Episode #99 – Rob Williams on Nailing Down Perfect Cold Emails That Land The Best Clients Out There

Well, hello, it’s John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy. It’s time for Episode 99 of the Mc-Method Marketing podcast where you’ll discover how to get more customers with less effort by using automated email marketing techniques and strategies. Pretty bad-ass stuff. Now today I’ll be talking to Robert Williams. Robert came here a couple of weeks ago, he’s actually just released a book on Emails That Win Clients. Simple as that, right? A lot of people who have services to offer, get online, go and get a list of email addresses from companies that may need their help and then email them. Cold emailing. Contrary to what a lot of people think, it actually works, but you have to do it right, okay? And a lot of people who’ve been in this game, and trying to get copywriting clients, trying to get sales funnel clients or whatever it happens to be, is, you know, they struggle, you know, it can be really, really hard and you sit down and you do a hundred emails, and get one reply, and the one reply says, “Stop sending me emails.” It happens. And so I thought I’d get Robert on the show to kinda talk about, well, what’s his strategy, what are the mistakes that people are making when it comes to cold emails and what can they do to rectify those mistakes and start increasing their close rate when it comes to those cold emails. So if you’re looking for more clients, or you’re using cold emailing your strategy whether as to get guests for your own podcast, multi-fine business deals with [The Go] and LinkedIn, this is gonna be a podcast that’s really, really useful to you. To get the show notes for this episode of the Email Marketing podcast, go to themcmethod.com/99. We’re one week away from the 100^th celebratory episode! And we got something cool coming on next week. Anyway, now, our first thing is just a reminder that if you’d like to work personally with me to help, you know, if you’d like my personal one-on-one attention to help create your email autoresponding campaign, create a wholesales phone for you, and uh, just depending on whatever you need, uh, I can certainly do that, yeah, next thing, or next step, send me an email at john@themcmethod.com, tell me what you’re looking for or what you need, and uh, we’ll get on to skype in the next few days, or next week, to discuss your projects, and then we’ll have some fun with it, we’ll get you some customers. And this week’s McMaster’s inside of the week is a pretty boring one, to be honest. Accountability, and uh, this is huge, it takes a long time to understand, but if you don’t have someone that getting accountable with your goals, with your vision, you’re just not gonna follow through, okay? It’s as simple as that. You need to find some accountability, whether it’s with a friend, a mentor, a business partner, you need to get it sorted. And this is why one of the things inside McMaster’s, inside the forum is an accountability section where every week, you post an update on what you’re gonna do in your business this week, what goals you’re gonna accomplish, and why it’s important to you, and uh, we’ll follow up and keep you accountable to make sure that you’re following through with your tasks. Keeping you accountable is the secret to success. Now we’ve got one review today, it’s 5-stars, and it’s 5-stars with email marketing, this one’s from Hugo S. Marino from the United States, “Love the podcast, mate. The information is jampacked with knowledge you only get if you actually hired some of this guys, keep up the good work. P.S. cool radio voice, cool radio voice. P.P.S. you owe me a beer.” And that’s fair enough, that is fair enough. Hugo, thanks for the review, mate. You’re absolutely right with, when it comes to the podcast, you know what, the great thing is I can email someone like John Carlton, or you know, one of these big dogs, one of these gurus and be like, “Hey can we get on the phone and just have a chat about my business and I can ask you questions?” then you’re like, “No way!  He’s my paypal buying [inaudible, 3:13] for 10,000 dollars.” Meanwhile, if I go to them and say, “Hey, I’ve got a podcast, do you wanna do an interview and I’ll ask you questions about my business and we’ll create a whole episode about it,” they go, “Yeah, sure!” So that’s one of the great things about podcasting. Free coaching is one way to look at it, and uh, you get the benefit of that by listening to this podcast. So that’s that. Thanks again Hugo for the review, now let’s get into this interview on cold emails with Mr. Robert Williams.

