6,337 Cold Emails Reveal What Actually Gets Replies (And Backlinks) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00This is a link building question SEOs
2. 0:02keep asking. What makes link outreach
3. 0:05actually get replies? This was asked on
4. 0:07the SEO growth subreddit. I'm going to
5. 0:09share the answers, then I'm going to
6. 0:10share this magnificent post in the
7. 0:13public relations subreddit with really
8. 0:16solid advice about how to do cold
9. 0:18outreach. And this is coming from
10. 0:19somebody I do a lot of cold outreach.
11. 0:21I'm very good at it. And seeing such a
12. 0:24great breakdown, I just I feel like I
13. 0:26have to share this. So this original
14. 0:28post is this person asking, "I've been
15. 0:29thinking about how much the outreach
16. 0:32message itself affects response rates. A
17. 0:34highly relevant prospect can still
18. 0:36ignore an email if the message feels too
19. 0:38generic or immediately looks like a mass
20. 0:41outreach campaign." By the way, tell me
21. 0:43if you have been through this cuz I'm
22. 0:44sure that you have. Every even me and
23. 0:47I'm legendary at messaging people, have
24. 0:49still been like, "Why is this person
25. 0:51ignoring me?" It can be very
26. 0:52frustrating. In my own outreach, I found
27. 0:54that keeping the message focused and
28. 0:56making it clear why I'm reaching out
29. 0:58seems to matter more than making it
30. 1:00overly detailed. For those doing
31. 1:02outreach regularly, what tends to make
32. 1:04the biggest difference for you?
33. 1:05Personalization, the offer itself, the
34. 1:08subject line, or the follow-up process?
35. 1:10Top comment on this, one of the best
36. 1:12ways to build links is to provide
37. 1:14something of value to the people you
38. 1:16contact. Think about helping them, not
39. 1:19asking for favors. If you want to link
40. 1:21from somebody, send them a blog that
41. 1:23doesn't just link back to your site.
42. 1:25Instead, ensure it provides useful
43. 1:28content and SEO value to their site as
44. 1:30well. Too many dead links hurt a site,
45. 1:33so if you find one and I have content on
46. 1:35your own to serve as a relevant source
47. 1:37of information, you can do more than ask
48. 1:40them to insert your link. You can let
49. 1:42them know about the problems that 404
50. 1:44links can cause them, then pitch a
51. 1:46replacement link as a solution that
52. 1:48happens to also benefit you. The thing
53. 1:50is you really need to, I would say
54. 1:52personalization is incredibly important
55. 1:54because people with websites or people
56. 1:57who are somewhat popular, they get
57. 1:59backlink requests all day. You need to
58. 2:02stand out. This is another commenter who
59. 2:04said, "Subject line gets it opened, but
60. 2:06the first sentence decides if they keep
61. 2:09reading." That's really true. If that
62. 2:10first line is clearly a template, then
63. 2:13it is over. That is true as well. The
64. 2:15rest barely matters at that point. So
65. 2:17many people use these terrible obvious
66. 2:20templates. If you want to get your
67. 2:22emails ignored, use a template. If you
68. 2:23don't want to get your emails ignored,
69. 2:25highly personalize your requests to the
70. 2:28person you're messaging. I also like
71. 2:30this angle of saying how detrimental 404
72. 2:34links can be, even if you have to
73. 2:36exaggerate it a little bit. The last
74. 2:38comment on this before I share the
75. 2:39public relations post is, "I would rank
76. 2:42them like this. Offer is number one,
77. 2:44then recipient, then timing, then copy.
