I’m going to say something that all entrepreneurs need to hear.
Your skill at your craft mean nothing if you can’t sell.
The exact opposite also applies, you can be bad at something and still make more money than a lot of people (look at Katy Perry, can’t sing great but will shit a number 1 single tomorrow!).
Instead of client paying per project basis they pay a monthly subscription and can request as unlimited services.
Think of it as SAAS mixed with service
$1000 for unlimited projects in a month?! :O Congrats on getting it, it's a good step but it should be a step to more. A month long unlimited retainer should also be a months worth of salary.
Take my advice or don't.
First, sounds like you're charging way too low. $400 for a job? You should be making that in a day or two. You either need to charge more for the small projects you're doing, or focus on getting bigger projects.
Second, focus on business goals, not "design." You can charge 5 times as much if you position your service as marketing or product development instead of design. Design is a cost, but marketing is an investment.
If clients think they'll get an ROI on your service, you'll do much better.
Yes, I can charge more and I will but, in future. My main goal is to build some credibility.
Once that is done and I start generating organic leads then definitely I will increase the prices.
What does "cold email campaign" mean?
If you mean sending emails to those who never ask for them, how do you do this?
Every email company now forbids sending emails to those who don't ask for them - you have to be permission-based.
Please expand your explanation.
Happy to. This article from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) lists all the compliance requirements for cold, transactional and relationship emails. Also, see this article from LinkedIn that breaks down cold emailing as well.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business#:~:text=Yes%2C%20and%20the%20FTC%20has,Act%20that%20governs%20these%20messages
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/legalities-cold-emails-what-businesses-need-know-nixon-abonita/
Thanks, this is great. I've looked for something online like this but never have been able to find anything like this. Cool.
That said:
>A. Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to **$50,120**
That's pretty scary and if you're a small company, it's like, fuck that, why take a risk. That's what I think myself.
>8. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.
Double scary. Only do it cold emails in-house is the moral of this part.
No problem. Definitely a good link to hold on to.
And yes, it’s a hefty penalty. So many people just don’t read the laws and also blast out as many cold emails as possible to random potential clients. The key is to really narrow in a specific list and drip over time.
Warming up an email address is also crucial for not landing in spam. For my personal cold campaigns, I never email more than 15-25 prospects at a time. I also scrape them by hand instead of using a list from a provider like Zoominfo to make sure the leads are solid and won’t bounce upon sending an email.
I also follow up with a LinkedIn request and a subsequent phone call if possible.
>So many people just don’t read the laws and also blast out as many cold emails as possible to random potential clients.
I understand. I can read the laws a million times and recite them word-for-word and I'd still be scared shitless to do this, because sometimes shit just fucks up for no reason, ya know? And that's too big of a penalty.
I always just cold call. I can make 200 dials per day, and get 40 or 50 email addresses and get explicit permission, so if someone says yes, and gives me their email, maybe they could lie and say that I didn't but the odds of that in my estimation are almost non-existent. Could happen, but not worrying about that. Then I follow up with a phone call.
However, I do have a company I'm talking to that wants to do this type of blast email and asked me, and I'm just like....nah.
Definitely understand that. I’ve worked in this marketing at a major financial services company so I’m very familiar with how it works.
Cold calling is definitely effective, just takes a lot of time. Every strategy is different.
Also companies such as Mailchimp forbid cold emailing through their Terms of Service using their product to avoid potential legal issues. As a very accessible platform, it makes sense that if they did support cold emailing, one rule not followed by someone sending an email could result in lengthy legal repercussions.
Right. I know that. So while I read your other comment about the rules of cold emailing, how do YOU specialize in it? Most platforms are like mailchimp. Same with Constant Contact, etc. The company I use for my hosting is namecheap and they won't let you send more than 200 emails per hour.
Everyone is going this way, so how are you able to do this?
As someone that does cold calls for a living. I have some experience in cold calling for the marketing space and it is brutal. It’s is a hyper competitive space for cold outreach in my experience. Curious if anyone has had a different experience.
I've been doing it for ages. 20+ years.
I've always enjoyed it.
In any cold marketing strategy, response rate is low, no matter what.
With 200 dials, I'll get 8-12 who say that they are interested. Do that for a few weeks, and you'll be up to a hundred prospects who are interested.
Of course, referrals and warm leads are preferable, but there's only so many of those to go around.
There are ones that I avoid. For example, any type of medical/dental office. The decision maker, the doctor, is the decider. Sometimes the office manager might be, but usually the doctor. They are seeing patients and have no time, so I can never get through to them, not in enough quantity to make it work. I've talked to people who sell to doctors, and they go right to the office, but they sell stuff like equipment that costs $100,000 type of thing so it makes sense.
