Why 4,322 cold emails only got 2 replies

Earlier this year, I met someone who had sent 4,322 cold emails pitching AI consulting and only got two replies. Not two meetings, just two replies, and zero meetings booked.

It was a well-structured campaign. Seven niches, researched properly. They had a clean list and the bounce rates for their emails were 3%. This was months of work. Just on preparation. The setup was actually really good.

So his instinct here was to fix the mechanism. He wanted to get new domains, write new subject lines, choose another niche, and this is the common instinct that most people have, and I understand why.

Technical problems are easier to work on. You can easily buy new domains and choose another niche. But what’s much harder is to sit with the fact that 4,322 people read what you do and none of them wanted it.

But that’s exactly what the stats showed.

Here’s why.

Every single one led with the tool. We’re an AI consultancy. We build AI systems. We automate your workflows. Different words all pointing towards the same message. But the thing is, people don’t buy tools. Every business focuses on three overarching measurements.

Revenue. Cost. Risk.

And every software pitch (AI is another type of software) needs to move at least one of them.

If a prospect can’t figure out which of these three you’re helping with, your pitch will always struggle.

Cost is the easiest to prove, but you can quickly reach a cap.

Revenue is harder to prove, but there’s no cap (or it’s very far away).

Risk is the one most sales people skip, but it’s the one that shows the prospect you know what you’re doing.

There’s actually one more.

Those three numbers are important to the company. But you also need to keep in mind the person reading your email, your sponsor, or the project lead. They will always ask themselves, what happens to me if this doesn’t work.

So the goal is to show how you can affect one of those numbers for the business, and make it easier for the person who has to say yes.

Ok back to the campaign.

We rewrote one of the emails. The old version focused on who we are and what we build. The new version tried to use a case study specifically relevant to the reader with a transformation as the pitch, supported by an actual outcome:

“I’m working with a sales MD at Barclays. One hour a week on a call. A month in, his team is turning client pitches around in a day instead of a week, and they’ve gone after another eleven mandates this quarter they’d otherwise have passed on.”

The subject line went from starting with AI, which is a pretty overused word in a senior guy’s inbox, to “How a Barclays MD uses AI”.

Response rates went to just over 3%. It didn’t rescue the campaign though. Service delivery became an issue straight after, which shows the other half of this: whatever you claim, you need to be able to back it up.

Cheers,

P.S. If someone came to mind while reading this, forward it to them. “Four minutes, worth it” does the job.

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