The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Cold Email Isn’t Dead. You’re Just Doing It Wrong⏐Ep. #253

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠ and join my new community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━Quick update before you dive in. We’re shifting our upload schedule from three times a week to two. Instead of Mo-Wed-Fri, we’ll now be posting every Tuesday and Friday. With all the new formats we’re producing, three a week became tough to keep at the level we want. This new cadence will help us keep the quality high.━I sat down with Will Cannon to break down how cold email really works today. Will has sent over one hundred million cold emails and grew one of his companies to a million dollars ARR almost entirely from it. We talk about how to write short emails that convert, how many follow ups you actually need, how to build a list, and what works right now for getting your first customer fast.Will shares his free playbooks and his socials at IAmWillCannon.comGet Will’s Free Cold Email Playbook: https://iamwillcannon.com/free-resources/the-cold-email-playbookEnjoy! ---Watch this on YouTube instead here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tkopod.co/p-yt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask me a question on or off the show here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-ask⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cjk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn about my company: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cof⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow me on Twitter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-x⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Free weekly business ideas newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-nl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Share this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-all⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Scrape small business data: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-os⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---

We got probably to our first 1 million ARR almost entirely through cold email. I started doing SEO. I started doing ads and other stuff, but that makes time. So I was like, let's just cold email. And that's what we did. I was cold emailing five plus million emails a month. So that's what, 60 million emails a year? You don't need to start with $50,000 emails.

You can start with 100 emails a month. You don't have a sequence of emails. You're throwing money in the trash. You're throwing your campaign in the trash. You think that cold email means I send you a cold email. No, that means you have a sequence of emails because 80, 90% of the time, you're going to generate more revenue on a follow-up than you. you are the initial email. People are busy. He's booking like five meetings a dead. So we're talking

100 meetings a month. He's crushing it. It's the one channel that's low barrier to entry, doesn't cost a lot to start. You can get your first customer in a day. It still works. Is it true that cold emailing is dead? I keep hearing that over and over. So I wanted to put that rumor to bed. Today I had my friend on. His name is Will Cannon. He started two software businesses from scratch that do millions of dollars a year. And he sends tens of thousands of cold emails per month. And he says, It is still alive and well. So today he gave us an absolute masterclass on all things cold emailing. How to stand out in the age of AI.

How many times to follow up, what your offer should be, et cetera. How to make sure your emails hit the inbox. How to scale a campaign. Please enjoy. People just think, oh, I need to call me a people. That means to send people an email. No, that means a 15 email sequence or a 10 email sequence. We found that 80, 75 plus percent of the revenue we generate from cold email is not from the first email.

It's neat because they're. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, of course. How many follow-ups? 10 to 15 email sequence. Yeah. Now what type of people like a, this is to like a real estate agent?

No, this is B2B. This is we're reaching out to SaaS companies, 50 to 500 employees, IT services, computer software, people that need B2B data, people that have sales teams. So yeah, I mean, this is another big part of cold email is you think that cold email means I send you a cold email. No, that means you have a sequence of emails because you're going to, you're going to to generate more revenue on normally 80, 90% of the time, you're going to generate more revenue on a follow-up than you are the initial email. People are busy. They get 100 cold emails a day

of, you know, a lot of these big companies. They don't reply to the first email. And so if you don't have a sequence of emails, you're throwing money in the trash cash, and you're throwing money in the trash cash cash in, because that campaign is not going to be nearly as successful as a full sequence of emails. That's, okay. So that's crazy to me because typically when I send cold emails, I see such a big drop off at like the third follow up that like the open rate is like so low and the response rate is abysmal. Like if they are responding, they're saying leave me alone that I just thought it was like diminishing returns like the difference between the fourth follow up and the 15th follow up is next to nothing.

What is what does like your timing of these followups look like? How long does it take you to send 15 emails? 45 to 60 days. So I would I mean look, every industry is different. Every campaign is different. So there's a lot of factors here. But I would say first email. The second email is three to five days later.

