I recently set myself a goal to increase lead gen revenue as it had dropped off over the past few years and gone to nearly zero leading up to and after my move across the country.

If you’re a little bit like me, the revenue from the lead generation or affiliate sources can be a great side income and getting that notification email from PayPal about another payment made while you weren’t doing anything is great!

But — that’s not to say there’s no work involved — you have to create something of value and get it in front of people…specifically the right people, you know?

I won’t bore you with the details of the specific project, because what is most important is how I more than tripled my response rate from hot prospects that wanted me to reach out to them!

Now, this is always the interesting part, especially if you’re entering a new market. I had no contacts in this area (recently moved here) and haven’t worked in this industry either…so no referrals.

What to do?

Cold emailing.

Yup!

I knew going into it that I’d want automation to handle this since sending out prospecting emails is not only boring and time-consuming but I’d need to send multiple follow-ups.

Why?

Well, you have at best about a 30% chance of a response to cold email depending on how you present it and if it’s truly cold and you go straight for the sale it’s less than 1%.

However, if you continue to follow up your odds of response go up and up until you’re closer to 90% at 6+ points of contact.

90%…

That’s not a typo.

In all honesty, I didn’t even go that far, I just set up a series of 3 emails with a classic hook in the first email to greatly increase my odds of response and then set up the 2nd series of 4 emails to send to those who replied.

Interested in seeing these emails and how simple they are?

Here’s the first series of prospecting emails:

Email 1

Easy email, straight to the point and uses the great “are you accepting XXX in YYY area” formula. Good stuff.

But I’m 100% convinced that it’s the subject line that gets the open on these emails:

It’s so simple. I love it.

What’s the open rate for this email?

75%

Yeah, that’s a good way to get an open AND a reply. So good.

Ok, let’s go through the rest of the prospecting emails to see what they would be sent if they didn’t reply to this first email.

Email 2

Email 3

What did the results look like for the entire series?

Here are the overall stats:

Now, fun fact that you can’t see from the numbers above…

While I do love the first email and will use it forever, it only got about a 20% reply rate.

I say only, but that’s pretty darn good.

But that means that 80% didn’t respond within 48 hours, and most of those probably never would have.

By sending those 2 follow up emails, my reply rate was 81%!

I quadrupled the reply rate with 2 follow up emails.

Once anyone had responded to the prospecting emails, I sent them a series of follow-up emails to get them on the phone or at least respond positively via email.

So, how did this second set of emails turn out? Pretty good from my point of view:

91% open rate, 2 replies, and I’m now in conversation with 2 companies that cover a large portion of the complete metro area.

It’s this mixture of automation and initiative to set it up once and then let it run that can produce great results.

The bottom line is this — if you aren’t using the automated tools that exist for free or very low cost out there to send automated follow-ups you are throwing away money.

I said it at a recent webinar I was talking on, I get annoyed when someone sends me 1 email and then I never hear from them again.

Maybe I was busy.

Maybe the hook wasn’t right on the first email.

Send me another one! If it’s the right timing and the right offer I want you to get it in front of me and we should do the same with our automated follow-up.

You can do the same in 15 minutes writing out a few quick emails in a notepad file and then sticking them into an automated follow-up system that does the work for you, day in and day out.

If you don’t have at least 3 emails automated, you’ve got a very clear task today!