Step-by-Step Guide: Craft Cold Email Campaigns That Secure Meetings with AI
Jan 7, 2024
How To Craft Cold Email Campaigns From Scratch That PRINT Meetings Using AI
Cold Email is competitive. Your favorite Guru’s seem to be getting results, but their high-level overviews don’t seem to be getting you the conversions you thought they would. Truth is, there’s no one-size fits all cookie cutter solution that’s going to allow you to print meetings. At Buzzlead we’re delivering INSANE results for our clients, so good that we’re actually booking 10-20+ meetings with enterprise companies on our first campaigns with some of our more recent clients.
We’ve figured out the process to speed up the new client learning curve by 3x, and I’ve simplified our process down to four key points that anyone can pick up and adapt to their business through this guide here.
This guide will contain use cases, tools we use, and video guides, along with what your outputs should look like. These are just a handful of the examples we’re utilizing for our business now but, this will continue to expand and grow.
So, if you like this content be sure to join our Skool community to stay ahead of the curve.
Here are the tools we’ll be utilizing in this guide:
**https://www.ghostwrite.rip/**
Here are the 4 steps needed to craft a killer campaign:
Build a LASER targeted lead list around best case studies
Crafting Offers/Compelling Scripts/Personalized Videos AT SCALE using AI
Cold Email Deliverability Checklist
Pitch and content ideas
We’re going to break down each of these 4 steps so you can plug them into your business and watch your conversion rates SKYROCKET.
Step 1: Build A LASER Targeted Lead List Around Best Case Studies
They may sound cliche, but at the end of the day the best way to get the highest conversion rates through cold email is by simply reaching out to RELEVANT prospects with the right message. You may think your copywriting is incredible, but if you’re reaching out to companies from the wrong industry, or prospects who don’t have a problem your solution can help them solve, your emails won’t make any sense. You need to reach out to a targeted audience, and paint the ideal outcome they can get from your solution by showcasing case studies of similar people you’ve helped with your solution.
Tools: Going to break these down by advanced tools and poor man’s workaround tools if you don’t quite have the budget
ADVANCED LOOKALIKE TOOL $$ - www.ocean.io
If you have the funds for it, Ocean is BY FAR the best tool for building a targeted list of companies identical to your best customers. You simply plug in 1,2, or 3 company websites, and ocean will use advanced search filters + AI to scrape the internet and pull as many identical companies out there in the market. They offer contact emails as well, but I’m using the tool to find lookalike COMPANIES, then enriching those companies with email address in other tools like Apollo.io
Here’s an overview of Ocean.io. I export the company URL’s, and enrich those with people’s emails on Apollo.
https://www.loom.com/share/3e165a05e40041fc857c9306db912361
Poor Man’s Lookalike Workaround: Using Apollo.io or really any b2b list building tool out there, you can plug in 5-10 of your best customers, or ideal companies you’d like to work with. You’ll want to find the commonalities across the industry, keywords, and other filters and use those to plug into your search when building a lead list from scratch. This will give you a targeted list, it’s just a little more effort and the data won’t be perfect.
https://www.loom.com/share/91b147cc1efd42299cefb4c580f33597
Once you’ve got your lead lists, run them through MillionVerifier.com or another email verification tool so you’re only reaching out to valid contacts. For contacts that come back as “catch-all”, or “risky”, run through those a catch-all validation tool like scrubby.io to make sure all the emails you plug in are safe for sending.
Step 2: Crafting Offers/Compelling Scripts/Personalized Videos AT SCALE using AI
Now that you’ve built out a targeted lead list, you’re going to want to do some market research, find out these prospects biggest challenges that you know your company can solve. We’re going to walk through a couple of AI tools that can help you with the process so your copywriting comes easier and it’s EXTREMELY relevant and personalized to each prospect, without you having to do each one by one.
Market research:
Tools: GPT-3 or 4
Video Explanation done by my business partner Troy:
https://www.loom.com/share/f39c73f8042f48c7ae605be435b23fd0
Purpose: Working in lead generation you work with a ton of different companies that span a multitude of different verticals. It’s difficult to know the ins-n-outs of every industry without reading hours of research, talking with industry insiders and doing some boots on the ground research. Thanks to Sam Altman and the advent of GPT 3-4, that process just got a ton easier.
For purposes of this article, we’ll use GPT 3 and 4 to identify ideal prospects, typical pain points, how they usually solve their problems and what’s our value add in the market.
Here is the typical prompt flow you’ll want to work with:
Prompt 1:
“GPT, you are my dedicated research assistant for a new client we took on, XYZ. I will be asking you a series of questions to understand more about the ideal clients that would benefit from their solution, typical pain points, how they usually solve their problems and what’s our value add in the market.”
Prompt 2:
Who typically derives the highest value from X Service? (X service being your clients service)
Prompt 3:
What are the typical challenges that prevent them from accomplishing, (ideal outcome)? (ideal outcome being the offer your client provides)
Prompt 4:
How would they (ideal outcome) without X Service?