The next email is two to three days after that. And you're, yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're just peppering someone with emails. And it sounds to the normal person like they would have already replied on the first or second email. They don't want to be bothered with the eighth email. Yeah, but if you take, if you look at kind of cohorts or if you just run like, here's what I'll say. A, B, test everything. Go test this yourself. Can't, you know, have a thousand of these.

Divide 500, 500. Send one campaign and just send one cold email. And then on the other campaign, five to 10 touches a cold email, test it for yourself and see what works better. I can almost guarantee you in most cases on B2B cold emailing that you're going to have more revenue, meetings, everything from the campaign that has followers. I mean, this isn't a secret. Yeah, I agree. To me, the only difference is like, like clearly following up is everything. But what I'm talking about is the difference between three followups and 15.

Right. Yeah. I mean, look, again, it depends on the segment. we're selling into sales and marketing teams that they're sellers themselves. They get peppered all the time. They pepper people. So it's that, look, I may be a little bit different because of our space. That's why I say depending on the industry. But yeah, I mean, again, I would just say test it, right? Maybe three or five work better for you and you don't need the 15.

True. And that's easier and it's less volume we need to send. Go with that. I would test it. I would honestly test A, B, test it. But 100% for sure, one versus three or one. versus five in most all, almost all industries. No brain.

You're going to have a lot more success. And look, if you add in calling your LinkedIn or these other touches, here's another thing, too. I recommend warm, like, you know, warming up your camp prospects. And what I mean by this is if I have a list, if I have a small list of 100 or 500 people, I want to follow them all on LinkedIn. I want to comment on something they've said. I want to, I want to warm them up in a way where I can look familiar, like as a familiar face. when they hear from your for a familiar name or a familiar company name.

And with you warm up prior, and so that's why I wrote this guide on cold email. Like I've been cold emailing forever. I wrote like a guide like five or ten years ago. I got all these super. So I read the book Predictable Rebby Aaron Ross way back in the day. That's how Salesforce built zero to 100 million error through cold outbound. That book changed my life. I read that when it came out until Aaron Ross is the one who wrote.

So I read that book when it came out and I was like entrenched with cold email for a long time. And eventually I reached out to him and a bunch of other people and wrote a guide on cold email, like the ultimate full-mail playbook way back in the day. This was like four or five years ago. And then more recently, I revised that. I was like, hey, you know what, let me take everything I've been learned by cold email and what's going on today at 2025 coming up on 2026. And let me write a whole playbook on how to do cold email A to Z, the warm up and all that stuff is in

there. So I kind of wrote a guide on it. I wrote a guide on it. Let's link to it for sure. Yeah, that's like to it for sure. That's my playbook A to Z on cold email and how to do it right. Um, yeah. So if your sequence is 10 to 15 emails and it's 45 to 60 days, then are you averaging like three to six

days between each email or is it like first few or like every two days. And then after that, it's like once a week. It does space out later. Yeah. It's, it's yeah. You space it out more as you go. 100%. Yeah.

You're touching them more often initially first email three days later, second email three, four days later, second email. And then eventually it's a week or you're spending. And then, you know, like there's breakup emails. There's a lot of tactics. some people use. That's been around forever. And the thing is people kind of, people in our space, some people, some, some, some, some industries don't know because we've, we help people call email campaigns.

Some industries, you can still use breakup emails. You can still use, hey, I hope you appreciate my professional persistence, but blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, now if I see that, I know that's a cold email. I know you're not, you know, so, but like, so things have got more sophisticated, but there's still a way to do cold email, right? And there's still a way to make a lot of money with your own email. We're still doing it today. Yeah. Now, how many of these followups are you just saying like, hey, just checking in here. Hey, just following up versus. like, you know, two to eight sentences worth of stuff.

I like short. I like short. Yeah. Like, hey. Always. I like any interest question mark. I don't, I don't love bumping this to the top or certain things I don't love. Again, it depends on the industry.

It depends on who you're targeting. But I love short stuff. I love just, bump it right up and see, see what happens. I mean, it's, if you send eight sentences in a follow-up email, I mean, there's almost no chance. Can nobody read that. Did, did you happen to see my tweet about the cold email I got this morning? No, I didn't. Let me see it.