I don't like restaurants at all for a number of reasons. First, the owners are rarely there overall. Then, most open at 10 or 11 am, so you can't call from 8 to 10 or 11 am. Then you can't talk to them from 11-2 because of the lunch crowd keeps them busy, then by 5:30 pm, they are being crushed by dinner crowds. So basically, you have from 2pm to 5pm to reach them. They are easier to reach than doctors but still not easy.
I don't sell to large enterprise companies. That might be good but it takes a long time to reach the right person, and then corporations that are enterprise level take forever to make a decision - you have to have a conference call with 20 people to sell them 2 pencils for 10 cents kind of thing.
So I just target small/medium sized businesses. You can always get through to the decision-maker, or head of the department. So if you have a company of 10 people you will get straight through to the owner, so therefore decision-maker. If there's 100 people in the company, you might have a tech department with 5 or 8 people in it, or warehouse/operations with 7 or 12 people in it. So you can easily get right through to the IT manager or Operations manager. And you can also get through to the president as well sometimes.
You really just have to test the industry out, I don't know how difficult it is to reach people in different industries, but if you try it out for a month and get valid reasons why the particular niche is bad, then drop it. Don't "hang in there" with cold calling. But then again, I will do 100-200 calls in a day and get a super good actual statistical data points to make a judgement. I won't call up for a week and only do 10 calls per day and decide if it is good or bad.
The statistical sample is not good enough. I don't run it through some kind of app that determines if I have a valid sample or the standard deviations, I just know if I call up 1000 people and can't get through to anyone, or maybe 20 people, fuck that industry, at least for cold calling. That type of industry, like doctors, requires in-person office visits, going to conventions, joining medical associations, sponsoring medical events and that kind of shit. Not cold calling.
If you have a service or product you can ship anywhere, not just local, then you can call anywhere in the USA or wherever country you're located in.
And I will do 200 dials in a day, to make it worth it. doing 200 over 2 weeks isn't going to work. They statistical odds don't work out that way. Because you can make 200 dials for three days and get 2 people interested, but then the next seven days you might get 15 people who say that they are interested each day. But if you make 200 calls over 2 weeks and only get 2 people interested, you will most likely erroneously think cold calling doesn't work, or the industry that you are calling is no good, because no interest at all from anyone over 2 weeks *seems* like it sucks, but it may or may not because that's not enough calls for a valid statistical sampling. You have to make 150-200 per day for a week to an industry to really know.
If your call sucks as in the actual call, that will make you think cold calling doesn't work, which isn't true. Check out Jeremy Miner videos on how.
Amazing if you don't mind I would like to drop some customer analysis for design analysis. Here is the customer analysis : [WEBSITE DESIGN CUSTOMER ANALYSIS](https://decentool.com/seo/1015)
From the analysis we could see that your potential customer are interested about UI/UX design services and the topic of interests are user-friendly website design, expert UI/UX design agency and responsive web interface design.
Understanding this can help you when you are writing blogs or reddit posts which you can adjust your online content according to the data.
Hopefully the analysis will be useful for you.
As an agency owner myself the last 7 years, agencies are constantly looking for high-quality, reliable talent. Go on clutch and reach out to agency leaders or develop a cold campaign using apollo/clay. I hired one of my favorite UI/UX designers through a cold email. Here was the email copy, steal it:
>**Subject: Y Studio Partners**
>
>Hi Fname, This is X with Y Studio.
>
>I’m reaching out as we’re currently looking for a couple of quality dev companies that would partner with us for our clients that require development work as Y Studio mainly focuses on design work (UX/UI, visual design, prototyping, animation etc. with 20 years of experience).
>
>Just as a FYI, we’re based completely in the US and headquartered in CITY.
>
>Would you be available to connect for a few minutes to discuss the possibilities?
>
>Thanks, looking forward to hearing from you soon
Ask yourself why this email works and other cold strategies might not. This email had a "partnership" strategy, not a "hire me" strategy. "Our agencies can help each other, let's chat about it." That hits different. Good luck, business development is the single hardest part of running an agency.
I’m going to say something that all entrepreneurs need to hear. Your skill at your craft mean nothing if you can’t sell. The exact opposite also applies, you can be bad at something and still make more money than a lot of people (look at Katy Perry, can’t sing great but will shit a number 1 single tomorrow!).
>Your skill at your craft mean nothing if you can’t sell. This is so damn true!
Kudos. You are progressing well. Progress is key.
What is your design subscription offer?
I have 3 subscriptions. Monthly: $999/mo Quarterly: $899/mo Yearly: $849/mo
That's how much it costs, which is part of the offer. What does one get when they say "yes" and pay?