Prompt 5:
Based on the knowledge you shared, what's our competitive advantage that we should leverage in cold email to book meetings?
At the end of this you should have a clear picture of who it is you should be targeting, what are the typical challenges they encounter that you can leverage as FUD in your email, how they might solve it so you can object handle and what’s your offer to the market.
Offer creation:
If you took on a client and don’t know their offer, I created a customer offer creation Hormozi GPT bot. It’s linked here: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-1S7uqu34A-hormozi-gpt
Prompt the bot with the following information:
The niche or target industry of the brand or agency.
The specific result or benefit that the service or product delivers.
Any unique mechanism or method employed by the product or service.
Optional: The time frame in which the result can be expected.
Optional: Any risk reversal elements, like guarantees or trial periods.
Personalization:
Tools: Clay
One of the early applications of AI or LLM (large language models) has been personalizing first lines of emails to capture the prospect's attention and get them to read your offer later in the email. We use AI personalization in markets that are highly competitive or we’re pitching enterprise solutions. In either use case, you’re typically able to figure out a decent amount about the prospect or audience based on their website, recent news or LinkedIn.
The tools we utilize for AI personalization are Cargo, GPT of sheets or Clay. For the purpose of this document, we’ll review Clay, it’s a web-based software that allows you to pull in website information and linkedin profiles to form personalized first lines to capture the reader's attention.
Here’s how it works:
Video Explanation by Troy:
https://www.loom.com/share/5dd54f70112f4b84baf58fdcc62127a9
First you’ll want to upload a sheet to clay.com using the link I provided above. Once uploaded, make sure the data is formatted correctly and accurately.
Next, we’ll migrate over to “Enrich data” in the top right corner.
Select ‘Use AI’ this will enable the GPT functionality.
You’ll need to provide your OpenAI API information which can be found in the settings section of your GPT account on GPT3 or 4.
Next select a column to use the ‘Use AI’ function.
Provide the following prompt to GPT:
GPT, you are my cold email writing assistant. Your goal is to create a personalized first line introduction to an email using information from /Website and /LinkedIn Profile to demonstrate to the customer that we're interested in their field and find them interesting. Keep your tone casual. Keep it under 1 sentence.
This should provide you an output as seen below…
From there, you can download the file and quickly import it into your campaign as a custom variable.
Your emails are now personalized at a significant scale.
AI Video Outreach Using Response.ai
We’re doing AI video outreach AT SCALE using Response.ai and incorporating personalized videos for thousands of leads, and plugging that directly into our cold email campaigns.
Here’s a quick video overview of how we’re using it
https://www.loom.com/share/60b4115d91764a8e9036d2a19215e7ec?sid=5d8453b3-61d1-4c12-9c3c-3410b3146c19
Step 3: Cold Email Deliverability Checklist
You can spend all the time in the world building a laser targeted lead lists, writing the best scripts, and using sick personalization that SPEAKS to your prospect, but if your emails aren’t getting opened and read, your campaigns will still go flat.
This probably should have been Step 1, but I’m going to assume you’ve already setup your email accounts for sending cold emails. You DO NOT send cold emails from you main email account. You need to set up subdomains which reroute to your main website. People will mark you as spam, and over time your domain reputation will plummet, so for that reason, you need to set up burner email accounts to send cold emails from at volume without risking your main website domain going down. I’ve got a whole Cold Email Masterclass which covers the technical setup step-by-step if you want to check it out. Just go here to the link below.
How many email accounts do I need?
6 email sending accounts for every 1,000 leads you contact in a campaign
If you want to email 5,000 leads over 1-month - Use 30 sending accounts @ 35 emails/day MAX
10,000 lead campaign over 1-month - Use 60 sending accounts @ 35 emails/day MAX
How do I setup my email sending accounts properly? https://www.notion.so/buzzlead-coldemailmasterclass/Cold-Email-Inbox-Setup-a6e92f2afbc74971bceb821d68e3cad4
How many accounts to send 1,000 Emails/Day - 15 domains w/ 2 email accounts sending 35-40 emails MAX each day
DELIVERABILITY CHECKLIST
Keep sending down to 25 emails a day MAX PER email account. If you send more, you’ll be fine at first. But your domains will wear down quickly and you’ll constantly be getting flagged as spam, which will plummet your open rates
Use Spintax in your emails. (spintax explained below this checklist)
Split your email accounts 50/50 (google & outlook), and match ESP with Email Sending Platform
No links in your emails. Make it plain HTML text only. This includes unsubscribe links and calendly booking links. Just include at the bottom of your message something like - “Respond NO to opt-out”, and manually book the calls.
Keep a DO NOT CONTACT block list. Whenever someone says not to contact them, be sure to tag them DNC, and remove them from all campaigns. If you don’t, they’ll mark you as spam, which crushes your deliverability over time.
Keep your messages short (under 50 words). Large paragraphs look spammy and will trigger people, causing them to mark you as spam.