Okay. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. So this was, this made me really think twice. Like, this is very curious. My team forwarded this to me. They thought it was real. It says, dear Chris, I hope this message finds you well. In 1929, my grandfather founded standard publishing with a clear purpose to preserve the voices of Americans and Christians around the world. It is with deep regret that I share we are going out of business. We simply can't keep up with the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence and the cost-cutting measures our peers have embraced. For nearly a century, we have remained committed to creating our books by hand,

MDASH, writing from the heart, honoring every story, and staying true to the values my grandfather built this company upon. Chris, if it's not too much to ask, I would like to personally invite you to schedule a moment with our team and allow us to prepare a free sample chapter for you. As we close our doors, we want to go out by serving one last time, M-Dash, offering our work freely so that my grandfather's spirit of generosity can be remembered. felt by many. So the domain that it was sent from is non-existent. The person in the signature is non-existent. The business is non-existent. It's all fake. It's like this is your standard like going

out of business sale that you see on retail stores. They've been going out of business for a decade, right? Because it works. People think they're getting a deal. What do you think about this? Like it's unethical. They're clearly lying. Like there's a play here. No one's going out of business. They aren't who they say there. I'm not suggesting anyone do this. But what can we learn from something like this? Or what do you find interesting about? I mean, first of all, hey, dear Chris, that automatically screams cold emails, screams, you know, they're not American. Not that you have to be American to say cold emails, right, right, right, from everywhere. But I'm just like it just screams like this is an advertisement of some sort and trying to sell you something. Yeah, I mean, look,

you need cold emails. Look, here's what I'll say. So I have a friend that's a certified financial plan and he's crushing it on cold emails in a very specific way. And this is kind of what this reminds me. It's like, like, we're not going to go down the battle. But he cold emails teachers. So he's a certified financial planner, works for a big company. He called emails teachers because his company has a relationship with some of these school districts and he can allow them to move their book of business over to him. He emails a very specific segment teachers who don't get a lot of cold emails with a very specific message, hiding them to cite basically in some ways, letting them know like, hey, like I work in connection with your school district,

but the blah, blah school districts, it's personalized and, you know, invites them to a call. And he is absolutely crushing. It's one of the best cold email campaigns I've ever seen. And part of the reason, I think, is because of the segment, teachers don't get a lot of cold mills. There's nothing to too much to sell teachers versus B2B stuff, right? So he's sending messages in a specific way because he has a specific relationship. and he's getting on his cold email campaign like he's booking like five meetings a day so we're talking

and i mean he's sending weekends too but let's we're gonna you know we're gonna call it you know 20 100 meetings a month ish plus right obviously no you know there's some no call no shows like but he's crushing it because he found a very specific demographic people that don't get a lot of cold emails and he's sending the right message to them yeah and he's absolutely crushing it so this kind of reminds me of like not this because this is good but like it reminds me of going after an audience that isn't getting hit really hard with the right messaging yeah and absolutely crushing it yeah and they're trying to tug on your heartstrings right right yeah right right I mean this don't tell me you reply to this no I've tweeted about it and then someone responded and said I just

got this today as well and it was the same email but from a different URL different domain everything I think I'm going to respond just to see where it goes because I love doing that. Like I just love seeing what the funnel looks like, you know? Right. I mean, what is there finally saying it's going to give it for free? There's obviously some, there's some catch there, right? It's probably like a ghost writing service. They're using AI, which is funny because they're saying the AI is putting them out of business.

They're using AI to write books because do, publishing.com is like a hundred and something million dollar business. Like there's a lot of money to be made in books. Have you wrote a book yet? No, but I'm working on it. I'm about saying. That's a next step, right? You build a personal brand.

Everyone's done it, right? And then are you going to have Alex Ramosey $100 million launch? No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. Are you going to bulk? Have you studied his, the last launch he did? Uh-huh.

Yeah. Are you going to do a bulk thing like he did is like where it's like, hey, give out $6,000 worth of books to all your friends and family. And you get in my workshop, my webinar, my this, my that. I don't know. Probably not. It just seems like a lot of work that I don't want to do. It's probably.

