will be rewarding in the long term!
I really encourage you to keep it up!
If your product is great, you'll certainly succeed that way.
Doing this tedious work will pay off in the long run.
You have a huge advantage compared to many other indies and businesses, because cold outreach is tedious work - therefore only few people do it.
But those who do are even more successful!
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
We are currently growing https://twitter.com/9_by_16 through cold outreach only.
There is no other way to target niche specific YouTubers based in US.
And we are currently closing at 4% without a call.
Cool!
Sounds like you have a fitting product for that niche!
How do you contact these YouTubers?
I have a person in my team that finds their email and all other social channels manually.
Thank you for the insight!
From my experience it's a lot of work to find these contact details manually.
So I think you are doing a good job by using them👌
It can be pretty addicting when it actually works. 😅
I think some of the most pivotal points in my career have cold outreach at their roots. I got to meet amazing advisors and partners through outreach.
I also got some clients, which is a plus.
Btw, I've shared my quick hack for outreach here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/ive-hacked-outreach-here-s-my-trick-for-reaching-out-to-cool-companies-895cf2dba7
Thank you so much for sharing your experience Heleana!🤗
Exactly, if it works that's simply great!
If you really see that people are interested in whatever you do, you just get a motivational boost!
This has two advantages:
I tried but it didn't work for me.
When you say did not work can you please share how many emails you sent?
Thank you for sharing your experience Carlos!
I am curious how and how long you did cold outreach?
And did you have a clear target group?
I do. I think a lot of cold outreach critique comes from people that have strong opinions about stuff they're too scared to do.
Also, when people say cold outreach doesn't work, it's usually coming from engineering types that look at marketing with disdain and then wonder why it doesn't work.
The single most important thing with cold outreach is something everyone skips... your positioning.
Which very specific problem do you solve for what very specific crowd. After that, you wanna make sure that your solution is in the ballpark with a price point that's either lower than the value gained or lower than the cost of leaving the problem unsolved.
Once you have all those elements, the second to last step it to simply start telling your target segment in your target market. With the final step being, making that clear message a bit sexier. See this.
P.S. agree with some other commenters that it doesn't work for everyone. (Which is how marketing works. Tactics are tools! Product Hunt is not a marketing strategy, it's a marketing tactic. That being said, I suspect that for a good 50+% of people that say it didn't work, I could get it to work well if I got the things listed above in order.)
P.P.S. This is kind of implied in the original answer but just for completeness' sake: really get clear on WHO you're serving. If you're sending emails out willy-nilly you can't be surprised at a lack of results. You don't sell your amazing beef burgers at a vegan conference.
"Which very specific problem do you solve for what very specific crowd."🙌
This is such a greatly elaborate comment RJ!
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your sophisticated and analytical point of view!
I also feel that many indies are simply scared to do cold outreach.
That's why they don't do it.
And I also see a clear lack of solutions to relevant problems - as you describe.
Hence many people focus way to little on a certain target group.
So they wouldn't even know to whom they could sell their product.
Appreciate the kind words. Yup, I wrote about star problems here: https://www.younglingresearch.com/essays/starproblem
This gives you a model to think through real vs imagined problems and troubleshoot if people aren’t buying.
As to your point about cynical comments… a lot of it is the fox and the sour grapes.
Just like you shouldn’t take engineering advice from me (a marketer) don’t take marketing advice from engineers.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts again!
I agree that you should always be aware which kind of advice you take seriously from which kind of people!
This is also one big takeaway which @dashbarkhuss stressed during the interview which I will soon publish on my YouTube channel.👌
I've mixed feelings about cold-emails. People say it works wonders for them; but I'm going to try it for a few months.
I think it boils down to who you reach, and whether they are looking for your solution.
Exactly!
Cold outreach is very much about knowing your niche and your target customer.
But this should always be the basis - shouldn't it?
How do you expect to serve anyone with a business if not even you know for whom you develop a solution.
What's your strategy to get started with cold emailing?
I do 25 per day so I can still have time for other things.
125 per week
20 calls booked
Close 5 deals
That can generate between $15k and $30k depending on which offer they choose.
Cold outreach is really a numbers game.
Wow Chris!🙌
This is great!
Thank you for sharing your experience!
Where do you reach out?
Twitter and LinkedIn
The real win is having my podcast. I can bring most of my prospects on the show as guests. Then they're open to learning more and hearing about my offer.
This is of course a great advantage👌😁
So do you interview the same people who are your target group on a regular basis?
That's definitely part of the process. Some of the founders I get to work with now are incredible.
I've even built a system now to help founders be a guest on podcasts. After podcasting for 7 years, I'm dedicated to using it to help others.
Great!
How does this system work?
Become a star in your industry using podcast interviews.
This is a service I provide to founders.
Cool!
Sounds like a helpful marketing skill in 2022.👌
I am new as indie hacker. On average how may cold calls you guys make. Damn i tried 10 daily and its really frustrating thing to and the result is so far ahead. Any tips?
I think you are doing a great job.