It’s John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy. I’m here with Robert Williams. Now, Robert uh, has really interesting stuff going on, he’s gonna make a great podcast, a great interview. He’s just launched a new book called Emails That Win You Clients. So what I like about that is very simple, very straightforward, and uh, I think it’s very applicable to, to a lot of listeners to this podcast. Even me, I’m really looking forward to this conversation because, because I do a fair bit of client work myself, with uh, creating, you know, autoresponders, and sales pages, and sales funnels, and split testing, and all that kind of stuff. So this is gonna be, basically this is, Robert’s gonna share a strategy or a few different strategies, a way to kinda use cold emails to get clients, basically. Not just you know, tiny little measly clients that don’t pay much, but big deals, you know, proper deals, that can build you a very very decent income. So uh, things like, what should you say first, what if you sound spammy, how do you frame yourself, how do you get the right tone for the email, we’ll get into all that stuff today, and you’ll also get a chance to buy Robert’s book. That’s at emailsthatwin.com. He also, he’s also got a great site called Let’s Worskshop, and as far as I understand, he basically sends you freelance leads that you can email today and make money. So instead of you going and get the leads, he gets the leads for you and just gives them to you, and you can email them yourself, which is a pretty cool service, he’ll probably talk about that too. So Robert, how are you doing man?

Robert Williams: I’m doing good, man. Thanks for having me.

John McIntyre: Good to have you on the show, man. So I did like a very quick intro there based on you know, what we chatted about before I hit record. Can you give the listener a bit more of a background on who you are, what you do, and uh, what this whole cold email strategy is all about?

Robert Williams: Sure. So I think like, probably a lot of listeners, I went to uh, I went to an art school, and once I graduated, I kinda came out dreaming of like an agency job, or maybe like a start-up job, and I was prepared to do that. Have a nice portfolio and I emailed, you know, a bunch of different agencies,  I ended up working at one and realized that it was not my, you know, the ideal dream job that I have been dreaming of. Uhm.

John McIntyre: Why is that? What’s wrong with working a job?

Robert Williams: Well for me, it was not controlling my future, not controlling how much money I was making, or even the work that I was working on, it was somebody telling me what to do and stuff.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: And so o that’s when I started looking at freelancing, a little bit more seriously. Uhm, and so, what I ended up doing was going out on my own, and looking for freelance clients online, and kinda building a consultancy based of, basically no clients, and uhm, looking for them online, uhm, and I ended up doing that for a year and a half. And so starting kinda from scratch like that was a, was a kind of a unique experience for me. A lot of times you hear on the internet, like, freelancing is all about feast or famine, and you know, you go from one extreme to the other, of like having tons of clients and having zero the next day. And a lot of the mean out there on the internet is like, the only real way to get work is through referrals, which, which, like I’m not gonna lie, referrals are huge, and it’s great if you can get them, but uhm, I just knew that there was like, other ways to get freelance work, you know. You can’t just start out getting referrals all the time. So,

John McIntyre: This is true. Because that’s, it’s so true. This is why, when people start, it’s just like, “Well I don’t have any clients, I don’t have any case studies, so I can’t get any, what do I show people? So I can’t get referrals.” It’s kinda like, “I don’t know where to start.”

