TCC Podcast #39: Cold Emailing with Jorden Roper

Copywriter and cold emailing specialist, Jorden Roper, joins Kira and Rob in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio for the 39th episode. Jorden is a three time college dropout who lost her job (the same day her husband lost his job at the same company) and managed to find several freelance clients within a month. She shares how she did it, and how she used cold emailing to find clients plus: •  How you can do cold emailing that lands clients on day one •  The cold emailing formula she used to grow her business •  How she used Pinterest to brainstorm her brand •  How to be fearless as you “put yourself out there” •  How she uses Youtube to attract a different audience to her blog •  How much work she put into creating and launching her course •  The biggest mistake she sees new writers making today This one is packed with useful information and ideas any writer, beginner or expert, can use to grow and improve their business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Craig’s List Problogger Job Board Limeleads Pinterest Jorden’s video about haters on Youtube Writing Revolt Blog Cold Emailing Course Mariah Coz’s Launch Your Signature Course Maggie Patterson Jorden’s FB Community Jorden on Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 39 as we chat with copywriter Jorden Roper about getting fired from bad jobs, and finding copywriting to pay the bills, using YouTube for brand building and outreach, what she has done differently from other copywriters to get an edge, and how copywriters can find great clients with cold emailing. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jorden. Jorden: Hey, guys. Kira: Hello. Welcome, Jorden. Jorden: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Rob: Yeah. It’s about time. We’ve been trying to get you on the podcast for a little while. It’s time you got here. Jorden: Yes, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much. Rob: Jorden, I think maybe we should start with your story. I know you’ve shared this a lot with your list, but a lot of our listeners probably haven’t heard it. You went through a time in your life when you were going through different jobs and landed where you are. Tell us about that. Jorden: Well, before I started my freelance writing business, pretty much right before, I had been working at this full-time job at a marketing agency. I was doing some writing there. It was very stressful. It was a super toxic work environment. I know a lot of people who are probably trying to break into freelance writing can relate to that, like just going to work every day, sitting in your car in the morning, and just wanting to scream or cry or whatever before you walk up to the office. That’s kind of the situation that I was in. I ended up getting fired from that job. Just a few months before that actually, my husband started working at the same job. When his contract ended, they decided to just let me go, too. Kira: What? Jorden: Yeah, we’re both out of work on the same day. Kira: Oh, no. Jorden: We walk out of the office together like, “Oh my God. What are we going to do? This is insane.” It was very stressful. Actually, I had some other stuff going on at the time, too, just within ... I think within the same week before this happened, I found out that I had an early stage skin cancer on my leg. It was just one of those when it rains, it pours type situations. It was extremely stressful, but ultimately I’m very thankful for it just because I had been wanting to start freelance writing for a while before that. Getting fired gave me that little push I needed to just say, “You know what, I’m just going to go all in and make this happen.” Kira: Wow. You walk out the doors, you’re fired, and you’re like ... How do you go from there to launching a business? Did it take a couple of months, or did you get a client immediately? Jorden: I landed my first clients pretty quickly. I mean, I think, just for a couple of days, my husband and I were both just kind of in this shocked, like “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” state where we were just kind of thinking about our next steps. After that, I had been reading about freelancing for a while, and I had been already thinking like, “You know, I want to make an escape plan and like get out of this job like soon for sure,” so I knew a little bit about what I needed to do. I started pretty much right away setting up a website for myself, creating a marketing strategy based on the niche that I chose. I think I got fired in mid April. Then at the beginning of May, that’s when I started really aggressively marketing myself as far as cold emailing, and all that stuff. Rob: You talk about the marketing strategy that you set up. Tell us a little bit more about that. What did that look like? What were you thinking you were going to be doing? Jorden: Well, I just knew that I wanted to focus heavily on branding myself, and also positioning. I knew just from reading tons and tons of blog posts online that I definitely wanted to pick a narrow niche when I started out, so I decided to market myself to IT service providers and software development companies and technology companies. I set up basically my entire website based around that. I made my niche clear. I really positioned myself as a perfect fit for that kind of clientele specifically. All my writing samples were in those industries. Then, I started cold emailing those specific target clients. Rob: This is before you had any clients at all. You had created some samples and chose this all before client number one? Jorden: I had gotten a few little jobs here and there, while I was working, just dabbling in freelance writing. I got one job from Craigslist, and then I had gotten one job from the ProBlogger job board, but I think once I got fired, that was when I decided I need to start really taking this seriously like a business. Instead of just applying to a random gig here and there, I wanted to start really pitching myself and going after more high-quality, high-paying clients. Kira: What did the cold emailing process look like? I mean, if you could share the details, too, just how did you pull together the list? How did you find them? What did the emails look like? All the details. We want all of it. Jorden: Yeah, for sure. Mainly how I got email addresses was using a tool called LimeLeads. It’s basically a huge database of B2B leads that you can download based on industry. Since I had niche down, it was really easy for me to go into that database and pull a bunch of email addresses in the IT and technology industry specifically. That’s what I did. I didn’t do that horrible thing where you just send out the same template to a thousand people. It wasn’t anything like that, but I sat down and went down the list and personalized every single email, took the time to look at their website, took the time to talk to them about how I could help their business, really use that cold email to position myself as the perfect fit for their business specifically. That’s what I did. I set a goal to send 20 to 25 cold emails a day. That’s what I was doing for the most part. But on the very first day that I sent out cold emails, I sent 17. Two of those ended up turning into high-paying clients. After that, I was just like, “Well, I know I’m going to be cold emailing a lot now, because that’s what’s working.” Kira: I want to know about what you actually said in your emails, because there must’ve been some structure in it, and it worked, especially for people who may want to do the same thing and land their first few clients. Jorden: Starting with the subject line, I think a mistake that I made really, really early on, like before I started learning how to market myself, was using a self-focused subject line about how I needed work or whatever. But then I started learning more about it and learning to make it more client-focused, so asking them about their content strategy, or mentioning something specific about their business. Then in the email, I would make sure to personalize again. I was using the person’s name. I was making a genuine connection with them, so mentioning something specific I had seen that they’d done online, whether it had been a blog post or something that I thought was really cool that they had done with their business. That was always early in the email. Another thing that I always put early on in the email was my niche. I didn’t reach out to them and say, “Hey, I’m a freelance writer.” It was like hey, “I am an IT and technology copywriter.” Right away, as soon as they opened my email, they’re like, “Okay. This person specializes in my industry.” I would link out to my site from there. Again, it was the positioning of this is an IT and technology copywriter. I had that in a huge headline on my homepage. I had all of my portfolio pieces tailored to that. I think overall with the email, it was just using that really targeted strategy, and really using positioning as far as my niche expertise is what helped me become successful with cold emailing. Rob: On day one, you landed two clients. You said they turned into high-paying clients. I’m assuming the first jobs were relatively small.