ListKit

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We get asked all the time… > "Can I filter ListKit for people who are looking to raise funds?" > "What about people who are looking to hire salespeople?" And the short answer is, with our current B2B search… No, you can't. But… People are mind blown when I tell them: Your cold email scripts can act as a filter! For example… "Hey Christian, I noticed you're in charge of ListKit's operations. Are you guys looking to raise funding right now?” Reason I ask is because we're looking to invest in early stage startups right now" Or: "Hey are you guys hiring for salespeople right now? I have 2 AEs that each have 3 years of experience at enterprise SaaS companies, and I think they'd be a perfect fit at ListKit." If you've been having trouble filtering for something when you're building a leads list, just open your cold email by ASKING a question that'll do the filtering for you.

B2B companies often put their business in this mental box to where they can only service this one specific type of company. This is silly, unless it 100% does NOT work elsewhere. Example: 'I only work with supplement Shopify stores that do $150k/m and are based in the USA.' Very small TAM. ListKit and any other data provider on the planet CANNOT invent TAM. It can only pull TAM that exists. Your 2 options: > Expand your TAM > Send lower volume and accept it Why can't you work with ANY Shopify store doing $150k/m, or even $50k/m for that matter? Is servicing a supplement Shopify store really that different to servicing beauty or fashion Shopify stores? Have you ever consistently closed supplement Shopify stores that do $150k/m based in the USA over cold traffic? Do you really think putting 'supplement Shopify stores' on your landing page vs 'Shopify stores' will be the magic pill to you signing clients vs not? If the answer is no (which in most instances it is), you are handicapping yourself. By all means, run a specific campaign to this market. But limiting yourself to ONLY this one area isn't ideal - from not only an outbound perspective, but business perspective as a whole.

As cold email gets more competitive, the best thing you can do is learn to cold call. You are way more likely to outlast competitors if you cold email AND cold call. "But how can I get a prospect's phone number?" Easy: listkit.io/phone-numbers

The more specific you can be with you who target and how you position your offer, the better your cold email campaign results. If you're reaching out to plumbers in your local area, it would make a lot sense to include a case study of another plumber you were able to help generate leads for. But what if you don't have such a specific case study? Well, then it comes down to how you position it. If you're targeting HVAC companies, but you've only worked with plumbers, then you can say that you've helped companies in the home services space increase their sales pipeline. Sure, it's not as specific, but it's still quite relevant. So think of the different angles you can take with your existing case studies and see how you can make them touch home with your prospect.

The surest way to get no replies to your cold email is by sending one that is six or seven paragraphs long where you boast about your accomplishments and the years of experience you have in a specific industry. You may thing you're helping the prospect with all the info. But that huge wall of text just ends up overwhelming them. So what you want to do instead is keep your email short and concise. Your email must be 50 words or less, and must cover two essential points: Your offer and a relevant case study that will appeal to the prospect. Sure, you can also start your email with a personalized line, but that's as far as you're allowed to go. Everything beyond that is just fluff.

Your B2B data provider is ripping you off. And they're well-aware of that: B2B data providers often sell email addresses and other contact info advertised as 'pre-verified' and 'ready to contact.' But our data shows otherwise. The ListKit team ran an email verification test on emails exported from popular B2B data providers And discovered that, on average, 28% of these email addresses don't exist. So every time you export contacts from these providers, you: ↳ Lose $0.28 for every dollar you spend ↳ Waste even more money on verifying email addresses using third-party tools ↳ Risk getting your domain flagged if you accidently contact unverified leads However, when you switch to ListKit, these problems disappear. All email addresses you export from the ListKit database are Triple-Verified before you receive them. Which means you don’t ever have to worry about manually verifying emails or cleaning spreadsheets. If you want to learn more about what sets ListKit apart from other data providers on the market, check out our Comparison page: listkit.io/comparison

Every successful cold email angle falls into one of four buckets: 1) One sentence cold email This works extremely well if you can ask a relevant question to a prospect that can be answered with a yes or a no. "If we can get you 10 qualified sales calls, would that be worth learning more about?" The whole point of the one sentence cold email is you want to get people intrigued by what you're asking to the point where they start to research you, look up your company, and see what you do. 2) Loom video pitch Instead of going straight for the call, pitch a loom video in your CTA to open a conversation. "We can get you 10 qualified sales calls per month on a pay-per-performance basis. Mind if I share a quick video explaining how it works?" You're essentially providing free value with a Loom video to win them over and convince them to hop on a call. 3) Direct pitch With the direct pitch, you get straight to the point rather than beat around the bush. "Hey, I'll cut the BS and get right to it. I respect your time. I can get you five new clients per month from Facebook ads guaranteed, or you don't pay. We recently worked with Client Ascension on their ads, and they signed six or seven clients at 10k each as a result. Would you be open to a quick phone call to learn how we can help you do the same?" People are sick of the templated AI pitches...so it’s always worth testing an angle that gets right to the point - especially if you have a unique offer. 4) Case study If you have a strong track record delivering great results for your clients, leverage your case studies in your email. "Hey, love the work you do with Client Ascension. I recently helped ListKit generate 100 sales calls in 90 days with my organic content strategy, and I can help you do the same. Mind if I send over more information?" No need to overthink this part. If you have good client results, use them!

