Why Most Cold Emails Fail (and What to Do Instead) with Shira Simmonds

In this episode of the Happy Productive Podcast, Jennifer Dawn is excited to welcome Shira Simmonds, CEO of SSC Digital. Shira’s agency specializes in growth strategy and lead generation, dedicated to unlocking business potential and propelling exponential growth. This conversation tackles crucial **lead generation strategies**, offering honest insights into what truly works and how to avoid common pitfalls. With over two decades of experience, Shira shares how businesses can effectively acquire new clients and build lasting relationships through transparent, data-driven methods, making this a must-listen for any entrepreneur seeking to boost their sales efforts.

Transcript

Jennifer Dawn: Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Happy Productive Podcast. I am really, I’m chomping at the bit, I gotta be honest, I’m chomping at the bit to get into this conversation today. My guest is Miss Shira Simmonds. Shira, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jennifer. So happy to be here.

So Shira is the CEO of SS Digital, a growth strategy and lead generation agency dedicated to unlocking the potential of businesses and propelling them towards exponential growth. You guys are business owners and y’all know you’re not growing without leads. Leads, leads, right? Common ends. So that, and then of course closing them, but that’s not what this show is about. With over two decades of experience in business development, marketing, and strategic partnership, Shira has collaborated with startups, mid-size enterprises, and Fortune 500 companies across diverse industries and global markets.

Jennifer Dawn: Shira, okay, first of all. How did you come to be doing this work today with business owners helping ’em on their lead generation efforts? You know, a bio is wonderful, but just tell us a little bit of like your story as an entrepreneur and how you came to be doing this work today.

Shira’s Journey: Building Effective Lead Generation Strategies

Shira Simmonds: Yeah, absolutely. So, so SSC is actually my second company. My first company was called Ping Mobile. It was back in 2003, 2004. If you remember, pre-smartphones, if that dates me. I’m sorry. Oh girl. I remember just analog phones and I tell my kids, I’m like, y’all, these smartphones, you don’t even know. Right. You don’t even know. Exactly. So like I came up with this concept when I was actually pregnant with my fourth child and I was in the, the, I was in Target. And I was like holding the baby with one hand and trying to get the coupons at the bottom of my, you know, diaper bag. And I realized like, wow, imagine if we can have it on our cell phone, which was not a smartphone. And it was via text messaging, having brands communicate with customers. So anyway, that business grew and I actually sold that company.

Shira Simmonds: So I decided, you know, after all of that and running this big company, I’m gonna just be a consultant. Mm-hmm. I’m gonna take some time and just consult. That was the plan. That was the vision. And then all of a sudden I started getting all these contacts call, calling me and asking, “Hey, you know, we need help getting some clients here. We need help with business developments.” So what started off as Shira Simmonds Consulting became SSC Digital. I started hiring more people and really continuing to do this outreach. We have been in business for 13 years now. All we live and breathe is lead generation and really helping our clients grow.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love that so much. Your story is similar to mine. I had had a software company and grew it. Had a, had a company that failed went and did another software company and then started my coaching practice about 12, 13 years ago. And it was Jennifer Dawn Coaching and it was just like I wanted to be a one-woman show. I had had teams, I didn’t want to deal with the people. I didn’t wanna deal with the headache. I just am like, look, it’s all me. Like I just wanna do it all myself ’cause I can do it all myself. Yeah, that lasted for a few years, right? And then now we have a team of six coaches. It’s still Jennifer Dawn Coaching, and we have a marketing agency, you know, all these coaches working for us. So it just goes, woo. But but it’s a beautiful thing and a very, very good thing.