Robert Williams: Exactly. And so, what I ended up doing was like looking for leads online, looking for uhm, different opportunities I could kinda contact, cold contact and what ended up working for me was a few different things I noticed was, and we can get into all of it a little bit later, but uhm, what basically came from that, was I noticed I can get clients on my own, uhm I don’t need referrals, I don’t have to at least only rely on referrals, and I don’t have to just be sitting and waiting for work to come to me. And once I realized that, it was just about taking the time to kind of find the opportunity to call through all of them and kind of realize which ones were gonna pan out and be successful clients for mine, of mine. And once I did that, uhm, I realized it was taking a lot of my time. I wished I could kind of hire another web designer to do it for me. Because I had tried like a VA, I had tried getting my girlfriend to do it for me, and they were just like, kinda lost in it because they weren’t web designers themselves and so they couldn’t really identify the clients. So that’s why I started workshop was uhm, I was noticing it was taking me a really long time to do it, and uhm, and I wished I could hire like a web designer, or like another freelancer to do it for me, because uhm, at that time I was trying to get my girlfriend to do it, or get my VA to do it, and they just really didn’t understand what a good client looked like. Uhm, and that’s why I had the idea for Workshop, which was me basically taking this over for freelancers and looking all over the internet for the best opportunities, and sending out the ten best ones every day, and so that way the freelancer can only focus on contacting them and winning the work, uhm, building the relationship with the client, which is what freelancers really wanna focus on anyway. Uhm, and so, so that kind of brings me to the point of the book, which is Emails That Win Clients, Win New Clients. In the past year and a half I’ve been working with all these hundreds of freelancers, that they get the leads I send them, and I’ve been able to kind of extract the patterns of like, what, the people who struggle, and the people who land client after client in the service. And what I’ve noticed is like, the people who don’t succeed with the Workshop, the people who struggle, the people who keep having kind of the famine, the feast or famine flagpole, they all do the exact same, almost word for word, tactics in their emails. So I started working with them, I worked with, you know, over 50 different uh, freelancers and sent out hundreds, maybe thousands of emails by now to all these different clients and what I ended up noticing was like, I was just basically repeating the same thing over and over to all these freelancers, uhm, and that’s when I decided to kind of put it all in one place, in a book that could be, it could be referred to and I could send that out instead just because I was getting kinda tired of repeating it.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: And so, so that’s where it came from, and I think, do you wanna get into like what the book is about, like specific tactics and everything, or,

John McIntyre: Give me a rundown, like tell me, first talk to me like, is this, we’re talking about designers and developers, but as a copywriter I know that these kind of strategies like with, it’s about the, who are you trying to talk to, so what are this, what are you trying to sell, design stuff or develop,

Robert Williams: Yeah. 

John McIntyre: Or copyrighting. It’s all,

Robert Williams: Exactly.

John McIntyre: In your work.

Robert Williams: Yeah. But I see it, this will probably all resonate more with your, with your, with copywriters, because copywriters kind of understand some of the fundamentals, and so like a basic rundown would be, you know, I kept seeing the same mistakes happening which was, emails were extremely long, emails were focused like completely on the purpose of writing the email, they didn’t provide like a single call to action or a single next step that could be done, they were kind of all over the place, kind of typical copywriting errors, I think.

John McIntyre: And it’s funny too, like cause I’ve seen, I got a friend of mine who’s [inaudible 10:49], who’s doing some of this, uh, some of this like code average stuff,  and he’s not a copywriter, he does some different kinda stuff, but he’s right now, he’s really trying to build that, like that marketing process to bring on new clients. Some sort of reliable way that he can, you know, bring on new dills. And uh, you know, you know, we used to work in an office together, so you know, once a day, you know, once, twice a week, he’ll come over to me and say, “Well can you check out this email, what do you think?” And often, it’s funny, cause he’s trying to think like a copywriter, which is interesting, cause he tries to go in there and tries to have some benefits, and tries to make it interesting and compelling, and that kinda thing. But when I look at it, I’m like, “Dude, if this is a cold email, you can’t write them 200 words and give them a whole story and explain everything.” All you really wanna say is, I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong, cause you’re this, you’re the [guy that’s busts out of it], you’re the cold email guy. But I think it’s like you sell it, it should be like two or three sentences, like just checking in, here’s, you know, do you have this problem if so, let me know and let’s have a chat. And uh, what I’ve seen, or the mistakes I’ve seen is when they go into that, here’s what I do, here’s all about this, here’s all the reasons why you should probably contact me. And like the thing could, the one mistake could be like not using copywriting at all, and the other thing is thinking that, the other mistake is thinking that you need way too much copywriting.

