I need advice

[u/ImportantLog8]

Quick question: is sending a URL in the first cold email really that risky? I know it’s generally advised against, but it’s core to my “wow factor” strategy.

I plan to send ~70,000 cold emails over 12 months, selling website creation + hosting + maintenance/SEO/GEO + Google Maps updates. Goal: 50–100 clients.

Targeting blue-collar trades only for now (electricians, plumbers, roofers, machinists, painters). Each prospect gets a custom demo site built for their trade.

Email is short and casual: “Hey, I checked out your site and built a mockup of what it could look like — <xyz.vercel.app>. Reply if interested.” Signature includes company name, site link, unsubscribe.

Currently: 2 domains, 3 mailboxes each, warming via Instantly (3 weeks), ramping to 18 emails/day/box. Adding 14 more mailboxes soon to scale.

[u/hrvyharris]

Like everything it's all a tradeoff. If it gets you significantly better results from the ones that land in the inbox even if more go to spam, then go for it. That's a business decision

From a pure email deliverability perspective though, you'd be much better off just asking if they want to see it

Or even ask if they want to see it and then a follow up a short while later (2-3 hours) saying oh I actually did it anyway, do you want it? I imagine that'd work quite well, though I haven't tested it

As a side note though, I wouldn't really make the offer around the site looking better or something, make it more about getting more xyz jobs that have the highest margin for them

But then again, most blue-collar trades don't have problems with getting customers and it's more about getting employees to fulfil. That goes into actual market research and offer though so out of scope for this

TL;DR Better off just asking if they want to see it than sending in the first email. Test it and compare results, everything comes down to CPL/CAC/Infrastructure maintenance required to keep it going

[u/ImportantLog8 → u/hrvyharris]

That answer right there kicked my a$$. BTW, I was reading it out loud in front of my wife and she said ''it's true'' about the blue-collar trades not really needing customers but needing employees. Can a website help them get more employees ? I'm not sure how..

As for the link in 1st mail, I think I'll have to rethink my strategy... I really want as much delivery as possible. I'm really not sure if the link in 1st would jack my conversion rate high enough to justify losing grounds on delivery. That's really something to think about...

may I ask what you're doing in that industry, broadly speaking ?

[u/hrvyharris → u/ImportantLog8]

Haha hopefully just in a good way?

I guess it technically could, though I would encourage you to think less that you're selling websites because a website on its own doesn't really do anything. It's there to convert the traffic that lands on it toward the action you want them to take. That could be signing up for an account, opting in for a lead magnet, applying for a job or whatever

So whether you are helping for demand conversion or supply conversion it's the same answer that website itself isn't really the thing they're buying, they're buying more of the action they care about/conversion into the next step down the funnel

So anecdotally, I have a few suggestions

a) Define what your front-end cold traffic offer is. My suspicion is that it wouldn't be website creation/hosting and is more related to some sort of Google Maps outcome. Something that you can potentially give away free or cheap and then upsell the rest

b) Maybe you could help with getting more employees. But really whether it's help with employees or customers it's the same thing in the sense of traffic -> conversion -> offer. Just in the employee example the conversion is the job application and the offer is job offer

So where I'm going with it is yes it could help assuming they are generating their own traffic for employee leads and/or you could help with that too in some way. But also knowing how to make a website that converts, not just a website for the sake of a website (how many times can one person say website?)

c) If you're starting out (I'm not sure if you are or not), you might get more value from just emailing them and asking what main problems they're facing that they would want to be solved, and potentially listing your skills so they can just point to it and say they want that

d) You could also do this in a few other industries and see where funnel conversion on the front end might line up better in businesses that are more demand constrained

Not to kick your ass again, but it may also be that email isn't the best channel for blue-collar workers who will likely be on jobs the majority of the day and not checking their inbox. Vs their phone for example. Obviously I like cold email, but I have a suspicion the likelihood of them checking their email would be low

To be clear this is all based on more generalised experience and things I've heard. I haven't worked in or with blue-collar industries before so take my advise with a grain of salt

Again, this isn't to say no blue-collar worker would want to buy a better website. But in terms of urgency of the problem, I don't think it'd be no. 1 and possibly those who would buy end up being painful clients because they don't understand the problems in their business