From my point of view it makes sense to just make this a habit.
Maybe you don't even need 10 calls - depending on their length.
However, you shouldn't listen to me since I am not financially free.
What are your experiences so far?
In which niche to you operate & where do you find your prospects?
I actually have many campaigns running, using https://lagrowthmachine.com/ which is by far better than lemlist
How does it work for you so far?
And did you ever try to reach out manually - maybe even consistently over several weeks or months?
It's a proven pattern.
Thank you for the confirmation David!
Do you do cold outreach on a regular basis?
Yes, I tried to promote my website with cold outreach, but it didn't work very well.
I am curious how many emails you've send.
Do you have a number?
All my products got customers through cold reach, infact I built a tool to make my job easier https://birdsearch.carrd.co
It let me find leads on Twitter
So you got all your customers for your cold reach app via cold reach?🙌😁
For Bird search about 80% and for other products it is around 25-30%
Which other channels do you use for sales?
Twitter seem to be working consistently sometimes Slack communities
Cool.
How do you find relevant Slack communities?
I send hundreds of emails per day (lol)
How long have you been doing it so far?
And how is it going?
It's a brutal process. The hit rate is extremely low. But you do get gem responses every now and then. I think the moral is that you need to prepare yourself to be ignored.
(I've been doing it for months)
This sounds great overall if you ask me:
You don't just want to be prepared to be ignored.
But you also want to be prepared for success, right?
How do you prepare for people who respond?
When you approach the cold reach out process you are doing so under a subset of a greater strategy, e.g., are you looking for a specific customer, influencer, investor? You should have a general understanding of what success should look like and you should be prepared with "material" to follow up with..
However, as is often the case with Indiehacking, you are never presented the exact situation you expect...even with successful cases. I think it's always great to group opportunities in different buckets. A lot of the time it relates to preventing burnout. For example, if you get a positive response, but it requires you to do 50 hours of additional work...be very careful where you put your time...so don't move too quickly...I've even backlogged some of my most valuable responders...to see how they fit into a greater overall strategy. We're here to build semi-scalable businesses, not cater to the whims and desires of anyone and anyone who responds.
This is a very valuable addition!
Having clear and meaningful priorities is definitely part of the game!
What helps you to prioritize the right actions?
Cold outreach is something I'm specifically focused on. Here is a video call room dedicated to people prospecting with each other.
https://vibehut.io/rooms/62cb38b45e68680016292137
Even though there is a room dedicated to Prospecting. Vibehut.io, the entire platform, is designed to eliminate the need for cold outreach. Instead we favour allowing accounts to flag that they are "Free to talk". This functionality is in the bottom corner on the right sidebar.
If you're free to talk, others can initiate a call with you.
If anyone here would ever like to connect, chat about their startup or indie hacker journey, myself and hundreds of others on Vibehut would be happy too.
Btw, here is a dedicated room for Indie Hackers: https://vibehut.io/rooms/6304c25f8ac27200164bd65f
Thank you for sharing your resources, Chris.
I wonder how the platform intends to eliminate cold outreach?
How does it replace the action of calling or writing to someone who's you exact target customer?
Only people I see talk highly about cold reach-outs are the same people either selling a related course or services. For an indie, this should be considered as the last resort.
Why? They are simply creative people and its a terrible way for them to feel down. This is 2022, nobody wants to talk to a salesperson. People like to discover stuffs themselves and purchase when they think it makes sense for them.
Cold reach-out is not scalable and getting all the no's can induce mental trauma. Not to mention angry prospects shouting or replying back they will gonna file a case (!).
With an agile team of SDRs cold reach-out can be a thing as it works once in a while. But please don't suggest everyone needs to deeply research the prospect all the way to their personal life, make the mail funny, or offering values. Over the course of last few years, all these were tried and now overly saturated.
An indie should only consider cold reach-outs when everything else has been exhausted. Go out in the wild, may be write blog, try posting on social media regularly, network with people in a meaningful way. Unless you have raised a couple millions don't hear to all the cold reach-out nonsense.
Help your target users discover you organically. They should feel like they found you, not the vice-versa, and you are not tricking them to sell a crappy product/service.
Thank you for sharing your opinion Ash.
As far as I understand your points indies shouldn't do cold outreach, because
Having a business can lead to mental trauma?
Working a salaried job too... or being unemployed... or endless other incidences.
Is this really a reason not to do it?
Besides I wonder what you want to scale at the start of an indie business?
I understand that the additional work and rejection related to outreach is not what most indiehackers love.
And I wonder that people who do cold outreach are associated with courses and services.
This sounds rather like a feeling from personal experiences (which is okay, but shouldn't be regarded as only option from my point of view).
A similar feeling which I recently discovered is that those who say things like "Invest in yourself!" are often the people who sell some kind of educational material (in which one should of course invest😉).
The entire scenario would be different if there is a group of people working on a project vs an indie. Getting no's is part of the job for a sales team, but for an indie, it can ruin productive hours, the motivation.