The Truth About Lead Generation Strategies & Avoiding Scams

Jennifer Dawn: Talk to me a little bit about lead gen, and I’m gonna tell you right now, and I know there’s people listening right now, there are so many lead generation companies out there that are full of sh*t and they are fraudulent and they take your money and they make big promises. I’m speaking from experience where you hire these companies, they promise you all these leads, you know, in 90 days. And here’s my 2 cents, is this is my opinion, everybody. I think that 90 days is how long it takes the business owner to figure out that they’re full of sh*t, because you go into the arrangement, everybody’s optimistic, it’s all gonna work. The business owner says, “all right, you know we’re gonna have these changes within 90 days.” And you start getting closer and closer. And they don’t deliver, and then the 90 days is up. That’s when the business owner says, “I’m done. I’m outta here.” And I think that they go on to the next sucker. That’s my opinion. I’m not saying that’s exactly the industry, and I’m not saying that’s everybody, but I would love to hear like, what do you think? Do you see this too out in the industry? When we talk about lead gen of so many companies out there that don’t actually make big promises and don’t deliver?

Shira Simmonds: It’s actually been a really big hurdle for us because the term lead generation has such a bad reputation associated with it because of everything that you just mentioned. Yeah. So we’ve kind of had to differentiate ourselves to be more like growth accelerators, you know, because the word lead generation is, you know, people associate that with scams and promises. So first of all, I always try not to guarantee anything, okay? Mm-hmm. If you guys are already doing your own outreach and you have your open rates, your apply rates, your conversion rates, then we can come in and do an audit and share what are the changes that we would make to increase those results. Because we already have data. But to come in and say, “oh, no problem. We can change your business in in 90 days” is a lie. Okay. You have to be really, really careful to be fully transparent. I would say the other thing that’s super important is that there’s full transparency throughout the process. So it is a process. Nothing happens. You don’t go from A to Z in 90 days, right? The first month you should be spending warming up the domains. We’ll talk about email deliverability. I know you’re excited about that.

Jennifer Dawn: Hey guys, I was like, sure, we gotta talk about this ’cause our email deliverability rates have tanked. What’s going on out there? But keep going, keep going. We’ll get to it. So yeah, the first step is really showing the clients that you are warming up the domains. You’re doing everything properly. You’re not sending out campaigns without that. You’re setting up separate domains from your main company domain, right? Mm-hmm. You’re warming those up and you’re slowly, after two to four weeks, sending out 30 per domain, and then you can increase it when you have a good reputation. So that’s kind of the first step. Mm-hmm. The next step is the, the list building. I think this is where a lot of companies go wrong and it’s, it’s happening more and more in that the, the list themselves are coming from like these databases. For years they’ve been really good. You know, we’ve been using them also and we actually built our own database as well, and they’ve been great.

Shira Simmonds: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Dawn: But now that everyone’s getting inundated with messaging because of AI and because of the ability to quickly find a list now and quickly send out emails, everyone’s getting more inundated than they were before, and this is part of the email deliverability issue. It’s kind of tied in because Gmail and Outlook and all the ISPs are getting stricter now to, to help prevent everyone’s inbox from being out of control. Right? Yeah. And so that next step is really starting to make sure that you have decent open rates, that you have a low bounce rate. So there’s a, there’s steps in the process, and I always tell my clients that it takes a few months to start getting those replies in and to nurturing those replies. There’s a strategy behind that. So it’s not in 90 days we’re gonna change your business. It’s gonna take, you know, 30 to 90 days to really see what is your sweet spot, what is the best messaging with the best audience? How to then convert them from a positive lead to a call. So there’s a lot of steps in the funnel, and I think once you’re just open with your clients about that and you can share that journey with them, that this is really what happens and it’s more realistic and everyone’s on the same page and they’re not expecting this magic to happen.

Jennifer Dawn: It does happen. It does. Mm-hmm. Not for everyone. Okay. So I’ll say that it’s like there’s certain industries that are just, you know, certain titles that are just very hard. You know, if somebody’s in charge of compliance or a lawyer, you don’t wanna send them a cold email, right? That’s not gonna work. So there might be other channels of communication like LinkedIn or phoning or events, right? So there’s lots of different strategies that need to come into play, and it’s a holistic approach that we take where we can, you know, work on all these different channels. Oh, this is so good. So clarify for me just for the audience too, the difference between, okay, so I wanna make sure we’re all talking about the same thing. So an email list, our email list that we already own and we’re sending emails to versus. Cold outreach. So people that don’t know us are not on our list. And so when you talk about lead generation, are you talking about do, do these strategies work for our existing list or is it more for cold outreach? The truth is that I like to do both. Okay.