It's worth it. I mean, it's clearly worth it. And he also, before the launch for however many months or a year or something, ran a bunch about, like he, you know, he built the funnel up to this big launch event. Something, something, I guess anyone that's trying to build a personal brand or launch a book can take pieces from that and learn from to help make their launch more successful. Yeah. So I work with like over 100 people right now that are trying to start AI automation agencies. If you were doing a cold email campaign as a brand new.

AI automation agency owner, right? Looking for small to medium-sized businesses to charge like an upfront two to five grand to like audit their business or solve a problem and then an ongoing like $500 to $1,500 a month to maintain that thing. What would your email strategy, cold email strategy look like for an offer like that? Yeah. I mean, look, it's all dependent on the industry, right? I mean, you know, like I said, you're going to have, this is another thing too.

Like, I think cold email can work and does work, but it doesn't always work because there's some industries and some spaces and some companies that don't have the right offer where it's going to be a lot tougher. In general, my strategy, and this is part of my playbook, is build a small list of, first of all, figure out who your ICP is. People don't even have that nail down. Describe to people what an ICP is. Yeah, an ICP is your ideal customer persona. And this is like who you're selling to. And I think you should be very specific about who you're selling to. If you're like, hey, I sell to anyone, I sell to SaaS.

Anyone that has a SaaS company, I sell to. No, no, no, no, no. I sell to SaaS companies that have 50 to 500 employees that have outbound sales teams that that use XYZ software. Like, you know, narrow it down as much as you can, first of all. So that's kind of step at one. Yeah. Well, for example, one of the guys that I know, he sells basically a tracking system for

auto body and collision repair shops that have over $40,000 in revenue per month. So basically when a customer brings in their car, he sells a service, a software where the customer can know the status of their order at any given time. And it's just high level. He's just selling white labeled high level. But like that is his ICP. Autobody collision repair places $40,000 a month at least in revenue, that one product. And he's crushing it. Nationwide. Yeah. Yeah. You mean, this is a perfect example. He started in Georgia. But, Now he's nationwide. Yeah.

Okay. And is he doing cold email, cold call? Is he, is he going person? How is he getting business? He's doing, he's using Facebook ads, actually. Beautiful. Right. I mean, look, this is a perfect example where you can, I would use cold email for this as well.

Facebook ads, obviously, Facebook ads, if you can get your rest of where you need to be, like push that as a channel. This is another lesson too for entrepreneurs that are building anything, especially the ones you said you've worked with a bunch that are studied AI agencies is a lot of people will say, dive deep on one channel, like say like, hey, Facebook ads is working. I don't need cold email. I don't need sales team. I don't need SEO. I don't need any of these things.

I'm going to focus here. I actually, from my experience, I give the opposite advice. I say if you have one channel that's working great and if you can double down on it, great. But don't let one channel be your sole source of revenue for your business.

If I would put some percentage of my time, for example, for that person, on focusing on working on other channels. Because again, and I've seen it happen time and time again, things change. You might be crushing with Facebook ads today. And if you're putting all your eggs in that basket and I'm telling you, things may not change.

But if things change and if your RASCO is negative and you're screwed and you haven't put any effort at time into building a brand by using all these other channels, you're going to be screwed. Your business is going to be screwed. Your revenue is going to be screwed. So I would focus on adding other customer acquisition channels one by one. And so like that's what I've done with my business says. I've got burned on that in the past.