Robert Williams: Yeah, exactly. And, and, and those are probably the two biggest, uhm, issues I see is like there’s, the, there’s on one hand the extremely long email that nobody’s gonna read ever in their entire life cause it’s sucks the life out of you, and on the other hand is like the one sentence email that’s like, hey I’m a freelancer, you know. And so the two extremes you definitely wanna stay away from but if you’re gonna, I mean, a shorter email, I just, is way more uhm, compassionate for the reader, like, everybody’s busy, everybody is focused on themselves and they, you know, everybody is stressed out, they don’t wanna read this huge long email. So, considering that, it’s a little different for like, email newsletters or like, autoresponders, stuff like that. When you’re cold emailing somebody, you definitely have to cut, uhm, keep it as short as possible.

John McIntyre: Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about that, so what’s the, do you have like a framework, or a strategy, or some sort of blueprint that you use when you cold email someone?

Robert Williams: So it’s, yeah, there’s a few things I always do when I , you know, getting started with writing the email, uhm, and I think it’s, the key is you wanna stay away from getting put in the trashcan, alright? And the number one way, like, when you check, when you check your email, the first thing you’re looking for, is how can I, you know, throw this, this email in the trash, and the first thing you think is, is this email spam, right? And that’s something that I’ve, I’ve noticed a lot too. In the book I go into like, I don’t think freelancers should use scripts, or at least they shouldn’t fo-, they shouldn’t rely on scripts too much because, you know, a freelancer only needs a handful of clients, they don’t need thousands and thousands of clients or customers, so focusing in on like a one-to-one basis, like the way you write your emai.l it should be in order to not be spammed. Like the definition of spam is like an email that you can send out to thousands of people right? And so if you write the email in a way that you’re focusing on the person that you’re writing to, as opposed to yourself, that tells the person opening up your email, like, this person took good time to like, understand who I am, first of all, he knows my first name, you know, it’s obvious it’s not spam at that point. And so I think that’s the first thing you have to do is like make sure that there’s no way that this email can be misconstrued as like, spam, and uhm, it’s authentic, and, cause, everybody’s inboxes is full of spam, that’s the number one, I think, thing that freelancers don’t do either. Freelancers kinda focus on themselves. They send an email out that could literally be sent to anybody because it’s all focused on themselves, like, I went to, you know, college, I had this job, I had these clients, this is my website, this is my work, I do this, you know. And so, so that’s the number one thing.

John McIntyre: Okay, okay. So how do they do that though? Like it’s, it’s one thing to kinda, to, to understand that idea.

Robert Williams: Yeah.

John McIntyre: Well, how do you actually do it? How do you actually connect with someone and come across as a real person? What like, down to like, how do you kinda script this, cause, well here’s an example, alright, I’ll give you an example of some emails that I’ve been sending out to people, and you tell me if this is, let me see, I’ll bring them up right now. So what I do is I get a list of people who use certain soft wares online, you know, email marketing software like infusionsoft and ontraport and that kinda, we got their first name, I have the software platform they’re using, I have their website, their company name, so what I did with it is, I’m bringing the email up. So I emailed someone basically saying that, “Hey names, hey Robert, I just know, I just saw that you’re using infusionsoft on your website emailsthatwin.com, just wondering if you’re happy with it. You’re paying a lot for it, are you happy with the results you’re getting with it? Let me know.”

Robert Williams: Right.

John McIntyre: That was more or less the email. I was kinda like trying to be personal, be quick and to the point as well.

Robert Williams: Yeah and the, that email is focused on me the reader, it’s not focused on you or anything about what you’re doing or you know, anything in terms of that way right? So that’s, that’s great. And that’s uh, I think, you, have you seen success with that email? Have you sent it out?

John McIntyre: I have actually. I mean, one got a reply and he’s just like, “Man that was an amazing cold email”. So it’s working.