Because an existing email list, first of all, there’s a lot of gold golden nuggets I like to say in that list. First of all, just to leverage that list for different purposes, not just emailing them. But really understanding who your ICP, your ideal customer profile is by seeing who was already part of that list and kind of, we like to say reverse engineering them. So looking at their qualifications, like who are they? What industries are there in their titles, how many people are in their company. And from there we can find what we call lookalikes. So like companies that really look like them. That’s one way that we use your existing database. Also to cleanse it, I would say it’s really important because if somebody signs up five years ago, they may not even have the same email address or be at the same company. And then what’s gonna happen is that the domains that you’re using, those are gonna bounce and that’s gonna affect all your outreach. Okay. So. Yeah, you really wanna make sure to maintain the health of that database. But yeah, cold outreach is our number one, I would say focus because we have the ability to build these new leads, and develop new relationships. So I would say we do both, but cold emails where we really see the growth. Okay. Makes sense. And so let’s start with the cold email.

AI-Powered Lead Generation Strategies: Smart Signals & SmartReach AI

Jennifer Dawn: So you, you are like, Hey, I need some leads, JIRA. And so you use your, is it AI technology to go out and then research and find people that are either lookalikes or an alignment with that ideal client avatar? Actually, we’re, it’s very interesting you said that because that is something we’re building right now. Okay. Is the, is the AI to be able to find the list. And I’ll share that We actually are calling that Smart Signals. Okay. Okay. Because we’re looking for individuals that actually have shown some intent or shown a signal that they would be interested in receiving your message. So I’ll claim that shortly. And then we’ve built a technology. Called SmartReach AI. And what SmartReach AI does is it hyper personalizes every single email. So it’ll scrape your LinkedIn, Jennifer, and it’ll say, “Hey Jennifer, I see you run this amazing podcast, and you just had this guest on Shira Simmonds. I love what she specifically said about this and this.” Okay. And it really looks like you sat there and researched each and every prospect. And created this customized message to start engaging with them. So that’s the SmartReach AI technology, and it’s a software as a service tool. We also use it for all of the clients that we manage full service for as well.

Jennifer Dawn: It also has a learning engine, so as people are replying and booking the system is learning and getting smarter and smarter. What I love about it too is that everybody has their own tone, their own voice. And like, what we don’t want is this AI sounding machine, right? Right. That’s. About sending messages. So we have the ability to actually edit the messages in your own tone and in your own voice. And when you edit and save, it teaches the system how you write and it writes like you moving forward. So every person can give their personal touch and it’ll learn from you. The, you know, the more you edit and save, the more it learns your tone, your style. So that’s the SmartReach. I love it. Now, can you also use these tools on your existing email list and your existing followers? And I ask this because, you know, LinkedIn, I’ve got thousands of followers. You know, I don’t know who most of these people are, and I think that like a lot of us could, if we’re being honest, would be like, “yeah, I’m connected with 10,000 people on LinkedIn.” Great. How many of them do you actually know? How many of them are you really cultivating relationships with? Same thing with like our email list. Like we’re finding that. We’ve got all these names on the list, but if we can’t get the emails in the inbox, like what’s the point? So I’m just wondering like, can you direct these kinds of tools on like your existing platform? If you wanna start with people who already at least have heard about you instead of a totally cold prospect. A thousand percent. And that’s actually a really smart strategy to do that. So there’s a few tricks to doing that. Okay. So the first, mm-hmm.