Avoid spammy words like “Promotion”, “flash sale”, “discount” as they’re likely to get flagged by email servers
Keep your campaign sequences under 5 steps. Odds are if you reached out 5 times already, they don’t want to buy from you. Stop harassing them and move on. People get triggered usually after 3-4 emails and will more than likely report you as SPAM, so we typically cap it there now. 5 MAXIMUM.
Spintax Explained
Cold email spintax is a technique used in email marketing to create variations of a single email template. The purpose is to personalize the email for each recipient and increase the chances of engagement. Spintax allows you to generate multiple unique versions of the email by swapping certain words or phrases within brackets.
Spintax is best used on your subject lines, greetings, one-line openers, and call-to-actions. Don’t use spintax on the body of your message.
Here's a simple explanation of how it works:
Email Template: You start with a basic email template that you want to send to multiple recipients. This template contains the main content of your email, including the message, greetings, and call to action.
Spintax Syntax: To create variations of the email, you use spintax syntax. Spintax uses curly brackets {} to enclose different word choices or phrases separated by a pipe symbol |. For example: {Hi|Hello}, {John|Mike|Sarah}.
Word/Phrase Substitution: Within the spintax syntax, each word or phrase separated by the pipe symbol represents a different option. When you send the email, the spintax software randomly selects one option from each set of curly brackets and substitutes it in the email.
Generating Unique Emails: By using spintax, you can generate unique emails by creating multiple options for various elements in your email. For instance, you can have different variations of greetings, introductions, or even entire paragraphs. Each time you send an email, the spintax software selects different options, resulting in a slightly different version of the email for each recipient.
The purpose of cold email spintax is to make your emails feel more personalized and avoid a generic, mass-sent impression. By tailoring certain parts of the email to each recipient, you can increase the chances of getting their attention and receiving a positive response.
{Hey|Hi|Hello} {{first_name}} - {We haven’t had the chance to speak yet | We haven't had the chance to get introduced yet}, but we’ve been working with Big Data companies like Profisee to {place|rank} them on the top page of Google, driving thousands of visitors to their site each month.
{I recorded a quick video sharing how we can help you rank higher, mind if I share that with you here? | I recorded a quick video sharing how we can get you more leads on autopilot, mind if I share that with you here?| If you share your top 3 competitors, I'll give you the keywords they're outranking you on and I'll prepare a competitive takedown strategy.}
Step 4: Pitch and Content Ideas
Tools: Clay and GPT-3 or 4 via API
Video Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORy1I1y9CQM
Hands down the best application we’ve seen for utilizing AI in copywriting has to be providing marketing proposals, content ideas or website audit strategies. We’ll essentially deploy GPT to scrape websites and pull in custom ideas based on its repository of highly performing content. Now how you want to frame these AI content ideas is entirely up to you. What we do sounds something like this…
“Hey Tom, I was on your website the other day and noticed some things that might be leaving revenue on the table…
AI content idea 1
AI content idea 2
AI content idea 3
Sharing that without knowing too much about your website and growth strategy but, thought you might find it interesting.
Open to exploring this more over a call next week?”
OR
“Hey Bill, I was trying to find your site the other day and had some difficulty, I fear other buyers might be having a similar experience.
Had a few ideas I wanted to run past you…
AI content idea 1
AI content idea 2
AI content idea 3
Sharing that without knowing too much about your website and SEO strategy but, thought you might find it interesting.
Open to exploring this more over a call next week?”
Here’s how it works:
First you’ll want to upload a sheet to clay.com using the link I provided above. Once uploaded, make sure the data is formatted correctly and accurately.
Next, we’ll migrate over to “Enrich data” in the top right corner.
Select ‘Use AI’ this will enable the GPT functionality.
You’ll need to provide your OpenAI API information which can be found in the settings section of your GPT account on GPT3 or 4.
Next select a column to use the ‘Use AI’ function.
Provide the following prompt(s) to GPT:
Create three SEO back linking ideas based on /website . These should be bullet points. Ideas MUST remain under 40 characters. Be more detailed, provide specific recommendations for sites. Remove quotations from any suggestions.
Create three website audit ideas based on /website . These should be bullet points. Ideas MUST remain under 40 characters. Be more detailed, provide specific recommendations for sites. Remove quotations from any suggestions.
Create three growth marketing ideas based on /website /recentnews. These should be bullet points. Ideas MUST remain under 40 characters. Be more detailed, provide specific recommendations for sites. Remove quotations from any suggestions.
Create three lead generation ideas based on /website /linkedinprofile. These should be bullet points. Ideas MUST remain under 40 characters. Be more detailed, provide specific recommendations for sites. Remove quotations from any suggestions.
Create three creative sales ideas based on /website /linkedinprofile . These should be bullet points. Ideas MUST remain under 40 characters. Be more detailed, provide specific recommendations for sites. Remove quotations from any suggestions.
This should provide you a bulleted list of ideas that you can easily import into your campaigns that should look like this before and after.
Before:
After:
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