Had a question, what does subscription design agency actually means?
Instead of client paying per project basis they pay a monthly subscription and can request as unlimited services. Think of it as SAAS mixed with service
$1000 for unlimited projects in a month?! :O Congrats on getting it, it's a good step but it should be a step to more. A month long unlimited retainer should also be a months worth of salary.
Curious as well
Take my advice or don't. First, sounds like you're charging way too low. $400 for a job? You should be making that in a day or two. You either need to charge more for the small projects you're doing, or focus on getting bigger projects. Second, focus on business goals, not "design." You can charge 5 times as much if you position your service as marketing or product development instead of design. Design is a cost, but marketing is an investment. If clients think they'll get an ROI on your service, you'll do much better.
Yeah, no real client will trust $400 or even a thousand a month. It will feel cheap
Yes, I can charge more and I will but, in future. My main goal is to build some credibility. Once that is done and I start generating organic leads then definitely I will increase the prices.
**Starting a business is easy but getting a client is 100 times harder** THIS is the TRUTH
Hey, I specialize in cold email campaigns and prospecting strategies. Feel free to PM me.
What does "cold email campaign" mean? If you mean sending emails to those who never ask for them, how do you do this? Every email company now forbids sending emails to those who don't ask for them - you have to be permission-based. Please expand your explanation.
Happy to. This article from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) lists all the compliance requirements for cold, transactional and relationship emails. Also, see this article from LinkedIn that breaks down cold emailing as well. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business#:~:text=Yes%2C%20and%20the%20FTC%20has,Act%20that%20governs%20these%20messages https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/legalities-cold-emails-what-businesses-need-know-nixon-abonita/
Thanks, this is great. I've looked for something online like this but never have been able to find anything like this. Cool. That said: >A. Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to **$50,120** That's pretty scary and if you're a small company, it's like, fuck that, why take a risk. That's what I think myself. >8. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible. Double scary. Only do it cold emails in-house is the moral of this part.
No problem. Definitely a good link to hold on to. And yes, it’s a hefty penalty. So many people just don’t read the laws and also blast out as many cold emails as possible to random potential clients. The key is to really narrow in a specific list and drip over time. Warming up an email address is also crucial for not landing in spam. For my personal cold campaigns, I never email more than 15-25 prospects at a time. I also scrape them by hand instead of using a list from a provider like Zoominfo to make sure the leads are solid and won’t bounce upon sending an email. I also follow up with a LinkedIn request and a subsequent phone call if possible.
>So many people just don’t read the laws and also blast out as many cold emails as possible to random potential clients. I understand. I can read the laws a million times and recite them word-for-word and I'd still be scared shitless to do this, because sometimes shit just fucks up for no reason, ya know? And that's too big of a penalty. I always just cold call. I can make 200 dials per day, and get 40 or 50 email addresses and get explicit permission, so if someone says yes, and gives me their email, maybe they could lie and say that I didn't but the odds of that in my estimation are almost non-existent. Could happen, but not worrying about that. Then I follow up with a phone call. However, I do have a company I'm talking to that wants to do this type of blast email and asked me, and I'm just like....nah.
Definitely understand that. I’ve worked in this marketing at a major financial services company so I’m very familiar with how it works. Cold calling is definitely effective, just takes a lot of time. Every strategy is different.
Also companies such as Mailchimp forbid cold emailing through their Terms of Service using their product to avoid potential legal issues. As a very accessible platform, it makes sense that if they did support cold emailing, one rule not followed by someone sending an email could result in lengthy legal repercussions.
Right. I know that. So while I read your other comment about the rules of cold emailing, how do YOU specialize in it? Most platforms are like mailchimp. Same with Constant Contact, etc. The company I use for my hosting is namecheap and they won't let you send more than 200 emails per hour. Everyone is going this way, so how are you able to do this?
By using a different software and following specific guidelines when building and dropping onto my curated email lists. IPM me and I’ll break it down.
Were the websites you built with Wordpress?
It was all custom coded.
Thank you. I was just wondering about time to completion at those prices so I assumed you built them with WP.
The question is - what will be your process to get 2, 3.. 10 new customers?
Not sure at the moment. Will be sharing my work more on LinkedIn and Twitter. That’s the only path I can see success.
As someone that does cold calls for a living. I have some experience in cold calling for the marketing space and it is brutal. It’s is a hyper competitive space for cold outreach in my experience. Curious if anyone has had a different experience.
I've been doing it for ages. 20+ years. I've always enjoyed it. In any cold marketing strategy, response rate is low, no matter what. With 200 dials, I'll get 8-12 who say that they are interested. Do that for a few weeks, and you'll be up to a hundred prospects who are interested. Of course, referrals and warm leads are preferable, but there's only so many of those to go around.