The first one is using Sales Navigator. If you’re familiar with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can actually go in and you could do two things. You can search for anyone that actually is following you. Or following your company. Okay, so that’s a real strategy that you can use, and then you can import that list into SmartReach. SmartReach has the ability to hyper personalize LinkedIn messaging as well as email, so you can choose, you know what, let’s just send these. We’ve actually partnered with an automation tool called Hey Reach, and so it automatically will send the messages to them. It’ll hyper personalize each one. And that’s a great list to start with. Okay. Another one, another good source to start with is looking at your website visitors. There’s lots of tools like RB two B and all these other tools that will show you who’s actually visiting my website. And then you shoot them an email saying, “Hey, I saw you visited my website. Would love to, you know,” and that’s a little bit of a warmer lead as well. That’s another what we call like Smart Signal, is that they’ve come to your website. Or they’re following you or you’re, you know, they’re following your company.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh, this is so good. Okay, so go back to LinkedIn. Yeah, when you say you could send it on to people who are following you, if I understand, and this is for everybody’s clarification too if they’re following you on LinkedIn, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re connected, correct? Right. Those are two separate things. Correct. Ab there’s two. Love it. Okay. Two separate things. So there is a feature. Both on LinkedIn and on Sales Navigator. There’s different tricks that you can do. So on sale, on LinkedIn itself, forget sales navigator, just go into LinkedIn and then you can go and you could search for who is connected to, if you’re connected to me. So you could see who is connected to me. Okay. And you could see who’s following me. You can look at both of those. Mm-hmm. Okay, and then you, that is so cool because I see on LinkedIn, I have all these followers and I’m like, and right now we’ve been doing a little more of a push to do more on LinkedIn because I just haven’t really done it, but like I’m like, all right, pick one platform and just work on that platform. So we’re working on LinkedIn right now. I want started. I was like, wow, okay. I’ve got. Thousands of followers and I didn’t even know that I had thousands of followers, and so it’s like, okay, so it sounds like you could use a tool like this to actually now do something with it. I know that I got a lot of connections too, and I’m actually working to clean those up and just like get rid of all these connections that are people just blatantly. Like LinkedIn has gotten so bombarded that I feel like sometimes I don’t even wanna get on there because just people are selling, selling, selling. So I’m getting rid of a lot of those connections so I can foster the real ones. But it sounds like you can use a tool like this to actually go after the people who are following you on LinkedIn, and then from them you’re able to then craft an email, an email that you would send directly to them. Yeah, absolutely. And there’s lots of other things that you can do as well.

For example, if you wanted to hone in on companies that, let’s say have reduced their sales team, they may need a sales development representative, you know, outsource company because they’ve just reduced their sales team. That’s another kind of signal you can also use on Sales Navigator. You can upload that list to the smart link and it can start sending those connection rep request, say, “Hey, I see that you guys recently reduced your sales team, or, I see you’ve increased your sales team and you may need more support.” Or, “I see that you just hit 5 million in revenue,” or “I see that you’re active on LinkedIn.” That’s another great signal as well. You can only connect to people on LinkedIn, which I highly suggest. If you look through your followers, there’s a little button on Sales Navigator that says Active on LinkedIn. So click that, and those are the ones that you wanna communicate with directly on LinkedIn, and the rest you can send an email to because the fact that they’re not active on LinkedIn, they’re not likely to open it up and engage with you. So don’t waste your a hundred connections that you could or, or messaging that you can send a week. Right. Oh, I love this so much. Okay. Website visitors. Let’s see, probably last year. Yes.

A client of mine turned me onto a tool, and I can’t even remember the name of it, but the idea behind it was because we do get a lot of website traffic. We’ve invested a lot in SEO, we run Google Ads, and so we get a lot of website traffic. The point of it was that their tool could give us the information of the people who were on our website. Yes. And we, we did this, it was very expensive. And the, the data was, was crap. Like, we reached out to all these people, like they just weren’t good prospects. We were like, what? And so we did, we stopped doing it. So talk to me a little bit about like. Your tool, how it works does it actually work, like to get good data as far as like somebody who is in fact, you know, shopping you on your website?

