Cold email template (+framework) to book more meetings & 5 essential parts of a powerful ‘above the fold’ section.
Cold email template (+framework) to book more meetings & 5 essential parts of a powerful ‘above the fold’ section.
Hey - it’s Alex!
Today, I will share with you:
3 actionable SaaS growth tips
👉 Cold email template & framework
👉 5 essential parts to grab attention with your ‘above the fold’ section
👉 How to not confuse features and futures
‘Best tip, failure, & learning’ by Amal Abdullaev (Co-founder & CEO of Comfi)
1 software tool recommendation
… that will help you quickly grow your SaaS product 🚀.
👉 Before you begin:
✅ Get your FREE copy of the SaaS Growth Strategy Worksheet
✅ Unlock your growth potential with a list of 82+ proven SaaS growth strategies
1. Cold email template & framework
If your growth relies on outbound sales, you need to nail your outbound emails.
If not, you will never book relevant sales meetings.
A powerful (cold) email always consists of the following 4 parts (simple framework):
Part 1: A clear Why
Give a clear reason why you reach out.
The reason needs to be buyer-centric.
‘I’m reaching out to you because WE are the market leader in XYZ’ doesn’t work.’ Because it’s seller-centric and your potential customer doesn’t care about you.
Make use of trigger events as a reason to reach out.
Trigger events include new funding rounds, changes in leadership, new product/feature launches, and recent posts on social media...
‼On 17.11.2022 I will share 14 trigger events + 4 tools on Linkedin. Follow me and don’t miss it.
Part 2: Assume the pain
Add content that is highly relevant to the prospect. Combine the trigger event and assume problems that are related to that. Refer to others of this audience that faced similar challenges after such a trigger event.
If you assume the pain and your prospect faces the same pain, the following will happen:
you position yourself as an expert
pitching your solution (part 3 of your email) feels natural and makes sense to them
your email is relevant to them
Part 3: 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻
Now it’s time for your short pitch. Mention how you can help to solve the (assumed) problem for them.
Your 1-sentence value proposition is super powerful for this.
But don't pitch your product, just keep it high level.
The goal is to create interest and curiosity in your service/product, not to close the deal.
Part 4: Call to action
Make it clear what the next step is if they are interested.
Should they reply to your email, click on a link to watch a video or read an article or book a meeting with you via your booking link?
Make the CTA interest-based. They mostly perform better.
Bonus tip:
Keep the email short. 3-4 sections. Each section max. 3 short sentences.
Structure the email in sections and make it easy to read.
Highlight essential parts/words. Remove unnecessary words
P.S. For all non-native speakers among us, I can highly recommend Grammarly.
Email Template
👉 If you want 4 more cold email templates, simply comment on my Linkedin post from today.
2. How ‘above the fold’ grabs attention (5 essential parts)
Your website is the center of all your sales and marketing activities.
If your website doesn’t grab the attention of your visitor, you will see very low conversion rates.
Both design and copy, need to be on point.
Nice design, but a bad copy, doesn’t show any significant results.
The ‘above the fold’ section is the section of your website that visitors see first before they start to scroll down. It’s basically the ‘landing page’ of your website.
The goal of the ‘above the fold’ section is to grab the attention so that the visitor stays on your page and continues to read.
On the example of calendly, I will share with you 5 essentials of a great ‘above the fold’ section of your website.
1/ Explain how your product helps (Title)
It’s about the benefit of your product or the job to be done. What can I achieve with the product? What’s in for me / the value you provide
2/ Explain what it is that you're selling (Subtitle)
Explain in 1-2 sentences how you create the benefit/value for the customer. The visitor needs to understand what is it that you’re building? Is it software, service, plug-in, event, etc.
3/ Let them see something related (Image)
Add something visual related to the Title and subtitle. Ideally, it shows something nice about your product that underlines the value you’ve mentioned in the title.
Seeing the image helps the visitor to better understand what they read in your title and subtitle.
4/ Add trust (Social proof)
No one likes to be alone or the first one.
By adding social proof you will increase trustworthiness and credibility.
Especially if your customers are NOT early adopters, social proof and trust (e.g. badges, certificates, reviews) can work really well.
5/ Call to action
Make it clear what you want them to do.
If you know the main objections of your customers, add them next to your call to action.
You basically handle the objections upfront. (e.g no credit card required, get started in under 5 minutes...).
This will increase your conversion rates.
3. Don’t confuse features and futures
A lot of times I see early-stage founders talking so much about the great features and products they are building. Nothing wrong with that of course.
But, if you’re speaking (on your website, sales demo, emails, etc.) to potential customers, you should not talk about your features (unless they explicitly asked for it).
Because what they really care about is how you can solve their problems.
How you can transform their business, from the current status to the desired outcome.
You need to sell the wonderful promising future.
So don't do the same mistake and confuse 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 & 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀.
You're building great features.
So you can sell great futures.
In the end, people buy results, they buy outcomes, they buy transformations.
1️⃣ If your product is email marketing software, you sell an engaging growing audience.
2️⃣ If your product is booking software for restaurants, you sell more revenue and higher utilization.
3️⃣ If your product is a Sales CRM, you sell a full pipeline and higher conversions (ultimately more revenue).
💡 Best tip, failure, and learning by Amal Abdullaev (Co-founder & CEO of Comfi)
Tip: Don’t hire expensive sales-as-a-service (aka lead/meeting generators) agencies too early even if you have enough budget and enough pressure from early investors to accelerate the sales motion and feedback from the market. And by expensive, I mean anything above the 3-4k threshold.
Failure: We’ve hired a 10k/mo agency that promised us a proper GTM strategy and at least 2 meetings per week. After 2,5 months of back and forth, we realized that most of their lists were not qualified for outreaches, a lot of irrelevant accounts. We found out that they had to be micro-managed to deliver properly, while in the very beginning they sold themselves as an autonomous machine for paving out GTM and generating leads. In 2,5 months they brought us 0 leads, not 1, even for a meeting.
Learning: Doing founder-led sales myself I was able to have 20+ conversations and signed up 2 customers myself during the same period. No one will care about and love your product more than you do. So, as I see it now, the outsourced sales team should only be involved if you can put them on the rails that you have discovered and tested yourself and you just need low-cost operational help to scale that out.
P.S. Check out Comfi if you want to sell 2x more annual contracts. They help bootstrapped and seed-stage startups offer their customers flexible payment options (a.k.a. BNPL for SaaS). They commit to annual but pay monthly.
Amal is always open to having meaningful discussions on Linkedin or over a virtual coffee.
🧠 Do you want to share your best tip with 500+ SaaS professionals? Reach out to me via Linkedin.
💪 1 software tool recommendation
I can highly recommend Loom for your quick screen recordings.
It’s super valuable for customer support (sharing product instructions), product marketing (creating simple product videos), and even in sales (creating short sales videos).
Check out how you can use Loom for your marketing.
P.S. Check out my list of best software tools for SaaS startups.
Happy growth 🚀.
TL;DR
Cold email template (+ simple framework) to book more meetings.
5 essential parts for a powerful ‘above the fold’ section.
Sell futures, not features.
🚀 Whenever you’re ready, 3 ways I can help you:
Follow me on Linkedin for more actionable tips to grow your B2B SaaS business
Download your FREE copy of the SaaS Growth Strategy Worksheet and get access to a list of 82+ hand-picked, proven SaaS growth strategies.
Work with me 1:1 to grow your B2B SaaS business - send me a DM on Linkedin or book a free 15min virtual coffee with me to learn more about my offering.
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