There is simply no one size fits all approach. I do understand there are other schools of thought but indies need to be creative with their time.
Building in silos is the worst thing they can do. Its better to explore other ways to get words out in the world. Then only reach out to leads that previously responded with their content. They will certainly miss some opportunities where after 50 cold calls they would have gotten a Yes.
Promoting own thoughts to eventually sell a product is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this is how we discover new stuff. But there are so many noises and as indies we need to be selective with our options.
I absolutely agree with you Ash👌
Time is limited and you should know how to spend it wisely.
If you work on a creative projects, then it may certainly make sense to focus on the building and improvement part.
From my point this scenario is often the case when you build something very new and impressive which didn't find traction (yet).
A scenario where cold outreach makes more sense is probably when you build a very obvious and clear solution to a problem, where people are already ready to pay for a solution.
How do you stay focused on your creativity while still doing reasonable marketing personally?
We're in the process of trying to scale and systemize our cold email outreach after years of focussing on LinkedIn automation for our leads. So far we've gotten a few calls booked and one conversion from the channel so I think it's worth doing if you can reduce the amount of time needed and automate everything.
That being said, it's still a very low conversion rate from email to call booked. But it is also very low effort once it's automated 🤷🏻♂️
What do you think about phone outreach as an alternative?
Or personalized messages/emails?
Sounds like you are actually running a successful company.
What I observed from many successful entrepreneurs is that they focused very much on personal 1:1 outreach instead of automation.
Which is certainly laborious but paid of for them.
I don't like it but I gotta try. I am going to do warm emailing for https://writableai.com
How are you planning to start there?
Doing it right now and it is painful. I'm a believer that manual, well crafted, short messages can help to create your own luck though.
This is very relatable.
I think this is a huge struggle for many (if not most) indiehackers: Well crafted, individual outreach is simply tedious work!
Nevertheless, well done it can boost your business to the moon - as it did for numerous entrepreneurs in the past.
So I really encourage you to keep it up for a reasonable amount of time!
You got this!💪
I'm currently in the 100's mark sending cold Twitter DMs. I resisted it for a while but took the plunge and it's actually not that bad. It makes it worth it when, after 30 blank DMs you get a 'wow, that sounds awesome!' and you start a really good conversation.
Way to go! I feel the same - I was putting it off for too long and finally just gave it a shot.
From my point of view this is something which you can perfectly implement as a daily habit!
I doesn't take much time.
But it's absolutely tedious if you do it every day all day.
But why not just starting with 3 DM's, calls or emails per day?
If you succeed you can still increase this number to 10 or 20 per day.
In the end it doesn't take much time as a habit.
If you can keep this up for several weeks or months you'll achieve great results!
The most successful people I know are successful because they do exactly that!
Couldn't agree more! It feels tedious and spammy at first but if you make it fun and believe that you are genuinely building connections and learning from people/meeting cool people then there's really nothing to lose.
I make sure I respect and understand everyone's decision if they choose not to engage with me or respond to requests to check out my product and so on. Mutual respect and a real curiosity to connect make it worth it!
I agree!
I mean, if you sell crap then it's good if you feel spammy.
So that you quit soon.
But if you have something which really provides a lot of value to people, you'll soon recognize that people will just love you and you'll keep reaching out naturally - just because it becomes fun when you see that you really change peoples lives in a positive way!🤗
That's soo cool!
I believe that's the only way you can keep it up in the long run - or at least for a while until your business runs properly.
It's a great way to get started and to validate what you do if you ask me.
@dashbarkhuss did this too.
I've recently interviewed her and will publish the interview on YouTube soon (click here).
Any tips for not getting discouraged by the sheer volume of people you have to reach before ONE says yes?
It's hard to know whether it's the approach, the product, or simply a numbers game.
It's a numbers game the more you outreach the better the results.
Exactly.
That's why it makes perfect sense to reach out for a long period of time.
If you stay consistent and have a product, which really solves a relevant problem (hence makes customers money or saves them time), it's only a matter of time as you say.
Did you use outreach so far?
Every day, I am a freelancer and it's the most efficient way for me to get new clients.
I set a goal for every day and never miss my target whatever the excuse.
Then I am curious where and how your reach out?
And what's your daily goal?
We've tried several methods. So far best results with https://www.apollo.io/
Thank you for sharing what works for you.
How do you use them?
I see a bunch of lame excuses from devs who are afraid, and shy.
I have tried email, I have tried twitter, I have tried LinkedIn and so far the results have been really terrible. XD
I have published a podcast episode on sending 50 cold linkedin messages if you are interested in my experience.
Thank you for sharing your experience Tiago!
How long have you been consistent with the cold outreach?
How many messages did you send so far?
If you check out the thread you see that @csallen sent several hundreds of emails within a few weeks - his guest even several thousand.
And @dashbarkhuss whom I've interviewed recently (click here), also did cold outreach via Twitter for quite some time.
I have only tried it a couple of times but the results were so terrible that I quit XD
I understand.
Did you convert any customers?
not really
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