Shira Simmonds: Yeah, so basically with Smart Signal is what we’re doing is we’re leveraging tools that exist now. So it’s not our technology, that part. So we’re leveraging different signals. So one of the companies that we’re integrating with, that we’ve been testing quite some time, as I mentioned, is RB two B. And they only have US traffic. Okay? So you cannot get this information if it’s an international visitor. And I would say it’s about 20 to 30% of your visitors are captured. Okay. So it’s not a hundred percent. Okay. Yeah, but so far it’s been super accurate. It’s to the point where I’m talking to someone and I show them my, and I say, come to, you know, I give them my URL and then boom, I get a Slack notification that they just checked my website so I know that it’s working because in real time I could see that it’s working, but it’s not my tool. So I can’t speak to them. But they’ve had tremendous growth. Over the last year and we’re integrating them into Smart Signal. So all you need to do is put this little pixel, you know, on your, in your HTML. And it starts throwing them into Slack. And what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna then take those and then create a hyper personalized message. So it’s gonna say something, “okay, I saw you visit my website and I just saw your podcast and I loved it. Would love to connect with you.” Right? So if somebody said that to you, oh my God, it would really make them right. So that’s how we cut through the clutter of getting all and inundated with, “Hey, I just saw that you visited, you know. LA and you know, you, you posted this great picture, like imagine if you can really see that someone, oh, this is someone legit that actually checked me out, you know?” Right. And actually has interest in speaking to me. So that’s what we’re doing with all these signals, is taking all these signals. It could also be another really great signal is, let’s say you look at another coaching company, right? Mm-hmm. And you can also look at how many followers they have. The likelihood is that their clients are following them. And so to scrape their followers and send them a message is also another signal.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh my goodness. I love it. So people listening right now, you guys are like, “Hey, like how do they like Cyber stalk me? Hey, how do they send me this email?” Like, I’ve gotten these emails, I’m gonna get ’em every day. And it’s just like, you can tell the ones that are just total crap and just, just templates and boilerplate and that. And then the ones where it’s like, what? You listen to this about that and you can really tell the difference. And it’s like. I don’t have time to do that kind of detailed research. Yes. Well, guess what? Like there are tools that can do it for you, and that’s what her company specializes in. So, and I, I wanna go back really quickly. Like, I love how you said, like anybody who says they’re gonna have it figured out in 90 days, it’s a lie. And it is a lie. I’m like, I wanna shout it from the rooftops. I’m like, business owners, I love you guys. Right? It’s a lie, right? Like, I love you guys and it’s like. Stop getting sold down the river by these companies that make these huge promises. And even as business coaches, when clients come in, yes, we’re gonna get some great wins in the first 90 days. A hundred percent. Yeah. But are we gonna solve all your business problems? No. It’s just not possible. You wanna work with companies that are in it with you for the long haul. Right? The long haul. I have yet to do one of these 90 day programs that’s ever, I’ve gotten some results, but that’s ever. Had like lasting, lasting results because business evolves, business changes, and so I just wanna like say to everybody, you guys stop getting, stop getting sold down the river. Okay. Yeah. Work with companies that are gonna be honest and they’re gonna tell you the truth, that it’s a process. It takes time. And then commit to the process of getting it work. Getting it to work. Anyway, so I just had to like shout that again.

