So for some context - I run an IT recruitment agency, basically renting out developers to startups and SMEs in EU and UK
I don't cold email for clients or have a cold email agency - but I've scaled my business to a great lifestyle company and 6 figures profit per year with basically just cold email (and linkedin) - in probably one of the most shit difficult niches lol
Here is my game plan for 2025 (high level, then will discuss each in more details)
- Fewer Emails
- More Targetted Emails
- More automation and nurturing
1. Fewer emails
at one stage, 2-3 years ago, I had a churn and burn strat, and it worked great - pump in leads, CEO, CTO, Founder - offer them developers, wait for replies
Replace burned domains every 3 months or so - 150 email accounts, 75 domains sending 45 cold emails per day (ah those were the days, when you could do some serious numbers, btw 2-3 years before that, you could easily do 100 - 150 emails per email account)
There was no personalization, no timeliness or relevancy - its not like I saw a job post on their socials, website or job board
I just looked at their tech stack and asked if they wanted more devs in that stack
This strategy worked, until it didn't - now is the time it does not work anymore
So I am sending way fewer emails
- Only to Google inboxes, I don't email MS accounts, you just don't hit primary these days
- I send from Google, MS and Private Infra
- Only 14 cold emails per day per email account
- Only 6-10 warmup emails at 80% response rate (although I'm not very convinced of email warmup
2. More Targetted Emails
As mentioned, before it was more spray and pray, it worked, but doesn't any more - it can still work, but only for lead magnets, but you will burn your accounts, so you'll be doing the churn and burn strat
- I only send to very relevant email accounts - Companies hiring with job posts on their website, companies that recently hired, companies with growing dev teams, companies that recently had someone leave, companies with poor reviews, companies with no HR etc
- we probably do 1/8th the volume, but have more than doubled our meetings booked
- Clay really comes in clutch for this, rapidAPI and Apify too
3. More Automation and Nurturing
When a lead wasn't immediately interested, i'd just email them again in a few weeks or months, but basically just recycle them into a brand new campaign
Now
Sending leads to Hubspot, labelling what their requirements are, creating specific email campaigns, to email them, eg: hey a few months back you mentioned you might hire a C# dev, can I send you a profile I think you'd really find interesting? - then automate a subsequence with that candidate, and follow ups, to ask what they think about experience, rate, what their head count looks like, or new projects they want to start
Nurturing on LinkedIn - connect with leads, even those not interested, and just make content about recruitment and software developers - already had a lead reach back out to me and set up a call for hiring a dev
Reminders - I set reminders to follow up with leads, or automated emails to be sent to those leads in x weeks/days/months
Email marketing campaigns, I actually just set weekly or month refreshes on clay tables, that automatically then update, add the new leads, enrich and then get sent to smartlead - so I spend way less time making email campaigns - again, thank you Clay, probably its best use case is time saving lol
Anyway, I am sure there is more to be done and I'll be doing more
Curious about you guys
What did you learn from this or what are you doing with your cold email strategy?
P.S I am adding cold calling to my omni channel, but wanted to focus on Cold Email specifically
By - BoGeee
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