The quickest way to increase your booked call rate: Cold call repliers to your cold email. Cold email is a game of volume and speed. The most successful cold emailers are not only sending thousands of emails daily, but also replying to their prospects instantly. But how should you reply to prospects that show interest in your offer? Traditionally, you'd reply to the prospect by asking them when would they be available for a call or emailing them your Calendly link. However, many prospects go AFK and don't end up booking after you email them. So how do you avoid that from happening? @sdrwhisperer gave us an answer. In our recent interview with him, Dylan mentioned a more efficient way of booking people in for calls with cold email. Dylan suggests that instead of replying to your prospect through email, you pick up the phone and book them for a sales call. By using this method, Dylan books 40-60 sales calls per month for his agency. You can check out our full interview with Dylan to learn how to book more calls through cold outreach: youtube.com/watch?v=K8a5Hj…

Here’s a common mistake we’ve seen people make time and time again with cold email: Someone gets stuck in the “online marketing bubble”, their cold emails start to sound like everyone else’s, and their own personality slowly starts to get filtered out of their emails. Of course, you should cater your cold email messaging to the industry you’re reaching out to, but everyone appreciates personality. In fact, here’s another great way to proofread your copy: Ask yourself, "Would I say this to someone at a bar?" If you approached someone at a networking event and said "I'm very impressed by your achievements thus far at ListKit, keep up the great work!" They'd never want to speak to you again. Instead… "Hey I'm super impressed by what you've built with ListKit" Much better. Build your next lead list, write your next cold email campaign with this mindset, and see how it impacts your results!

Most people underestimate the power of simply asking questions with your cold emails. For example, someone in our coaching program Client Ascension asked me "How do I filter for people who have bad PR articles on Google?" And I replied…”Just ask them” E.g. "Hey do you have any bad press you want removed from Google?" It instantly filters prospects based on whether they have that pain point or not. An even better way to do this would be by using ListKit’s intent data: 1) Use the intent filters to find indications they could be interested in your offer 2) Further, qualify them by asking them directly in your cold email E.g. Find a software that helps companies find sales reps, and create a lead list of companies that searched for that software. In your cold email you can ask: “Saw you signed up to {X}, are you currently hiring sales reps?” It’s hyper-personalized AND it comes across as an organic question, so you’re very likely to get a response. Use Intent Data when you build your next lead list and use a qualifying question to get them interested right away!

The biggest benefit of cold email is that it’s the only marketing channel with an immediate feedback loop. If you run paid ads, no one is commenting on your paid ads with “no thanks” or “stop”… You just wind up with a $2,000 bill from Meta with nothing to show for it. If you tease a new offer to your personal network, their feedback is always going to be slightly biased. With cold email, you’re reaching out to strangers who have no pre-existing opinion on you or your business, and this makes the feedback reliable. Here’s how you can take advantage of this: 1) Use it to test new offers immediately Scrape a list, write some copy and set a campaign live within 2 hours of coming up with a new offer. You’ll get immediate validation on your offer. 7-figure business models can be birthed from cold email. On the other hand, bad ideas can be instantly disproved without wasting months of time and effort coming to that conclusion. 2) A/B test scripts You can find winning variations rapidly by always A/B testing. Once you find a winner don’t stop, continue to A/B test new variations. 3) Scale fast Once you identify a winning cold email angle, you can scale immediately. Simply add more ListKit leads to your campaigns and increase total volume with more domains!