Shira Simmonds: Okay. I agree with you. And that’s a lot, a lot of, you know, our discussions initially with the clients is almost like a little bit of PTSD, you know, like we have to start off Yeah. By rewiring that how they view lead generation and what their experiences have been. And they’re so nervous. So it’s a huge collaborative process. It’s like, “okay, this is the messaging, these are the prompts we’re using for SmartReach. Here are 50 examples of how we are gonna customize. Do you like it? Do you like this tone?” No. “Would you like to change it?” It’s a collaborative process. And also Cummings, and listen, “I know you don’t like it, but I promise you this is what your audience is gonna like.” Okay? Yeah. So trust us. Trust us. Let’s do an AB test. Let the data lead us. So that’s a big thing for us as well, right? Listening to our clients and hearing them say, “well, I really think,” and listen, “you guys know everything about your business and your industry. We know what books calls.” Okay? So to collaborate on that together and to do a lot of testing and learning, and let the data lead you. I love that so much. Let the data lead you. You guys, that’s a great takeaway from today’s show. So when you’re out there and you’re running your business and you’re just making decisions by the seat of your pants, I want you to all slow your roll a little bit. And it’s like, “all right, data, data, data.” As my company’s gotten bigger and bigger, that data becomes so much more important. And if you don’t have the data that you need at your fingertips to make decisions you’re just gonna find that you get. Stuck that you struggle, that you can’t get to that next level.

Mastering Email Deliverability for Lead Generation Strategies

Jennifer Dawn: So I love that. Let the data lead you. Now, speaking of data, I have some data on my own email list that shows our deliverability rates have gone from like 30 and 40% to like 5%. And it’s, and over the course of a few months now, I do think that the domain had something to do with it. And so we did have to set up a dedicated sending domain and we weren’t doing anything differently. It’s the same list. We’re, we’re sending it out like we always have, and it’s just like whatever happened. So I think that the email del the, the email domain had something to do with it. We’ve set up a, a dedicated domain. We’re starting to see the email deliverability rates go up, but I’m seeing this across the board with so many of our clients that just like getting the emails in the inbox and then. I’ve got people that I have unsubscribed from their list multiple times and their emails somehow still seem to end up in my inbox. And I’m like, how do they get it in the inbox when I have literally unsubscribed from this list and their emails are still showing up and yet we are legitimate and we are struggling to get these emails in the inbox. And so I would just love to hear your take because I know it’s a very real thing right now with I think a lot of business owners of just. Really struggling to get their emails, their, the legitimate emails in the inbox. It’s so, it’s so interesting that you mentioned this, Jennifer. ’cause I literally didn’t know we were gonna talk about this and I just posted about this on LinkedIn. So if you wanna take a look that’s good because I connected with you on LinkedIn. Okay. So I could see everything you posted. So, so basically what happens, I would say over the last, we, there’s been a massive shift in the industry in the last few months. Let’s start with that. Yeah. What was the first shift?

Shira Simmonds: Was that Gmail. And Yahoo and a few others change their spam filters. Okay. So what does this mean? Every year they do it. Okay. But this year they did it twice and they don’t tell you what they’re changing. Okay, so you don’t know, is it this specific word that now is gonna be hitting that spam? Fly and it’s gonna turn everything into spam. Okay? Is it that I’m sending too many and my, you know, there’s a lot of factors that go into it. Did I set up my domain correctly with the DAC and all the components that need to be set up originally, right? Have I warmed up my domain before you start using now one domain? Sometimes I don’t know how large your your list is and how many emails you’re sending at once. But one domain, well we were sending the list is over 25,000 and we were sending one email to everybody at once. And so we’ve now switched that. So we’re sending in batches, so we are batching it. So we created the new dedicated sending domain. So now it’s mail dot Jennifer Don coaching instead of just Jennifer John coaching. And now we’ve started to send it in batches. So those are two steps that we’ve taken. Okay. So how many emails are you sending in a batch? That’s a great question, and as I’m talking to you right now, I’m wondering if batches are too big. If we need to maybe make those batches smaller. If I were to tell you the number that you’re supposed to be sending, you would be shocked. Okay. So the strategy for you will be to set up multiple domains, okay? Okay. So one is not enough because you shouldn’t be sending, especially at the beginning, more than 30 a day per domain. Okay, so think about that. 30 per day. Hmm. Per domain. Oh my goodness. So we are just blasting it then. Exactly. And so that’s a big no-no, that Gmail is now gonna flag you. So, okay. So what I would suggest is setting up multiple domains. They’re not expensive. You can buy one for like $2. Okay. Yeah. You have to set it up properly. But before you start sending any emails, put it on an email warmup tool. Okay. What does an email warmup tool do? It’s an, it’s an automated system that automatically starts sending out emails. And replying to the email, so instantly has it reply.io has it. I think there’s a bunch of different tools that, you know, allow you to have this warmup and what it does is as it starts replying and you could set it, I think we have it at a 25% reply rate to make it look, you know, legitimate. And what it does when you have a new domain, it gets a score, it gets a health score from Gmail and the different providers. And so it shows them, wait, this is not a spam email. Okay. Okay. This is something that people are having engagement. Once you have engagement, your score gets higher. Okay? Okay. So you wanna start warming up those domains for at least two to four weeks before you start sending an email. Then you start sending 30 a day.

