Latest / Sell Well: Helping Agencies Close More Deals and Grow Revenue / Phone a Friend: Natalie Turner from MintLeads on Cold Email 101

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Phone a Friend: Natalie Turner from MintLeads on Cold Email 101 · Sell Well: Helping Agencies Close More Deals and Grow Revenue

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today on the podcast, I have a longtime business partner and good friend of mine, Natalie Turner.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: She is the president of Mint Leads, which is a cold outbound email agency.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: They do amazing work and I've sent a lot of my clients their way over the years and have personally worked with them for years at a time.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: They absolutely changed my business at Lost in House, and I'm so excited for her to be sharing a little bit about cold email with you.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Quick backstory when I was in the middle of running Lost in House, I found myself in a really bad referral loop pattern.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting referrals from people that were not great clients, who were really challenging to work with, just not in our ideal scope, and also did not have a ton of budget.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And not that we weren't grateful for those clients, but at the time we were really trying to scale into this next level.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up getting a cold email from Tanner and scheduled a call with him.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: He is one of the founders and just really impressed me with some of the things that he shared.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know this at the time, but they were super new.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me it would be$2,000 for 10 calls, which just felt like an absurd amount of money at the time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't know if I can spend$200 a call.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: That feels crazy.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: But for some reason, I really trusted them.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they lived in Atlanta, where I'm from, and they went to Georgia Tech.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I figured, well, if I'm going to trust anybody with this, I might as well trust people who were in my backyard.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if they rip me off, I can go find them.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was my whole plan there.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: What ended up happening is that they became amazing partners to me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And out of those 10 calls that they delivered, we closed seven of them.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And those turned into two to three year long retainers.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like they were just one-off uh businesses that we closed.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: In the years to come, they would send me six-figure deals.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: We made so many amazing connections, white label partnerships, you name it, um, just because we took a chance on cold email.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: When I tell people that, they're like, You grew your business from cold email, like the sesiest channel known to man.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I know.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: But part of it was because I trusted them.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the other part of it was because we had really great messaging and a good strategy for targeting people.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: They so wisely brought in Natalie to become the president.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she and I ended up working very closely together over the years.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: She helped me pivot on campaigns, and I'm currently working with them now.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had Natalie come on to talk a little bit about what cold email is, how it works, um, and to give a quick overview into what she's seeing right now in the industry.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you are brand new to cold email, all this means is reaching out to a bunch of people by building a list and sending out thousands of emails at a time.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's some technical stuff like warming up domains and all kinds of stuff that can get a little in the weeds if you're like me and you're like, I don't really want to learn how to send cold email.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: But that's exactly why you hire mint leads.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're experts in this, they will put calls on your calendar.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: They actually schedule them all for you.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if that sounds like something you want to do, you can absolutely talk with them.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd love first for you to listen to this conversation with Natalie because I think it's going to be a really good one.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Natalie, thanks for joining me.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, how are you?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Doing great.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited that you're here.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Cold email is something that I recommend to a lot of my clients.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I send a lot of people your way.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited for you to uh just walk us through the cold email 101 side of things.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you are definitely an expert in the space, and I would love for you to just give us a high-level overview of what cold email is, who it's for, how does all of this work?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but before we get into all that, I'd love to hear a little bit of your story and how you got into this in the first place.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it was gosh, 2022.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was a little bit done with the corporate grind.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, wanted to, wanted to get out of this, get a little bit uh back closer to my engineering roots from Georgia Tech.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um my brother actually introduced me to our two co-founders, Jack and Tanner.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I took the risk, quit my corporate job, cushy job, and uh came to work at a gritty startup, truly out of my uh boss's house, which was an experience within itself.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, kind of got in here about four years ago and it really never looked back.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an incredible experience, lots of learning.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think my elevator pitch to people is hey, I send spam emails for a living and I'm really good at it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it it really has just been a whirlwind of kind of experiences, but have had previous to that, really didn't have anything in the lead generation space, nothing in the marketing space.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were just really good at sending emails, landing in the inboxes, and figuring out what people wanted to hear.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think over the last four years, we've really taken those learnings and had to adapt because the whole email market has shifted.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think will continue to shift and you just have to be um adaptable there.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to back up a little bit.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have people all the time where I'm like, hey, you should do cold email.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: You need to talk to Natalie.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, what is cold email?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love for you to have an answer for that because I'm sure yours is way better than what mine is.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So how I define cold email, and I think it will change for whomever, but it basically is you are completely reaching out to somebody that you might even not even want to reach out to, might not even be on your radar.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we use completely plain text.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, not a lot of this MailChimp, you're building out this whole email.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be perfect.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the greatest emails, honestly, and what we see and the feedback I get weekly from clients and what they hear from the sales calls they take is I never respond to these, but something about it made me want to respond to you guys.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the shortest email.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's one line.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's have you even thought about this?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are you having this pain point?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just looking for feedback here rather than I want a 30-minute sales call.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want a 30-minute sales call.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So cold email isn't shifted from that sales call method to just saying, I'm soft touching this person and seeing if they're even going to give me a response.