By Collin Harsin

January 5th, 2023

Abstract

After taking the leap into copywriting. I finished my first wave of cold emails. I aimed to service video game developers by writing Their “About us” page.

Deciding on this plan of attack wasn’t difficult. I have a passion for the games industry, and seeing that the majority of developers have slapped on “About us” pages(if they had any at all), I figure this wouldn’t be too risky for the developers. 

Materials and Methods. 


I began with research on cold email best practices. 

Two main takeaways:

  1. Personalize it.

I did this by using the recipient’s name and a mention of the company.

Ex: “Hey Brenda-  I had a blast with Back4Blood[the name of the game]”.

  1. Keep it brief.

I understand writing long cold emails were 

  • A waste of time 
  • Smothered any important information. 

I aim to keep my emails below 50 words. Though I have some ranging as high as 66.

To gather the emails, I signed up for Hunter.io, a web scrubbing app. For 50$ a month, you could insert a URL and find numerous emails from a company. 

While it works sufficiently. I had issues.

  1. You get emails without job descriptions. You then have to vet which emails are appropriate to message.  I don’t need emails from intern #447 but you can’t tell the difference unless you do more research on the names attached. 
  1. Painstakingly long. From multiple hours of data collection, I scrubbed 15 emails. Not a viable sample size to do any copywriting on. 

After this round of collections. I decided I would hire someone to collect emails for me. 

To do this I went to fiver and spent 23$ on someone. 

Here’s my listing:

The list was delivered in 3 days and noticed an error. She didn’t only scrub video game developers, she also included gambling and tech sites. 

I made a mental note but wasn’t upset. Because the majority was fine. And for 23$ I wasn’t complaining. 

Now to the email itself.

I landed on this after some revisions

This mock-up is:

  • 46 words
  •  Allows for personalization
  • Has a simple CTA

I created this format because similar to a lab experiment, I wanted something that had parts that could be separately tweaked. Like variables. 

I did stray from this format sometimes. For example, if the game developer didn’t have a strong game catalog, I would sub that out for “I was on your website”. Though I mainly stayed the course. 

My plan of attack was 10 emails a day. This, I too, infrequently strayed away from. Due to other commitments at the time.

Results

  • 5% response rate.  
  • 3 answered emails.
  • 0 sales. 

Discussion

#1 replied with “unsubscribe” which was very funny because this isn’t an automated list. 

#2 declined my services. 

 #3 is the most interesting.

I began a dialogue with him that seemed to be moving well. He asked for a wireframe and when I sent it, things went downhill. 

He kindly poked holes in my process, telling me where I could improve, and gave me kind words of encouragement. But declined my services in the end.

Here’s the email.

After brief feelings of rejection. I was determined to use his words to improve. So after thanking him. I created a warm lead page. One I haven’t been able to use yet. But it’s ready.

At first glance, I noticed these areas for improvement. 

  1. Hook- I may opt to use line #1 in the body instead of the subject. And create a new hook. 
  2. Offer. Make sure to emphasize the benefits of the product/service you’re offering?
  3. Lead collection. I will try different talent. And supply them with a more detailed description of the leads I want. 

While unsatisfied with the results, I am optimistic I can improve all around the board. 

What have you learned about cold emailing that could help others?

Let me know below and have a great day.