Now the other thing that can happen as well that they’ve become much stricter about, and this is because of AI, so there’s two things that happen. Gmail changed their filters and AI companies went through the roof this year, right? Yeah. So now it’s so easy to just, you know, write emails at in bulk and just send them out really quickly. So what is Gmail and the other providers looking at? They’re looking at your personalization. They’re looking at is this a bulk email? So if you’re sending the same content to every person day after day after day, that’s gonna be flagged as well. Okay. Okay. So you wanna have a, like that personalization, which you know, SmartReach can help with, but there’s a lot of tools that can help with that as well. That’ll change it up so that it’s not the same email to every single person. Okay? So those are just a few tricks that you can do to really help your email deliverability. But honestly, engagement is the number one. So once they start seeing, listen, this is legitimate, people are responding. So also cleansing your database is another part of that. Anyone who’s left the company, anyone who is not there anymore, anyone who is not interested, remove them. ‘ cause they’re not gonna engage with you. And then your score is gonna get lowered, right? So all of these strategies are what you kind of need to do to get your emails delivered to the inbox.

For those of us who have, like, let’s say I, I, I usually send a weekly email, one email every week. So a newsletter. I know there’s a lot of people listening. Maybe you have a monthly newsletter, you know that it is, it’s the same content. You’re sending it out to your whole list. So do we just scrap these efforts? Do we keep doing them? Like what, what are the people who are sending out like an email newsletter kind of thing? What’s a strategy for them? So, I’ll be honest, that’s not really my area of expertise. Sending huge bulk emails. There are tools that you can use. I’m trying to remember, not MailChimp and maybe a few other tools that can send bulk emails. And there are things that they do with the domain to ensure that they’re being delivered and they’re, they’re healthy. Yeah. My focus is really more, as I mentioned, on the cold email side and mm-hmm. You know, adding those new people to the list and sending that out. You guys, I want you to just pay attention. I asked you a question. She said, that’s not my area of expertise, and she told the truth. Okay. That’s how you know that she’s a legitimate person and a good company to work with. I just want to throw that out, right? Because a lot of people, especially when you’re out shopping for lead generation companies, and I just. Really wanna highlight this, that when you’re out talking to these lead gen companies, they will tell you everything that you want to hear. And when you hear somebody actually tell you the truth, that’s the kind of company that you want to work with. I just wanna throw that out there. So good job. Thank you. No, I’m always like honest about what we can and can’t do and that’s really more of like a marketing, you know, newsletter company that do those kind of work. Yeah, and, and you know, I know a few of them, so I’m happy to intro you to them. But I’m not that person.

Shira Simmonds: We really, like I said, are focused on the the cold emails and how to get those cold emails, and that’s really honestly where Gmail’s also getting so strict about that all of our clients had a huge decline in deliverability. So it’s not just you, and I’m sure everybody’s feeling it now. So I would say that’s also why. We have built those intense signals as well because the spray and prey that used to work, like you said, you might get a few big wins over 90 days and you still will with that approach. Okay. Yeah. But it’s much less than it used to be now, and it’s much harder. And you need to start moving towards more of these intent based signals that you could see. Like somebody just commented on a post, right? Right. I go to your competitor, let’s say, and they’re also a great coach, and they posted something and 50 people commented, that’s a great target audience for you, right? Mm-hmm. So a little bit more of intense signals. They’re going to an event. On, you know, a certain topic that you’re coaching, right? Yeah. That’s a great intense signal for you because you know, they’re interested in this type of topic. So all of these types of signals are really what you wanna focus on. So the combination of sending out the emails with the right, you know, deliverability strategy that I shared with you. Yeah. With those intent signals are what brings the conversions to book calls.