78. 2:47The fastest diagnostic is to group your
79. 2:50last 50 emails by ask and count positive
80. 2:53replies, not total replies. Can I write
81. 2:56a guest post and please add my link are
82. 2:59weak asks. A correction, missing source,
83. 3:02or original statistic gives the editor a
84. 3:04reason to act now. Improve the offer
85. 3:07before the subject line." Somebody
86. 3:09actually sent me an article that they
87. 3:11wrote, and I didn't even respond to
88. 3:13them, but I'm going to cover the article
89. 3:14on this podcast and share the article or
90. 3:17or I'm going to make I'm going to make a
91. 3:18social media video about it. But the
92. 3:20person wrote a very personalized message
93. 3:23to me, and that actually caused me to
94. 3:26click on their link in the email because
95. 3:28it felt very relevant and appropriate to
96. 3:31me. Person figured out what I like, what
97. 3:33I don't like, sent me a catered email,
98. 3:36and I said, "Okay, this is useful. I
99. 3:38want I'm going to check this out." This
100. 3:40is the public relations post that is so
101. 3:42good. It's called "Breaking into PR is
102. 3:45mostly a cold outreach problem. I
103. 3:47analyzed the results from 6,337
104. 3:50cold emails." Posting this because how
105. 3:53do I break into PR with no contacts
106. 3:55comes up here every week. The honest
107. 3:58answer is it's a cold outreach problem
108. 4:00more than a CV problem. The biggest one
109. 4:03was length. All right, listen carefully.
110. 4:05Please listen carefully. Emails under
111. 4:07100 words got an 11.9%
112. 4:11reply rate. The 100 to 200 word ones
113. 4:14dropped to 1.9%
114. 4:17and anything past 200 words was
115. 4:20basically dead at 0.3%.
116. 4:23That's about a sixfold gap and it runs
117. 4:26against the usual advice to write a
118. 4:29proper considered email. The short ones
119. 4:31read like a real person asking one clear
120. 4:34thing. The long ones read like someone
121. 4:37trying to prove they belong. 60 to 90
122. 4:40words was the sweet spot. I'm going to
123. 4:41say this again. I'm going to make a
124. 4:43short-form video about this. This is
125. 4:44huge. Cold outreach emails under 100
126. 4:47words got an 11.9% reply rate. 100 to
127. 4:51200 words drops all the way down to only
128. 4:551.9% reply rate. Anything past 200 words
129. 4:59gets a 0.3%
130. 5:02reply rate. If you receive a lot of
131. 5:04emails, you know that's true. Your eyes
132. 5:06glaze over if you see a lot of words. If
133. 5:09you see one or two or three sentences,
134. 5:12you're a lot more likely to read it.
135. 5:13Next paragraph in this, who you email
136. 5:15mattered nearly as much. People wrote to
137. 5:18directors and managers roughly three
138. 5:20times more often than CEOs and founders
139. 5:23and that's the right instinct. At any
140. 5:25firm past about 50 people, the team lead
141. 5:28is the one who actually decides, not the
142. 5:30CEO and not a generic press or careers
143. 5:33inbox. One reply from the person who'd
144. 5:36actually manage you beats 50
145. 5:37applications into a portal. Going
146. 5:40straight to the top only really paid off
147. 5:42at very small shops. That makes sense
148. 5:45too because the small organizations are
149. 5:47the ones where the CEOs will be more
150. 5:50involved in the day-to-day. But if it's
151. 5:53big, yeah, you got to reach the right
152. 5:55person. Follow-ups did more than I
153. 5:57expected. A single email landed about
154. 6:004.1% replies. Adding one follow-up a few
155. 6:04days later took it to 6.6%."
156. 6:07Oh, wow. So, roughly a 60% lift from one
157. 6:10extra message. "Two follow-ups was the
158. 6:13ceiling at around 6.9%."
159. 6:16Anything past that just irritates
160. 6:18people, which any PR person who's been
161. 6:20chased by a bad sales rep already knows.
162. 6:23God, this is such a good post. Two
163. 6:26follow-ups is the max. "Subject lines
164. 6:29went the same as bodies. Shorter one,
165. 6:31under 30 characters, opened at 83.7%
166. 6:35against 69.5%
167. 6:38for the long ones. And putting an actual
168. 6:40number in the subject was the single
169. 6:42best performing pattern we saw. Timing,
170. 6:45for what it's worth, favored Tuesday and
171. 6:47Wednesday over Thursday and Friday." Oh
172. 6:50my gosh, so tactical, so actionable.