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time they don't reply or they say, take me off your list.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a numbers game.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is much more than a couple emails a day.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're sending to thousands of folks a month, and all you need are a couple of those people to really make it make sense for you.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I want to touch on something you said that I think is so interesting.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: You said, um, you know, you're we're reaching out to so many people that aren't on your radar and some people that you might not even want to reach out to.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys did that for me and it exploded my business.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I had said, I want to work with interior designers because if you had asked me, do you also want to work with architects?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't know.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't know enough about it to even give uh an answer to that.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I probably would have said no, just because I was like, I'm investing and I need to have my target audience and my IC key and all of the lingo all tied up.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: But we opened it up and we also did architects, and that turned into a huge amount of revenue for us two, three years later, clients that stuck with us forever that we loved.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think you guys help people open up and see, hey, there's so much more for you here.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think people have such an idea coming in, whether it's been previous people or it's been passed down and it's just like this is just what we do.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's such a niche, and we do a really good job just trying to push the boundaries a little bit.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, sure, we can reach out to your target market, but let's pick two or three others and just see.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they can be adjacent or they can be whatever.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to go completely out of the realm, but because we are reaching out to so many, it doesn't hurt.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what I like to tell people is there are markets that are just not going to be responsive, but there's also going to be markets that are always responsive.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yearly they go through a shift where it's maybe it's all SaaS is responding in Q1 or all these other folks are responding in Q2.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have a backup plan so you can have a model that really works all the time.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, it's been really a great thing kind of seeing people like you, but also our other clients just be like, I would have never worked with them and now they're our largest client or they're our biggest case study.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if we could do it again, I would 10 times over.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's so many people who misunderstand cold email too and don't give it enough time.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I mean, one year in, we had several six-figure clients come from you guys.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, they looked just like everybody else.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was that plain text email and they respond back, like, sure, I'll chat with you.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was ended up being some of our biggest deals.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think that you do a great job of coaching people on, like, hey, give it time, work the plan, yeah, keep it going.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always gonna work the first time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where you just have to be super honest with people, even during the sales process, is what I've like, this could work, this could not work, but we're going to identify a target market for you and you're gonna get responses whether they're positive or not.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that might be something that they need to go back and think about their business plan.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have a model that is small enough where people would feel okay testing it out and they're not going to switch like to a six-figure agency immediately because they want to they want to build trust and and grow with you?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I certainly think it does take a lot of time.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it can work right off the bat, but it could also take a couple months to get up and running and really honing in on what that call to action needs to be and who that target audience uh needs to focus on.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what would you say to somebody before they're considering investing in cold email?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: What should they consider?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think the a big part of it is who is your target audience or who is your perceived target audience and how many of those folks are in the United States or across the world that you could actually reach out to and you would feel comfortable having a conversation with.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't going to be thousands of those folks out there.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are reaching out to small businesses, if you're reaching out to agencies, if you're reaching out to startups, that's an unlimited bucket right now.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those folks have marketing dollars, they're taking conversations right now.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the folks wanting to reach out to employers or folks like that who are like, I really want to work with med spas and Tulsa.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're gonna run out of those really quickly.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Targeted and it's not gonna work.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Someone might claim that they can, um, but telling you from someone who's looked at every single list source, it's probably not possible to run uh for a while.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you are somebody who is interested in cold email and you are wanting to expand your lead source and you're like, I'm considering ads, I'm considering all of my different options, I would really encourage you to get on a call with Natalie.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite things that you do, Natalie, is you tell people no.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: You have told a lot of my clients, like, hey, we're not it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I really respect that because when you say yes, I know that you're gonna deliver great results for them.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you want to learn more about this process and how it's gonna work for you, you can go to midleads.io, schedule a call with Natalie, and get to know um some of my favorite people in the business and start generating some leads for your business.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for being on, Natalie.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Susie.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so grateful for this conversation with Natalie.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I did not get into all of the tech behind the scenes or the copywriting that they do.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: They actually do a lot of domain warm-up.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: They write all the emails for you, they set everything up into an automated system.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: They actually reply to the emails for you and they are putting calls on your calendar.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get into a lot of the tech because that's the beautiful thing about outsourcing this.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to worry about it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's done for you.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're waking up with calls on your calendar.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Again, not a guarantee, but when it hits, it hits right and it is something that is totally off your plate.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a dialed-in sales system, if you are good at sales calls and I've got tons of resources on that, this makes adding revenue to your business really, really simple.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: If this feels like a really great third step for your business and you feel like you need to dial in your offers, you feel like you need to figure out what you're actually selling and then what you would say on sales calls before you invest in something like that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to chat with you.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can book a call with me or apply for one-to-one coaching at susiecoli.com.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to chat with you, tell you more about my experience with outbound, what's worked for me, and what hasn't.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually currently running a lot of different outbound channels right now, starting this fall, and I'm really excited to update you guys on how those are going.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll be keeping you updated along the way.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to announce some new things coming up soon.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: But until next time, sell well.