Robert Williams: Well, yeah. I mean, the other thing too is that you’re providing a very clear question there. A lot of times people end like they get down to the bottom of the email after they write this 4, 5, 6, paragraph email, and they don’t know how to close it because at that point, it’s like, this huge brain dump of an email, uhm, and so like, they don’t know one thing that can say, they don’t know you know how this kind of all ties together and so what they end up doing is they end up leaving it to the person they’re emailing, so what they’ll say is, they’ll say, they might even literally say it like, “Hey, let me know if there’s a fit here,” like, “let me know if this all makes sense,” or “let me know if you think I can help you.” And at that point, it’s like, if you don’t know if you can help somebody there’s no reason you should be emailing them. The only reason you should be emailing them, is if you know you can help them, you know? As somebody who gets emailed, like that’s the only reason why I wanna get an email from somebody, or if they’re gonna be pitching me something, you know?

John McIntyre: Yup. And this is the thing, I mean, people think that pitching is bad. And uh, but you know, I’m tired of pitching when you don’t actually know much about who you’re trying to pitch is bad. It’s just not gonna work, but if you go in there and you’re like, like we’re all business people, so you’ll have problems, and you know, everyone in the marketplace has problems that they need to solve, so if you’re cold emailing someone all you really need to do, I mean, they’re looking for solutions, and if you come across as like, tell them, well, you know, here you go, you’ve got this problem and I know exactly how to, you know, solve this problem for you.

Robert Williams: Right.

John McIntyre: Let me know if you wanna have a quick chat about it on skype sometime. It’s really hard to ignore an email about that, cause it’s got nothing to do with, like, at the end of the day, and I, teach people this in uh, in my programs, it’s got nothing to do with you as a business, you as a copywriter, you as whoever you are, it’s all about what’s in it for them. And,

Robert Williams: Ex-, yeah.

John McIntyre: Whether you like it or not, it’s what people are gonna be thinking consciously or unconsciously when they read your emails.

Robert Williams: Totally and not only does it not have anything to do, they, they don’t wanna buy you as a copywriter, they don’t even wanna buy the copy that you write.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: What they wanna buy is like the outcome of what the copy is, or like you said, the solution and the benefit of that solution, so, that’s why I think you shouldn’t really focus on your portfolio, to like, sell your, sell your work for you or to sell you know, help you win more work. Portfolios are usually like pretty boring for anybody who’s not the freelancer of sending it over. And so, I don’t know, that’s uh, that’s, actually that’s a really good point to make is that the solution is what people are buying, the benefit of the solution.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: And not the work, not the, you kno, this, the, the first part, right?

John McIntyre: Right. I mean, this is, this is nothing too, it’s like if someone wants a website, or they just want, you gotta avoid presenting yourself as a commodity. Like if you’re just another copywriter and there’s no reason for them to get on the phone with you and have a chat or even hire you, I mean, they, you’re one among tens of thousands of copywriters. So worse if you go out and that was part of you know, the reason, the reason I, you know, started calling myself the autoresponder guy, cause the idea, was you know, when I go on the phone with someone, when I was having a conversation with someone, I could be like, well, yeah I would say this explicitly, but the, the, I would imply, that well yeah , you can go and hire, you can go and hire a copywriter to write your emails, but wouldn’t you rather hire the autoresponder guy.

Robert Williams: Right.

John McIntyre: It’s more like, would you rather hire a generic web designer or would you rather hire a, you know, web designer who only works with gardening companies, and you just happened to be a gardening company. Well of course you’re gonna hire the gardening web designer. So, part of this comes to, you can’t just go in with an unsolicited pitch and you’re just like, I’m a web designer and I’m really good and I’ve got a great portfolio, cause that’s what everyone says. You’d have to have something different in the email or on the phone.

