Sending B2B Cold Email

[SteveRic]

Hi
We design online booking systems that are aimed at small / medium service business who don't take bookings through their websites. We are brand new so we are finding potential companies using
Google maps such as beauty salons or personal trainers. We are sending a cold email below as its very difficult to get the actual people on the phone as they are all so busy.
The email has a link to our website where we have a example demo of their specific business ie beauty salon or personal trainer. Our aim is to offer them a free 30 day account which we will setup with their own services etc, we just want some feedback on the email or suggestions how it could be improved.

Cheers

Steve

Dear **business owner name**,

I found your company on the internet and wanted to introduce Booking Widget Limited to you.
We provide booking systems for health & beauty companies like yourselves.

We are UK based company based outside Poole, Dorset providing online booking management solutions for small and medium sized businesses. We open up capabilities for companies like yourselves, to extend your services online to your customers through your own existing website or Facebook page 24/7. (monthly packages start at only ten pounds per month.)

The majority of UK consumers seek the convenience of buying and paying for goods and services online,at times convenient to them, and quite often outside of business hours.
Many larger companies are fully aware and provide online booking to maximise sales with great success (e.g. for rail and air tickets, cinemas, concerts etc)

We are looking to contact you to introduce ourselves and to hopefully
create a small FREE demonstration of your own services in a similar way to the
health & beauty demo shown below, so that you get an idea how your business could look online.

**LINK**

We look forward to making contact in the near future and showing off all the system benefits to your business.

Yours sincerely

 

[Lucie@MightyOak]

Hi SteveRic

I work in marketing and write a lot of sales letters and emails for clients.

In general it is not too bad, I would try and condense it a little if possible and also as an opening statement I would actually change it around and re-word it very slightly.

As it is a "cold/spec" email which I do all the time (not ethically correct I know) I would start it with

Dear ....

Please forgive the "off the wall" email but I wanted to get in touch and introduce myself and my company, Booking Widget to you. (that's what I usually say anyway and it does, believe it or not work).

I would then say a little about yourself and the company and then go on to say something like :

"We work with a lot of companies in the health and beauty industry and would love to work with you also, we can provide you with an online booking system that will complement your business .... (blah blah)

Also make sure the subject line isn't too salesy or people will just delete it.

I hope that helps a little ?

Best of luck

Lucie

Mighty Oak Marketing

 

[SteveRic]

Hi Lucie
Thats fantastic, thank you so much. I come from a programming background so sales & marketing is like a foreign language to me!

Steve

 

[Lucie@MightyOak]

Hi Steve

No problem - happy to help.

Now for the pitch .. If you do need any help with your sales and marketing please do not hesitate to get in touch - there you go, that was painless

Best of luck

Kind regards
Lucie

Mighty Oak Marketing

 

[Hunt New Business]

Hi Steve,

How did it go?

 

[businessfunding]

I appreciate you are not in marketing, but my honest opinion is that your message will get binned.

It must be short, snappy and relevant

Open with a catch and user-centric heading (why should I bother to read this?)

No more than 2 short paras, focusing on user benefits.

What do I do now?

The better you define the target the easier it will be to create this.

The only safe assumption you can make is that they are not interested - you have to make them interested!

Next step - you need a follow on process - awareness and response will increase hugely on following actions

 

[SwindonSteve]

Next step - you need a follow on process - awareness and response will increase hugely on following actions

It cannot be emphasised enough. Follow up. Sending the email and hoping for the best is a waste of time. You must incorporate this email into a process.

 

[PeterMoore]

Hi I have agree with the above comments made by SwindonSteve. I use email for several businesses I own and regularly send out emails to generate interest in our products/services. Although we do always get some interest we always follow up a couple of days later by phone saying "we sent you an email, did you read it" etc etc. We have found this a very productive way to find new clients. Email marketing is all about having the right contact in your target market and if you get this right with the right email followed up with a call you will soon fall over some opportunities. I came across a company the other week called click4leads and they offer a email marketing service and only charge on a PPC bases. They have a database of 2.5 million contacts in the SME Market and this may offer you the opportunity to get your message out to a bigger audience? click4leadsDOTnet best of luck

 

[Stuart Reeve]

I always thought sending out cold, unsolicited marketing emails to companies were illegal? I've been holding myself back for a long time because of this. :/

Stu

Hi SteveRic

I work in marketing and write a lot of sales letters and emails for clients.

In general it is not too bad, I would try and condense it a little if possible and also as an opening statement I would actually change it around and re-word it very slightly.

As it is a "cold/spec" email which I do all the time (not ethically correct I know) I would start it with

Dear ....

Please forgive the "off the wall" email but I wanted to get in touch and introduce myself and my company, Booking Widget to you. (that's what I usually say anyway and it does, believe it or not work).

I would then say a little about yourself and the company and then go on to say something like :

"We work with a lot of companies in the health and beauty industry and would love to work with you also, we can provide you with an online booking system that will complement your business .... (blah blah)

Also make sure the subject line isn't too salesy or people will just delete it.

I hope that helps a little ?

Best of luck

Lucie

Mighty Oak Marketing

 

[Clinton]

I always thought sending out cold, unsolicited marketing emails to companies were illegal?

It's not illegal in the UK if the business has advertised their email address publicly.

But even if not illegal some users will report you to Spamcop or other spam reporting service to get your domain blacklisted and cause potential delivery problems for email originating from your domain. I always do this with unsolicited mail and have even set up automation to make the reporting job easier.

 

[Stuart Reeve]

Hi Clinton,

Thanks for commenting, I know it was an old thread.

Well that's good news!

When you say publicly, would them advertising their email address on their website be considered advertising it publicly?

 

[Ashley_Price]

It's not illegal in the UK if the business has advertised their email address publicly.

I don't believe that is strictly true. I believe it's only legal if it is a generic email address, e.g. info@ or enquiries@

Just because they publicise it doesn't mean it is okay for you to email them. Like cold calling, the TPS state that you cannot call a TPS registered number even if it is displayed on a website, etc.

After all, think about it, a lot of people are listed in telephone books, but that didn't mean they agreed to have people cold call them.

 

[webgeek]

It is prohibited in the UK if it is not a limited company. Sole proprietors are like private individual email addresses - so don't send the unsolicited commercial email unless you feel like fielding complaints from them and seeing a smattering of forwarded complaints to ICO or the like.

Personally, we don't go for the pitch first and add value later, instead opting to send the first 10 emails without any mention of what we sell, what it costs or what it will do for them. Instead we send valuable information that they can use to inspire their sales team to perform better, ways that they can manage more effectively, inform their board/management teams, etc, etc.

A cold pitch out of left field better have a clear WIIFM (what's in it for me) within the first 2 lines, some bullets with benefits and a clear value proposition. If you drone on more than 2 paragraphs, or have more than a couple of sentence in each paragraph, I'm going to glaze over, mark as spam and move on to the next item in the inbox.

Give them something before you ask for something in return. PAY IT FORWARD FTW!