When we first thought of the idea for ListKit, it wasn’t some grand scheme to dethrone Apollo as the kings of the data space… It was actually because we’d sent out a cold email campaign with the wrong name replacements… So every single prospect in the campaign was addressed by the wrong first name. We'd just spent more than 4 hours formatting a list of leads for a cold email campaign... Cleaning the data line by line... FINALLY hit start on the campaign, And was ready to start booking calls for our client. We checked the inbox just to make sure everything was looking good, when our hearts sunk... The very first email we sent out used the subject, "Quick question, Andrew" But the prospect's name was Jeff. We knew it immediately. We deleted part of a row in our spreadsheet so some of the data shifted down a row but others stayed where they were... So when we launched the emails, The names, emails, and company names were all mixed up... And every single email being sent out had incorrect text replacements. This is how our idea for ListKit was born. Why are we spending hours on end formatting spreadsheets, verifying emails, and doing a bunch of grunt work... Just to have ALL of it go to shit anyways because one row got shifted up? So we sat down, systemized this entire process, and the original ListKit service was born in 2021. We spent the next 2 and a half years developing the SaaS product you see today, and we're working tirelessly to improve the product... And leave a great impression on the people ListKit was born in the first place. YOU - the agency owner, SDR, AE, BDR, small business owner, SaaS founder... We want to make list building as easy as humanly possible for you, and we'll continue rolling out product updates to make good on that promise.

When we first launched ListKit last summer, we were able to scale it from 0 -> 100k MRR in 90 days with 0 ad spend. We got a ton of early traction from our audience and word of mouth, but a lot of our customer acquisition came from cold email... 685 booked sales calls to be exact. Wanna know the exact strategy we used? Asking prospects if they want 50 free leads from our database. That's it. Here's the CTA that generated 100s of sales calls for us: "I put together 50 sample leads from our database, mind if I send them over?" Once the prospect said yes, I'd have my team put together 50 leads based on their ICP, then send the list over for them to check out. To convert that prospect to a booked call, they'd be enrolled in a subsequence that went something like this... "Now that you've had the chance to check out the 50 sample leads, how does tomorrow or Monday work for a quick call to get a full demo of our platform and set up a package that fits your needs?" A free lead magnet is so powerful over cold email because it builds trust with the prospect and allows you to showcase your abilities to the prospect before a sales call is ever booked. Workshop your offer, figure out what you can offer as a free lead magnet, and start pitching it over cold email - and watch how much your reply rate improves!

When we launched ListKit last August, we scaled it from 0-100k MRR in 90 days… With zero ad spend, and zero outside funding. How? Organic word of mouth, and mass-volume cold email campaigns. We generated 100s of demos from cold email in those first 3 months, and those demos led to sign-ups, organic search traffic, and plenty of free word-of-mouth advertising for us. I want to let you in on a little secret: Cold email didn’t work too well for us at first. I had to test dozens of different angles to find a winner, and it took a few weeks to land on a winner. The winning angle that still converts to this day: “I put together 50 sample leads based on the case studies on your website. Mind if I share the list here?” Incredibly simple, and very effective. Guess what? I would’ve never discovered this angle if we just gave up and shut campaigns off. This is why you need to think of cold email as a continuous marketing channel that never gets turned off, even if you need to spend a few weeks testing new angles and new iterations of your strategy. Would you turn referrals off, even if you didn’t get a referral for 3 weeks? No. Would you disable your website if you haven’t had any inbound leads this month? No. Yet I see people throw in the towel on cold email and write it off as an acquisition channel way too soon. Reframe your mindset around cold email, keep your campaigns permanently running, and use it as a massive acquisition asset for your business!

Last summer, we scaled ListKit from 0 to a 7-figure business in 90 days, primarily using cold email as an acquisition method. Here’s the breakdown of our cold email campaigns: 300 domains. 71,696 total leads contacted. More than 150,000 total prospects loaded into the campaign. Now, do you need to have 300 domains and purchase a list of 100k leads? Of course not. We didn’t start out with 300 domains and 100,000 prospects loaded into our campaigns. We started slow, with 20 email accounts and 5,000 prospects, until we found a winning strategy. Once we landed on a winning strategy, we scaled our campaigns up to what you see in that screenshot. You’d be shocked at the simplicity of our strategy: “Hey I noticed you’re involved in COMPANY’s sales process. We have a database of 500 million email leads in a database. I put together 50 sample leads for you to take a look at, mind if I share them with you here?” Once we send over the 50 free leads, we follow up with them to get the sales call booked. The best part about cold email is once you find a winning strategy, you can scale your campaigns as far as you want. Let’s say you’re booking 5 calls per 1,000 prospects you reach out to, and you want to scale to 50 calls. The next step is simple: Reach out to 10x more prospects, and you should book 10x more calls. It’s infinitely scalable, and it’s predictable.