Robert Williams: So like, last year, I was uhm, there’s this time, there’s this, I have a story that kind of talks about to what you’re saying. Last year I was looking for a used car, and I did, I did a bunch of research, I, you know, I, I, even bought this book on like how to negotiate for used cars and all this stuff, and I, once I started the process like, I emailed a bunch of people, I, uhm, I found, well first, I found like a few cars that kinda match what I was looking for, and I emailed them all, and we all started to kinda  the negotiation process with like 5 or 6 different peo-, different car dealers. And then a few days later I found, I found like the exact perfect car I wanted to buy, uhm, Honda Accord and it had like, every-, the car I wanted, and everything else I wanted, I know the guy and I told him, “Hey can you lower the price?” At that point, he had like exactly what I wanted, right? He emails me back and says, “Hey man, I would love to lower the price but I can’t because our dealership prices is low at possible at all times and our customers love that about us, and so I hope you will love that too about us.” And that may or may not be true, he might lower prices for some people, but at that point, you know, as opposed to, like, I might have been able to even get him down a few thousand dollars, or I might have been able to get another car for cheaper, but it wouldn’t be the exact car that I want, right? And so what this kinda ties back with you, is like, you niched down and you became the autoreponder guy, all the other cop-, if somebody wants autoresponders, all the other copywriters no longer, are no longer you, you know. It’s no longer about choosing between these five copywriters, it’s between choosing these 5 copywriters and the autoresponder guy, you know? So, I think, once you have something that you know people want and it, it, it sets a different game up, right? Have you seen that since you’ve, since you made the change?

John McIntyre: Absolutely. That was one of the best things I’ve done. Uhm, the, you know, something I’ve done from, that was a year and a half ago, two years ago, I mean, it’s, it’s probably changing and morphing right now. But, niching down, it’s not like nich-, people think niching down is like, you know, you exclude yourself from the rest of market, and that’s partially true, but I mean, really what’s, you just in a way, you differentiate yourself, it’s not like, it’s not rocket science, all you’re really saying is like, what makes you different, like, you know, if I’m talking to a web designer or a copy writer, and I’m like, look, there’s a hundred thousand copywriters, there’s thousands of copywriters out there, why should I hire you, what makes you different?

Robert Williams: Right.

John McIntyre: And it’s really just what’s your answer to that question, you know. People go with the unique selling proposition you can say like niching down, or positioning, like a positioning statement. But at the end of the day, it’s kinda like, why are you different? Because if you’re not different, then it doesn’t actually matter whether I go with you or any of the other, you know, 10,000 copywriters out there, any other web designers out there. Or you know, if you’re just buying that car that you want, that car instead of just being one of a kind, you found the one that you wanted, there might have been, you know, 50,000 of that exact type, like if there was, if there was 50,000 copies of that exact car that you wanted, then there’s, you wouldn’t have needed to go with that car.

Robert Williams: Yeah, exactly. And, but because there was only this one and it was you know, it only came up and it had everything I wanted and I couldn’t find it anywhere else, price at that point becomes less important, you know? Price, it’s, it’s no longer, you’re not comparing apples anymore, you’re comparing something you really want, and that’s far and above everything else versus something that you know, you’re gonna haggle, you can haggle down a little bit.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. So it’s  interesting how this stuff, how much this stuff applies like to positioning and having the USP, having the unique selling proposition applies to, applies to cold emailing in the sense that, really what’s good to offer here, if you don’t have anything good to offer, then cold emailing is gonna, gonna struggle with it. And by good to offer, you better have something that distinguishes from, you know, from everyone else. And if you don’t have that in place, then cold emailing is gonna be an uphill battle. However, if you can nail that down, it’s gonna make going and reaching out to people a lot, a lot easier.