Does Cold Email Outreach Work? Strategic Lead Generation Tips

Jennifer Dawn: Got it. Okay. And I know we’re running out of time. I’m having so much fun. Shera just like getting all this information from you. So, one more quick thing. So for those listening who have not used cold email outreach to grow their businesses, to do lead generation, like, you know, does it really work? Is it worth spending time and money to, to go through the process of getting cold email outreach to work for your business? It really does work. Like I said earlier, it really also depends on who you’re targeting. There are certain titles that I would not suggest doing it on email, but I would suggest doing it on LinkedIn as an example. Mm-hmm. Okay. And you have to know which channel, which, you know, channel is the best channel for your audience. And it could be phone, it could be email, it could be LinkedIn, but the only way you’re gonna grow is by doing some type of investments in marketing and growth, right? Yeah. And so what we’ve found is that it works. Like I said, you know, the combination of the hyper personalization. Helps with so many things, not just getting your email read, but also getting it delivered. Okay. Yeah. With these types of signals that people have shown some type of intent, so they’re a little bit less than cold. Okay. I wouldn’t say they’re warm yet, right? But they’re in between cold and warm, right? And you wanna get them warmed up and the right messaging to them. Right is so critical. And testing and learning, that’s so important.

Jennifer Dawn: Like, what is the right call to action? Should I say you know, “I’d love to talk to you. How’s Monday at five?” Or should I say, “Hey, you know, we’d love to speak with you. Would this be of interest?” Right? That’s a very different type of message. So how do you message that? What’s the best message for each person that would really resonate with them? There’s a lot of testing and learning that needs to be done, but the SmartReach technology also does that. It, it hyper personalizes based on what’s gonna work best for each person. So it knows, let’s say A CEO in the US with a hundred employees is gonna respond a different way than a VP marketing in the UK with 50 employees, right? And it’s different cultures and it’s different industries. And so if the system knows what’s gonna work best, and that is really what helps, what helps the conversion rates a lot as well. Very nice. Shoot, we’re out of time, but Shera, this has been so wonderful. Can you just take a quick moment and tell everybody who is like, I wanna learn more, where can I find her? Just like, where can people find you and connect with you to learn more about your company and your services?

Connect with Shira Simmonds & SSC Digital for Lead Generation

Shira Simmonds: So first of all, absolutely reach out to me on LinkedIn and our, our website is SmartReach.ai.com. Smart Reach.ai.com and you can send an email there. My team will send it to me, so don’t worry, it’ll come straight to me. Or you could reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to connect with anyone and also just help in any way that I can. So we’re great.

Jennifer Dawn: Shira, thank you so much for being on the show today. So very helpful. So very informative. I know everybody who’s listening is just like, ah. I personally had several light bulbs go off. I’m like, okay. So great, great information. Thank you for being here with us today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Alright you guys, that’s it for today’s show. Now, as always. Take some action. It’s one thing to be listening to this show, and I’m sure you had some light bulb moments as well. And if you don’t do anything to act on those, you’re not gonna get the results. And at the end of the day, it’s the action that gets the results. So pick anything, so many things from today’s show and take action on it. And that’s it guys. Get out there and have a happy, productive day y’all. Bye.

Links

• Connect with Shira Simmonds & SSC Digital:
• Website: SmartReach.ai

• Connect with Jennifer Dawn:
• Website: www.jenniferdawncoaching.com
• Retreats: www.jenniferdawncoaching.com/our-retreat
• Join our Academy: www.jenniferdawnacademy.com