Modern productivity tools make it easier than ever to blast out a thousand emails to potential prospects in an instant. But that’s not a guarantee that any of these missives will convert into meetings, demos, or sales. These kinds of imprecise, machine-gun tactics will only get you so far.
OneSchema co-founder and CEO Christina Gilbert — now a YC Visiting Partner — calls this a key mistake that the founders she’s mentoring bring to her office hours. In a wildly helpful edition of YC Startup School from September, Christina lays out eight potential fixes for outbound campaigns that aren’t landing.
(1) Do your first 100 outreaches by hand before automating ANYTHING
When you send out a massive email campaign and then get zero or just a few replies, you clearly did SOMEthing wrong, but you have no idea what it was. Was the email poorly written? Did you target the wrong companies or customers? Was the subject line not compelling enough?
Doing it all by hand forces you to think specifically about each person you’re emailing. What’s their #1 problem? What does their company do? How can you capture their specific attention? This will focus and fine-tune your thinking for future mass emails...