Robert Williams: Yeah. And I think you definitely, if you’re a freelancer you definitely have something people wanna buy, I don’t think you necessarily have to think of it in terms of like, niching it down, or like, in terms of like getting really specific about one thing, I think just becoming really clear about the benefits of the work that you do, and I think that’s almost enough to, to kinda dominate because most people, really have no idea what the true value is of their work. And so if you can present that kinda clearly, and like in words people understand, for example, in design and development, there’s all these terms and even copywriting, there’s all these like, vague industry terms, like for example, those new [exs], there’s you know, uhm, Ruby on Rails, PHP, there’s all these different, this jargon, right? And it’s the same in copywriting, like uh, headlines, you know, subheads, and all these other industry jargon, and what I find is like a lot of times the people who are struggling, they kind of rely on this stuff, like as a crutch, like, hey I’m a U-ex researcher, and to the client you’re not that thing, you are, you’re the person, that like, updates their website, or like decides what to put on their website right? And so I think becoming a lot clearer about like the way you communicate with people, like realize that that client hasn’t studied copywriting for five years, so they, so if you try selling them in a way that talks about copywriting, it’s gonna go over their head, and you’re not gonna present your value. Uhm, so yeah, I mean, I don’t think it has to be quite so like, you have to niche down and only focus on one thing, but if you do that it does allow you to kind of uh, anchor on that, and if it’s something people understand like autoresponders or uhm, if they’re looking for that thing in specific, it is gonna, it’s gonna help you a lot in terms of, of, of the value you present.

John McIntyre: Right.

Robert Williams: Uhm.

John McIntyre: Right. So this is the question of empathy of like, people are gonna take, before you, you know, if you’re gonna talk to someone you really have to communicate on their level which requires, what is the fast thing you know, like, copywriting, cause writing a cold email, which essentially is copywriting,   it’s not so much the words you put in there, it’s about understanding, there’s not like a perfect set of words or a perfect template.

Robert Williams: Yeah.

John McIntyre: It’s just about understanding, having empathy for who you’re trying to talk to and really understanding them, and the language they’re gonna use, and what their needs, wants, dreams, and desires are.

Robert Williams: Yeah, exactly. That’s, that’s kind of the key to unlocking any type of customer, right? It’s understanding them and what I always say, anything that you come up with is not gonna be as good as, at selling to selling to a customer, than as something they came up with. So if you’re contacting somebody like with a job posting, that wrote, they literally wrote what they want, and what they’re looking for in the job post, so looking and pulling phrases from a job post, is almost always gonna be, resonate with the people you’re emailing ten times more because they wrote those words and said, I want this, or this is, you know, or extracting form their words what they’re looking for, uhm, that’s often times like enough to uh, to kinda go off on a cold email.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: Cause a lot of times freelancers kinda get hung up, there’s no, there’s no business name, there’s no blog, you know, I don’t know enough about the client to email them, I don’t have enough, uhm, it’s too vague, and if you look at their job post, they’re saying, okay I want this website because of this, and uhm, can you help me with this specific issue I’m having. It’s like, if they’re having this technical issue, or they’re not getting enough uh, uh leads coming in the door, then it’s pretty clear like what the, what the benefit is that you’re gonna be selling them, and that’s all you really need to have in the email.

John McIntyre: Interesting.

Robert Williams: And kind of reflecting their words is always gonna be uh, more powerful.

John McIntyre: Absolutely. That’s the key. That is the key. So let’s sum it up then, and uh, then we’ll wrap it up. Sounds like, you’re gonna write email, obviously, you need to figure out what, how you’re gonna stand out. Basically, you’ll just be solving your own problems, so go and figure out what your clients want, what your prospects want, what those leads want, and work those things into the email, and if you can, you can get the actual phrases that have used in ,you know, job advertisements, that kind of thing in there. And then when it comes to actually writing the email, you need some sort of attention getting headline, which is pretty standard, and then the email should be fairly short and to the point, and have a very clear call to action on what they should do next, if they’re interested in talking with you.