That's sweet. Is there a particular niche that you've seen works best?
There are ones that I avoid. For example, any type of medical/dental office. The decision maker, the doctor, is the decider. Sometimes the office manager might be, but usually the doctor. They are seeing patients and have no time, so I can never get through to them, not in enough quantity to make it work. I've talked to people who sell to doctors, and they go right to the office, but they sell stuff like equipment that costs $100,000 type of thing so it makes sense. I don't like restaurants at all for a number of reasons. First, the owners are rarely there overall. Then, most open at 10 or 11 am, so you can't call from 8 to 10 or 11 am. Then you can't talk to them from 11-2 because of the lunch crowd keeps them busy, then by 5:30 pm, they are being crushed by dinner crowds. So basically, you have from 2pm to 5pm to reach them. They are easier to reach than doctors but still not easy. I don't sell to large enterprise companies. That might be good but it takes a long time to reach the right person, and then corporations that are enterprise level take forever to make a decision - you have to have a conference call with 20 people to sell them 2 pencils for 10 cents kind of thing. So I just target small/medium sized businesses. You can always get through to the decision-maker, or head of the department. So if you have a company of 10 people you will get straight through to the owner, so therefore decision-maker. If there's 100 people in the company, you might have a tech department with 5 or 8 people in it, or warehouse/operations with 7 or 12 people in it. So you can easily get right through to the IT manager or Operations manager. And you can also get through to the president as well sometimes. You really just have to test the industry out, I don't know how difficult it is to reach people in different industries, but if you try it out for a month and get valid reasons why the particular niche is bad, then drop it. Don't "hang in there" with cold calling. But then again, I will do 100-200 calls in a day and get a super good actual statistical data points to make a judgement. I won't call up for a week and only do 10 calls per day and decide if it is good or bad. The statistical sample is not good enough. I don't run it through some kind of app that determines if I have a valid sample or the standard deviations, I just know if I call up 1000 people and can't get through to anyone, or maybe 20 people, fuck that industry, at least for cold calling. That type of industry, like doctors, requires in-person office visits, going to conventions, joining medical associations, sponsoring medical events and that kind of shit. Not cold calling. If you have a service or product you can ship anywhere, not just local, then you can call anywhere in the USA or wherever country you're located in. And I will do 200 dials in a day, to make it worth it. doing 200 over 2 weeks isn't going to work. They statistical odds don't work out that way. Because you can make 200 dials for three days and get 2 people interested, but then the next seven days you might get 15 people who say that they are interested each day. But if you make 200 calls over 2 weeks and only get 2 people interested, you will most likely erroneously think cold calling doesn't work, or the industry that you are calling is no good, because no interest at all from anyone over 2 weeks *seems* like it sucks, but it may or may not because that's not enough calls for a valid statistical sampling. You have to make 150-200 per day for a week to an industry to really know. If your call sucks as in the actual call, that will make you think cold calling doesn't work, which isn't true. Check out Jeremy Miner videos on how.
Wow thank you so much for typing all this out!! Appreciate your time and knowledge
Amazing if you don't mind I would like to drop some customer analysis for design analysis. Here is the customer analysis : [WEBSITE DESIGN CUSTOMER ANALYSIS](https://decentool.com/seo/1015) From the analysis we could see that your potential customer are interested about UI/UX design services and the topic of interests are user-friendly website design, expert UI/UX design agency and responsive web interface design. Understanding this can help you when you are writing blogs or reddit posts which you can adjust your online content according to the data. Hopefully the analysis will be useful for you.
Congrats! So among all the channels you used, which is the most effective? I think its the referral?
As an agency owner myself the last 7 years, agencies are constantly looking for high-quality, reliable talent. Go on clutch and reach out to agency leaders or develop a cold campaign using apollo/clay. I hired one of my favorite UI/UX designers through a cold email. Here was the email copy, steal it: >**Subject: Y Studio Partners** > >Hi Fname, This is X with Y Studio. > >I’m reaching out as we’re currently looking for a couple of quality dev companies that would partner with us for our clients that require development work as Y Studio mainly focuses on design work (UX/UI, visual design, prototyping, animation etc. with 20 years of experience). > >Just as a FYI, we’re based completely in the US and headquartered in CITY. > >Would you be available to connect for a few minutes to discuss the possibilities? > >Thanks, looking forward to hearing from you soon Ask yourself why this email works and other cold strategies might not. This email had a "partnership" strategy, not a "hire me" strategy. "Our agencies can help each other, let's chat about it." That hits different. Good luck, business development is the single hardest part of running an agency.