173. 6:53Something else, you know, if if you're
174. 6:54subscribed to my newsletter, you'll
175. 6:56notice that I always do one-word subject
176. 6:58lines. I learned from the first 1,000
177. 7:01newsletter, which is about AB testing.
178. 7:03This person AB tested a bunch of
179. 7:05different tactics for newsletter
180. 7:07marketing. And he found that one-word
181. 7:10subject lines worked the best. And so, I
182. 7:12adopted that, and I AB tested against
183. 7:15one-word, two-word, three-word. One-word
184. 7:16subject lines worked the best for my
185. 7:19newsletter. "Keep your subject lines for
186. 7:21cold outreach short." I'll also
187. 7:23recommend using a tool like Yesware to
188. 7:26track email opens. Yesware is the one
189. 7:28that I use, so for me it's top of mind,
190. 7:30but there's plenty of great ones to see
191. 7:32if people are actually opening your
192. 7:34email. Something else that Yesware shows
193. 7:36is really cool, and other ones I'm sure
194. 7:38can do this, too, is if somebody
195. 7:40forwards my email to somebody, I'll see
196. 7:42it opened in all these different places
197. 7:45by all these different devices. And I
198. 7:47know if I hit a chord with the language
199. 7:50that I used. But it's also useful
200. 7:52because if somebody isn't opening your
201. 7:55email, maybe it's going to spam or
202. 7:56something, then you know to try them on
203. 7:58a different platform. You know, before
204. 8:00recommendation algorithms became so
205. 8:03popular, so the recommendation
206. 8:04algorithms on YouTube or TikTok or
207. 8:06Instagram, I still went viral many, many
208. 8:09times. And it was always from making the
209. 8:13right pitch in the right place. Well,
210. 8:15the right content and then pitching it
211. 8:17correctly in the right place. So, in
212. 8:192012, me and some friends, we walked
213. 8:22another friend through Times Square with
214. 8:25fake bodyguards and fake paparazzi, and
215. 8:28we wanted to see if we can could
216. 8:29convince everybody in Times Square that
217. 8:31my friend was an A-list movie star
218. 8:33celebrity. This format got super copied
219. 8:36after us. Lots of people did this after
220. 8:39us. We made the video, and then it was
221. 8:41up to me to make it go viral. I said
222. 8:42like, how to make this go viral? I
223. 8:44shared it on the video subreddit back in
224. 8:472012, which is one of the biggest
225. 8:49subreddits on Reddit, videos just our
226. 8:51videos. And I said something like, my
227. 8:53friend walked through Times Square with
228. 8:56fake bodyguards and fake paparazzi to
229. 8:58see if we could convince people that he
230. 9:01was an A-list celebrity. This is what
231. 9:03happened. I didn't say that I was
232. 9:05involved because I didn't want it to
233. 9:06look like first-party promotion, which
234. 9:09does a lot worse. I said, my friend, and
235. 9:11I gave this interesting story, and I put
236. 9:13it in the right place. And then the
237. 9:14video, it was crazy. A couple hours
238. 9:17later, it was number one on all of
239. 9:18Reddit. This was when the front page of
240. 9:20Reddit really meant something. And then,
241. 9:222 days later, we were going on all the
242. 9:24biggest TV shows in the United States.
243. 9:27Good Morning America, we were literally
244. 9:29on stage at Good Morning America. We're
245. 9:31flown out to Los Angeles to be on the
246. 9:33Jeff Probst Show. We were on The Today
247. 9:35Show, being written up everywhere.
248. 9:37Another time, me and a different friend,
249. 9:40we did this crazy driving stunt in New
250. 9:43York City. We made a video about it, we
251. 9:45put it on YouTube, and it sat dormant
252. 9:47for a year. Crazy stunt, crazy thing
253. 9:49that we did, sat dormant for a year,
254. 9:51nobody paid attention to it. Then a year
255. 9:54later, this was in 2009 or 2010, I
256. 9:57learned, "Oh, if you do something
257. 9:58noteworthy, you got to tell the right
258. 10:00people." because there were no
259. 10:01recommendation algorithms at the time.