Robert Williams: Yeah, yeah. And I think one big key here, that we should, we should kinda go over or kinda mention again, is removing you from the email, so it’s not at all about you, like, I almost always recommend that any sentence that starts with like, “I” or that has “me” in it or “my company” or “what I do,” uhm, that be replaced with the word “you” in it, and it kinda forces you to no longer talk about yourself, and talk about the other person, or if you’re gonna talk about yourself, talk about it in terms of what the other person’s gonna get. And there’s a few examples in the book, there’s actually a ton of different, like, every kind of concept we talked about it, there’s a specific example for each one. And so, so yeah, that’s kind of the, the, the one thing I think we should underline here is taking yourself out, like it’s not about you, the email you’re sending isn’t about you, it’s about the person you’re emailing. And the only goal you have in the cold email, there’s one thing you want, and that’s for the person to reply to the email. Anything that doesn’t help get a reply to the email is a, is a, is, should be eliminated completely from the email. So if you’re showing your portfolio, if you’re, you know, if you’re trying to exhibit like some charm or some wit in your email, you know, all these different things people feel like they have to do in an email, like introduce my company, uh, link my website, none of that stuff is gonna help you get a reply to the email, so it should be eliminated uhm, completely.

John McIntyre: Nice, nice. I love that. So let’s wrap it up. Hey man, we’re right on time. Before we go though, tell me uh, tell the listeners a little bit about Emails That Win, Emails That Win New Clients, and what they’re gonna learn in the book.

Robert Williams: So it’s basically what we talked about today, but uhm, it’s kind of like in chronological order, so it’s like, how to start writing an email, how to, you know, write your first few words down, how to write the subject is at the beginning, and then how to close the email is at the end. How to, how to end it, and how to have a real strong call to action is at the end, so you can basically uhm, open it up with, you know, if you’re on Gmail writing your email, you can open up the book, and kinda go step by step, kinda like a checklist of like, okay here’s how I should start it, here’s how, here’s what should be in the middle, kinda work it off of that. And it talks completely about everything we mentioned today and it breaks down every concept we’ve talked about, uhm, and how to do it specifically. You know, how to start an email, how to start,how to not babble, how to not send unsolicited crap emails, how to get to the point, how, how to not uh, ramble, how to write very clearly, how to come up with the call to action that’s gonna entice them to reply, and uhm, all the different stuff you should focus on when you’re writing it. So uhm, I designed it basically for the freelancers in, on my list, that I’ve worked with for the past year, uhm, on writing better emails. And I think, one thing we don’t really notice is that how many, how much time we dedicate to writing emails, so I always think back to like, if you saw a 5% increase in the quality of the emails you send, that would mean like, 5% more replies, that would mean 5% more clients, 5% more upsells, it would kind of just explode your business because we kind of think emails happen behind the doors, or behind the scenes, and it’s really not the case, like most business happens through email. And so yeah, so I think a 5% increase in the quality of emails you send, is, would be very modest for, for reading the book, and if you applied every principle in it. Just because the quality of emails that people send are so bad, uhm, I know copywriters are a little better, but it’s uhm, I think you know, as far as what I’ve seen with the freelancers I’ve worked with, they’ve started sending you know, 50, 75% better email and they get twice as many replies as they were getting or more, so, uhm, so I mean, yeah, that’s the basic uh, gist of the book and everything.

John McIntyre: I like-

Robert Williams: Uhm.

John McIntyre: I like-, emailsthatwin.com right?

Robert Williams: Yeah, it’s on emailsthatwin.com and the other service that I have is Workshop, it’s on let’sworkshop.com.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Robert Williams: Uhm, and that’s the newsletter. So I appreciate you letting me come on and discussing this with me, I think it’s something that needs to be talked about a little more, so I appreciate this.

John McIntyre: Good stuff, man. Well I had a blast, it’s very interesting to talk about. Thank you for coming on the show. What I’ll do is uh, I’ll have links to emailsthatwin.com and letsworkshopcom on themcmethod.com and the show notes for this episode, so uh, feel free to get the links. They’re very, they should easy to remember, so hopefully we’ll get you some, people should go in, and yeah, if you’re struggling with cold emails, you need a hand, I will go and get Robert’s book for sure, and I’m also interested in checking out this letsworkshop, that gets leads mailed to you. Cool, man. Thanks for coming on the show.

Robert Williams: Yeah, thanks again.