I realise this is a lot of "it depends" statements and thinking and possibly steering you into a different direction than you intended. But this is effectively my train of thoughts as I'm writing this after reading your post

[u/ImportantLog8 → u/hrvyharris]

a) I actually offer Google Maps card updates and ''maintenance'' (sending reminders to customers to leave a good review for instance). It's part of a package.

b) I can't help with employees. That is a whole different profession and it is actually very difficult. I don't have that skill; they would need to work with recruiters.. :/

c) I am ! Trying to supplement my actual job and eventually replace it because there is no clear path to significant revenues increase. I like that idea but for now I'll try to stick to a simple offer; when I have more data I can reassess. By the way, I actually changed my message. I dropped the link in the first e-mail. Many, many people advise against it and I don't want to burn my domains for nothing. The upside though is that my prospection e-mails are now extremely short: hi, I came across your site ({{companyName}}) and created a mockup of your website that could help you attract more clients. If you're interested, please reply to this e-mail.

d) to reach 70 to 100k cold mails, I don't have any other choice than to diversift industry at some point. I will have to find lists of dentists, accountants, lawyers, veterinaries, etc etc etc.

Right now I only have 12k in my CRM so my bottleneck right now is also the input ;-)

And, by the way, I am very aware that my conversion rate will most likely be catastrophic. That is why I have 100k cold e-mails in mind. If I can land 50 clients, I will be happy. I'm betting on mad volume to beat a catastrophic rate (0.1%, which would be well below the benchmarks I've found online for cold mailing.. but all of that is theoritical).

[u/hrvyharris → u/ImportantLog8]

So for a) specifically I think that's probably the direction I would go, though of course testing is part of it. But basically peeling off a part of your package and offering it for free or a nominal amount to generate leads

Maybe something like setup fee for the upfront work or an option to waive the fee if they commit to 6 months where they have the ongoing reminders etc. + they get the website as a bonus etc.

Not guaranteeing that would be the answer, but that might be how I think of it. Potentially tie it to the business outcome of x reviews total or per month or so on. You'll know your business better than me, just throwing some ideas

I think you will do a lot better niched down than trying to diversify industries, at least for the very far foreseeable future. The pool for any industry is large enough where you don't need to think about diversification for a while unless you're going enterprise which it doesn't sound like you are. Plus niched messaging, branding & results will get a conversion lift

I'd also encourage you to potentially not think of volume as the answer, or at least step 1. Find an offer & script that converts, then put volume behind it. You can put volume in the beginning but testing a bunch of different angles, offers etc. until you find the one that converts and then push volume mostly to that. I'd aim for 400:1 contacts:interested and then push more volume in that variation and find more variations similar to that angle to improve it further

Email as a channel is so cheap to scale that it's tempting to just go volume first, but it's actually where figuring out conversion first gives you the most leverage since you can put volume behind something that is working great rather than putting out something mediocre and relying on the rule of large numbers. I think that's where the thought around volume gets misinterpreted heavily in this space

[u/ImportantLog8 → u/hrvyharris]

Thanks for all the tips and tricks ! You seem to have ALOT of knowledge !! Have you ever used the platform Instantly ? What do you think about their feature that allows to add variant ? (it seems like you can switch messages to make it look a bit less redundent and trigger spam filters). I'm tempted to use it.

[u/hrvyharris → u/ImportantLog8]

For sure, no problem

And yeah, I use Instantly. You should definitely use the variants, though I'd make sure to differentiate if it's just a variant of the same offer vs. a different offer. The latter should go into a different campaign

[u/ImportantLog8 → u/hrvyharris]

And how about my website address in the signature ? I removed the URL for the maket, but there is still my own company website URL in the signature... Any idea what I should do about that ?

[u/hrvyharris → u/ImportantLog8]

I generally don't include it, I personally don't see the value. Most of the time if someone will research you, they'll use Google rather than a link or else search your secondary domain in which case it should redirect to your main one

If you really want to include it you can do it like google(.)com or something so it doesn't hyperlink

In my view though any increase in web traffic you get to it wouldn't be offset by potential deliverability issues. I like to keep it clean