I was ranking number one for all these. phrases and crush you with SEO. We were doing great high SEO, one of my first companies. Boom. Google algorithm update comes overnight. No more revenue. Like I've seen it happen. So it's like, but if you diversify your channels and you're building a mini brand, which is kind of like what updates that it gives Zoom info. We're going to have a mini brand. We're not big. We're not a billion dollar company. But when people look for B2B data and they ask chat to BT and they go on Google over Zoom info alternatives and da-da-da-da-da. They're going to see uplead there. And they're okay, who's up lead. So like build a mini brand, use a bunch of different channels. And eventually people will go

directly to you or just know you. Name recognition is so important. If they know this is, I need B2B data. Right now they just think about Zoom info. If they think, oh, Uplied as well, boom. So I think that's part of it. And that's what I would recommend. Like for this person, perfect example of an area where auto body shops or auto dealers,

they don't get hit with a lot of cool emails, right? So it's a perfect, it's a perfect segue into like, hey, you can go into Uplee. I can build a list of all these auto body shops. I can filter my redneck and filter my other things. I can reach out to the owners or the manager, whoever it is. and boom, I can build out a sequence and cold email campaign. I can almost guarantee I could run that type of a campaign and I can have success with that type of campaign. So I think that's a lesson for any of those.

But it would be interesting to ask you, how are those companies doing? Because I see a lot of talk about a lot of, you know, the next wave is building kind of these AI agencies helping small, medium, size of businesses. Yeah. I mean, they're doing great. There's 800,000 consultants in the United States right now. And I just wonder in 10 years, how many will there be? and how many of those will just be AI slash automation consultants, right?

Right. Yeah. There's 400 million small business owners in the world. Basically, they've been polls. And like 80% of them know that they need to be using AI and like 5% of them are using AI. So there's just massive disconnect. And it doesn't matter like how simple the tool is, like how easily you can build a website or an app with one prompt.

It doesn't matter. People will always need a job to be done. You know, like my vacuum is super easy to use. I can use it. I still have a cleaner. Come and use it because I have a job that needs to be done. And I'm willing to pay someone for it, you know? So that's my analogy.

Yeah, 100%. I see that there's a huge market price, especially because if you look at the demographics and the ages of a lot of these small meetings and business owners, like trying to get my mom to use chat GPT. I'm telling her how, you know, like, hey, like you can just, you don't need to go to Google anymore. Mom, you can go to chat GPT and she, you know, like convincing these people. But if you come in and you say, I have XYZ service done for you and I can help you

with XYZ as part of to help you grow your business, to help you automate things to help you save time and save money. Like, you know, it's a no brainer for a couple hundred bucks a month for like you said, millions of small businesses. Yeah. I'll give your audience the exact pitch we use. And this could be helpful, right? So it was the subject line was, hey first name.

So hey, Chris, right? It was, I found you on LinkedIn and I thought this could be a value to you. So trying to say like we're trying to have a, uh, they don't want to go crazy on personalization on first time, but something that felt personal. So, hey, found our link. I thought this could be a value to you. We built a tool called up lead. It's like Zoom info, but with real-time email verification and we're really affordable. So we're saying, hey, we built a tool called up lead. It's like Zoom info. So we're referencing a competitor that they know about. And then we're saying, here's our differentiator. We have real-time email verification. So upon download,

we verify emails in real-time, but most people don't. Most of their companies do bulk 90 days or whatever that is. And we're really affordable. We're less expensive. And we're doing what they're doing, but we're doing a little bit better. And then we said, so the call to action was, are you, so it's two called actions. One, we tested a couple,

but one was, are you open to trying out of no cost? And the other one was, can I send you 50 free leads? It's like, it's like this Alice for Moses book, a million dollar offers. A call to action so that you feel stupid saying no.

This was like, hey, I built a tool. It's called up lead. I'll give you free leave that match your ICP. Like, do you want some free leads?

And it was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So they give them a little taste. We get them in the app, give them a little taste. And then if they like what they see, they want more and they subscribe. So that was kind of the, that's how we kind of start building out. We got probably to our first one million AAR almost entirely through cold email.

I started doing SEO. I started doing ads and other stuff, but that takes time. So I was like, let's just cold email. And that's what we did. Yeah. That is beautiful. What is your cold email stack today and what was it back then? Yeah.

Back then it was Gmail. We used some tools at the time. But it was just like we're just buttoning stuff up together and we weren't going crazy on it because we were just doing more targeted campaigns versus bulk, which I've done in the past, a lot of bulk stuff. And now we use, so we have outreach. So outreach, it's a sales engagement tools. We have outreach.