The most overlooked (yet one of the most important) aspects of cold email, by far is... How strong is your personal brand on the Internet? Why? Because when a prospect gets a cold email from you, they're going to do some research on you. Go to your website, Google you, look you up on LinkedIn, YouTube, etc... And if you're a ghost on the internet, you're seriously hurting your chances at getting a reply from that prospect. Take ListKit for example. If you Google ListKit right now, you'll see our website. And our LinkedIn. And Twitter. And YouTube videos of other people reviewing ListKit. And our TrustPilot. And our G2 reviews. You get the point. If someone wants to learn more about ListKit, they can find endless amounts of content from a simple Google search. Is this true for you too? If not, this is your sign to start posting content on social media, collect reviews and testimonials from happy customers, and add a video sales letter to your website if you don't have one yet.

Mistake #1 - Not Pitching A Tangible Benefit One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with their cold email campaigns, time and time again, is selling things that people don't want to buy. For example: "We can supercharge your marketing with our End-to-End Advertising System" Hate to break it to you - but prospects don't wake up every day wondering how they can "supercharge their marketing." Instead: "We can add 30 SQLs to your sales team's CRM each month - and if we can't get you 30 SQLs you don't pay." Much better. So what's the disconnect here? People test cold email copy based on their own biases and assumptions, rather than what the market is actually looking for. And 10 times out of 10, the market is looking for something tangible, and easy to conceptualize. A few good examples: 15 booked sales calls per month 1 million views on YouTube 10k in revenue Notice how there's no guesswork here. The same also goes for your call-to-actions. The best CTAs I've seen over the past few months all pitch something tangible, like a Loom video, free sample, portfolio of your work, or a few ideas you had for the prospect. Go look at your cold email scripts through this lens, tweak them if you aren't pitching a TANGIBLE benefit, and watch your reply rates skyrocket.

We get asked all the time... "Can I filter ListKit for people who are looking to raise funds?" "What about people who are looking to hire salespeople?" And the short answer is, with our current B2B search... No, you can't. But... People are mind blown when we tell them: Your cold email scripts can act as a filter! For example... "Hey Christian, I noticed you're in charge of ListKit's operations. Are you guys looking to raise funding right now? Reason I ask is because we're looking to invest in early stage startups right now" Or: "Hey are you guys hiring for salespeople right now? I have 2 Account Executives that each have 3 years of experience at enterprise SaaS companies, and I think they'd be a perfect fit at ListKit." If you've been having trouble filtering for something when you're building a leads list, just open your cold email by ASKING a question that'll do the filtering for you.

Wanna know the best part about cold email? You could get laughably bad results, and still produce an ROI. For example, let's say you send 5,000 emails, book 3 calls, and close 1 deal. Assuming your client LTV is $5k, you're still seeing a massive return on those 5,000 emails sent - even with just 3 calls booked. Even though cold email is by far the most cost effective marketing channel, we still get a lot of questions about expected results and ROI. Here are answers to our most frequently asked questions: “How many meetings am I going to get?” The number of calls you book is entirely dependent on how good your offer is, how saturated your market is, how high of a level of authority you have in the market, how good your cold email copy is, and how many case studies you have on your website / YouTube channel. "So how many new clients will I sign?” It can range from 0, to as high as 10 or 20 deals per month with the best companies. It’s also totally possible that you could get zero results if you don't have the right strategy in place. However, once you do have the right strategy in place, cold email scales in a linear fashion. If you're closing 1 deal per 1,000 emails, it's safe to assume you can scale your campaigns to 5,000 emails per month and close 5 deals... 10,000 emails for 10 deals... and so on. “How many meetings am I going to get in the first month?” Once again, impossible to tell because you need to have the right strategy in place. We've had instances where it's taken us 2 months to test out strategies, then in month 3 we found a winning angle and booked 15 sales calls that month. We've had instances where our first test was a winner, and we booked 10 sales calls in month 1. All comes down to how many variants you're testing, and a willingness to see things through rather than testing one strategy and saying "cold email doesn't work." Since cold email is inexpensive to run, you can easily afford a 3-4 month runway to test new strategies and find a winner, unlike ads.

The biggest question I get after cold email campaigns are launched is... "How many emails should I send before I switch up my strategy?" And to be honest, there isn't a right or wrong answer. We always recommend contacting at least 500 to 1000 prospects per angle before you decide to switch your strategy. Here’s the process we recommend following: 1) Start off by writing 2 different cold email angles to A/B test (we provide proven frameworks in our FREE cold email course in Skool) 2) Run each angle through AT LEAST 500 prospects 3) Take the winning angle and write another angle to A/B test it against 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 forever The most important part of A/B testing is that there's really no "end" to it. Even if your campaigns are performing well, you should make it a game to keep trying to outperform your best cold email angle. Test new subject lines, new CTAs, throw in a guarantee, try out a new case study... The options with A/B testing are unlimited, so you have plenty to work with!