260. 10:03So, I emailed journalists and tip
261. 10:06inboxes at auto blogs, and we got picked
262. 10:09up by Jalopnik, which was the biggest
263. 10:11and might still be the biggest auto
264. 10:13blog, and we were put on their front
265. 10:15page for 2 days because what we did was
266. 10:17noteworthy. I pitched it in a short way
267. 10:20to the right people, and then we went
268. 10:21viral from that. Or, this was in 2018,
269. 10:24me and my friends, we made the first
270. 10:26video game in blockchain. I've talked
271. 10:27about that before. We created this genre
272. 10:29called play-to-earn in blockchain.
273. 10:31Nobody had made video games in
274. 10:32blockchain up until this point, a real
275. 10:34video game. How was I going to spread
276. 10:36this? I found the top crypto YouTube
277. 10:39channels, and I sent them short emails
278. 10:42explaining what we did, very short, and
279. 10:44one of the biggest crypto ones picked it
280. 10:47up because people need interest and
281. 10:49content to share, to report on, and if
282. 10:52you make it easy for them to share it
283. 10:54and report on it, and you share why it
284. 10:56is relevant to them specifically, they
285. 10:59will pick it up. You know, I do this
286. 11:01show every day, I make videos for social
287. 11:03media every day, I constantly need good
288. 11:06content to share. People send me
289. 11:08templates, I ignore them. People send me
290. 11:10long emails, I ignore them. Somebody
291. 11:12sends me a one to two sentence email
292. 11:14with a link to something I'm interested
293. 11:16in, very good chance I'm going to pick
294. 11:18that up and share it. The same principle
295. 11:20applies. And you can get tons of
296. 11:22backlinks without just recommending to
297. 11:25fix broken links, and this is a
298. 11:26replacement, or we built a generic
299. 11:29mortgage calculator, something like
300. 11:31that. You can do cool things, find the
301. 11:33people who care about it, send them
302. 11:35really concise emails with a concise
303. 11:37subject line, personalize emails, and
304. 11:40have cold outreach work for you. And
305. 11:43that, ladies and gentlemen, is
306. 11:45everything that I got for you on this
307. 11:48episode of the show. I've been doing
308. 11:51marketing and SEO for a long time. I
309. 11:53found the method of search engine
310. 11:55optimization that works best for sales,
311. 11:58for getting paying customers, users,
312. 12:00warm leads calling you on the phone, and
313. 12:01I share that in my SEO course compact
314. 12:04keywords compactkeywords.com.
315. 12:06It's about how to find the keywords
316. 12:07people are searching when they are
317. 12:08looking to convert, when they are
318. 12:10looking to buy, to use something, to
319. 12:12make a call. How to target these
320. 12:14keywords with conversion-based SEO
321. 12:16landing pages, how to structure your
322. 12:18site for these pages, 2 hours on tons of
323. 12:20different link-building methods,
324. 12:21examples in every niche, templates,
325. 12:24Google Docs, Google Sheets, step-by-step
326. 12:26breakdowns, everything is in this
327. 12:28course. You're going to love it. Again,
328. 12:30that's at compactkeywords.com, and this
329. 12:32is episode 1,194
330. 12:35of the podcast. 1,194
331. 12:39days in a row doing this show. I'm
332. 12:40recording this on a lovely Saturday
333. 12:43morning here in New York City, my home,
334. 12:46with a mostly finished cup of coffee,
335. 12:48and I'm feeling so good. I hope you're
336. 12:50feeling good, too. If you watch this on
337. 12:51YouTube, thank you so much for watching.
338. 12:53If you listened on Spotify or Apple
339. 12:55Podcasts, thank you so much for
340. 12:57listening, and I will talk to you again
341. 12:59tomorrow. Bye now.