We have sales finity, which is a dialer, a parallel dialer. Because now we're being multi-execor. We're doing LinkedIn. It's like multi-line dialing. Yeah, parallel dollar, exactly. Dial five, six lines at once. It connects. So you just basically save a lot of time versus having a manual hand out.

Yeah, yeah, it's parallel dialer. There's a bunch of them. There's a lot of them. Charles, there's a bunch of them. But yeah, so we use kind of all the, and then obviously we use up leave for the data. build our list and up lead. So we have intent signals and up lead.

So we know where there's kind of surging buyer intent for specific topics or specific competitors. So we'll build out a bunch of campaigns. We'll build out one around competitors. We'll build around surging intent or build out a run around. They just hired a new VP or got funding or certain. Put off all these triggers. Send them into our systems.

And then we'll do a multi-touch across all those. Man. Now, are you still doing cold emails today to grow? Yeah. Yeah. We're still doing cold emails today. I mean, obviously it's a bit. Now it's like one piece in, you know, there's SEO.

there's ads, there's a bunch of partners, there's an affiliate to a bunch of other things. But yeah, 100% we're still doing it because it still works. And it's like it's the one channel that's like there's low barrier to entry. It doesn't cost a lot to start. You can get your first customer in a day. It's like I 100% recommend cold. I mean, look, it takes a lot to do a cold email right.

And if you need help with that, like reach out to me. I'll help you. But like if you want to do cold email and you do it right and you don't need to bulk, you can do it at a small scale. You can build a list of 100, 200 people to start with. And if you send emails at the, the right time with the right message to the right person, your chances are six sets are going to be much higher. Is timing a huge factor for you? Because I feel like it depends on the industry.

And I used to really optimize for time of day and day of week. And I don't know. It just, even for maybe just for my newsletter, but I just learned it doesn't matter as much as I thought it used to. Yeah, I think newsletter is different than cold email. Cold email obviously depends, right? B2B cold email is different from something else cold email. So B2B cold email. Yes, we found that certain days or times usually work better. But it's all. It's not always the case because we've seen Fridays crush it and then we've seen Fridays, you know, you know, be the worst day. So we, we like to send middle of, you know, like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10 a M.PSD, like, you know, middle a day, late morning or early afternoon

in middle of the week. But we've done some campaigns on weekends that have done well, but usually those stuff. So I guess it just depends. But yeah, 100%. Always be testing. How many cold emails are you sending per day? And how many were you sending at your peak? We're sending right now about, I think, 40 or 50,000 per month. Okay. At our peak, I mean, she, I was sending millions per month back. I've sent probably over 100 million, 40 years. I was sending, that was just crazy, right?

So when I was cold emailing loan officers and realtors, I think the entire, I think, so I was, I had a list of probably, I want to say a list of a million people when it added up all the realtors, all the loan officers, everyone in and around the space that was emailing to try to recruit. And I was sending that email and I was sending follow-ups at that email. So there was probably a few years when I was doing cold email for a loan stuff. where I was cold emailing, you know, I don't know, five plus million emails a month. So that's what, 60 million emails a year.

That was way back in the day. So yeah, I've sent a ton of cold emails. But what I found is volume, you know, now you can't, you can't deliver tens of millions emails now like you can't before. You could before. What do you recommend if people want to send 30,000 a month like G Suite, multiple accounts, different domains in case you get flagged, like proxies or 20 of it? Yeah, you need, you need domain.

Obviously, like for us, you need a, you obviously want dot coms. You want them to be short. So try up, get up, lead this. You know, if you're going to send, let's say you're going to send, let's say something like what we're doing. Let's say around 50,000 in months. You're going to need hundreds of domains, probably two to 400 domains. Each domain sends 20 to 50 emails a day.

Like so, yeah, so small volume, but a lot of domains. You need to have your infrastructure set up. You know, we're doing some custom stuff. You know, people can use instantly. They can use lemless. they can use smartly. There's a ton of tools to do it. But you've got to watch your domain reputation.

You got to warm up your domains. Deliverability is a lot harder. Things are changing all the time. So if you're not on top of it or you don't have someone that helps you that's on top of it, it's not going to be easy. So it's not good enough to have like, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, but look, if you want to start, you don't need to start with 50,000 emails.

You can start with 100 emails a month. You can start with five or 10 domains and you can do it through a mail merge through Gmail or you can use one of these tools to do it. And you don't need to go crazy to start with. I think it's if you can find, you know, if you know who your target market is, you have the right offer and the right message. I like short emails. I like plain text.

I like, you know, 100%. No links. One is like, here's how I found you why I'm reaching out. Here's what I do. Why it's different. How I can help you. Here's the value to you. And then a call to action so good.

It's hard to say no. So can I give you something for free? Like, you know, I had, I just started on YouTube. Okay. And this is a story around cold email, right? And so I'm like, hey, I'm in the market for an editor. I'm in the micrature. A thumbnail designer. I'm in the market for all these people that I'm just getting started.

I had someone reach out to me and said, we're done for you, email agency. We write your script. We help with thumbnails. We help with editing. We help with everything. And you pay a flat monthly fee. Here's who we help. That's exactly like you. And here's how their channels are crushing it. Let let us give you one month of free service. We're going to write your scripts for a month. We're going to edit your videos for a month. We're going to create your thumbnails for a month. We'll do everything for free. You just have to record, what you're already doing now. And if it works, and if you get a better, more views and more clicks and more everything from your video, from the videos that we do, then we'll talk about the price. And that was an offer so good. I couldn't say no. And now I'm testing up that agency. Yeah, because I'm like, I'm already doing this. And I'm paying an editor, a thumbnail designer and all of people. Yeah. I'll, I'll take your office. That's a way to get, it was the right timing because I was in market. It was the right message to the right person. I'm the buyer. I'm the decision maker. And it was the right offer. If it was all that, but it wasn't the right offer. If they said it's $5 a month, $2, whatever they said.

I said, no, I don't know. You from Adam. I'm just going to do any of my wealth, figure it out on my own. Like, they had the right offer at the right time. And boom, I'm testing up their service. And if it works, I'm paying them. Yeah. That's it.

You know, it's funny. Sometimes we'll spend hours like scraping leads or learning how to really scale our cold emailing. When if we just spent those same hours doing really deep research on like 10 targets, like you in this case, those 10 emails will be so much more effective than 10,000 emails, right? Because they knew the niche. of your channel that you're already recording, like they knew a lot about you. It still might have been automated, but it was, you know, it was automated with a ton of

research, a ton of personalization, right? 100%. Anything else you want to say about cold emailing, about how to be successful in cold emailing today? Yeah. I mean, look, there's a lot of factors that go into successful cold email, deliverability, messaging, timing, you know, there's so many factors that go into it, the data itself, the leads.

Are you contacting the right people? So what I would say is right message, right person, right? time, narrow your list. You don't need to blast out millions of emails anymore. Narrow your list, focus on the right message, right person at the right time. If you can get signals, which is what I believe provides and other companies do, you can get signals on who to target at the right time and you send them the right message, your chances of success are going to be much higher. And so in short, that's how to do cold email right. A lot easier said than done, but if you need help with it, that's what me and my team do. Well, you're the ban. Where can people

find you if they want to find you? Yeah. So I just started to YouTube channel, you can push Will Cannon or it's I. We'll collab. We'll do a collab link on that. Perfect. We'll do a collab link on that. I build my personal brand website. I am willcanon. com. Built that. I have all my playbooks there completely free. So I wrote a playbook on SEO. I wrote a playbook on cold email. I wrote a playbook on everything. And it's not just like a Chad GPT written playbook. This is like all my 20 plus years of experience building out all these businesses. I put everything I know into these playbooks and they're completely free. Not selling them. You have to give your email to download them and I'll put you on my list. But

not selling them, getting them away completely free, and go check me out. I am Will Cannon. Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm everywhere. And we can put some links to that. And yeah, hopefully people got value and I appreciate you having you on, Chris. Absolutely.

Thanks, man.