Andrew and Sean have a bet to see who can write the best cold email copy for MetaMonster, and early results are in. Sean has a name and domain for his new product - Margins and is letting the Miscreants team handle the branding. 

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Margins: http://margins.so/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:01.15
Sean
What up, what up, what up?

00:02.64
Andrew
I got some stats for you.

00:04.12
Sean
Yeah, tell me. Hit me. but yeah We should probably give some context first.

00:08.26
Andrew
All right. So Thursday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, some night, there was a night last week when, I lured Sean into giving me a bunch of free consulting advice, in under the pretense of let's cowork and like work on things side by side.

00:11.90
Sean
I don't know. I can't remember. One of the nights. Uh-huh.

00:26.76
Andrew
And instead I just like for three hours was like, what do you think about this cold email idea? What do you think about this cold email idea?

00:34.37
Sean
We co-worked. We co-worked on your cold emails. You didn't lie to me.

00:41.45
Andrew
Fair, fair. I'll take it. I'll take it. So got some cold emails spun up. I knew this was something I wanted to do again now that the product was live. And it's early, early days, but i have, I've sent 200 emails.

00:57.98
Andrew
And so I have some early results and

01:00.84
Sean
Do we want to tell everyone what the five different emails were?

01:05.39
Andrew
Yeah, I narrowed it down to four after day one. I just canceled. There were two that were almost identical. And so I just killed one of them.

01:12.61
Sean
Okay.

01:13.75
Andrew
Probably shouldn't have, but like I'm incredibly impatient and no, no, it wasn't one of the ones that affects your bets.

01:16.85
Sean
Does it affect my bets? Oh, good, good, good. Sweet. That's what matters.

01:22.88
Andrew
Okay.

01:23.01
Sean
Okay, go.

01:24.34
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got four cold email templates. going these are meta monster cold email templates if that isn't blatantly obvious first one is just like classic sales email the uh the subject line is ai powered screaming frog and then it's just like hey i built this thing do you want to demo it i want to sell it to you classic sales uh sales pitch second one

01:45.84
Sean
Yep. Yep.

01:52.92
Andrew
is almost the exact same, only instead of presenting it as a sales pitch, presenting it as, hey, I'm looking for feedback, which is true. i At this stage, I just want feedback and information, especially on our pricing, which I want to talk about later. Third one is one of your ideas that you pitched me, which is kind of like Try to write... i think your your pitch was try to write your cold email like you're writing a newsletter.

02:25.14
Andrew
So try to write it so that you're teaching the recipient something and then just also happen to be have to have this product that is connected to the thing you're teaching that you want but to try to sell.

02:39.34
Andrew
And then the the fourth one was more of like a... Classic kind of growth hacky play, which is, hey, I want to interview you for our blog.

02:55.21
Andrew
And so you and I placed a bet on this. Your bet, what did you bet?

02:57.76
Sean
Yep.

02:59.95
Sean
So I bet that the AI powered Screaming Frog, the first one, the traditional sales email would have the most opens because not because I believe in those, but because specifically AI powered Screaming Frog alternative is just a great subject header.

03:04.78
Andrew
Yep.

03:07.11
Andrew
Yep.

03:09.83
Andrew
Yeah.

03:16.15
Sean
and then i also bet that the one that would bring you the most value quote unquote whatever that however we want to define that and is the newsletter one value isn't like you know someone actually demos most qualified leads basically you bet uh that the interview one would have the most opens and replies but the most valuable responses would come from the feedback yeah the feedback letter and whoever wins the other person to buy that the other person the up

03:23.39
Andrew
Yes. Yeah.

03:37.69
Andrew
Yes.

03:44.46
Sean
The loser has to buy the winner on Chick-fil-A.

03:46.44
Andrew
Yep.

03:47.24
Sean
So the stakes are high.

03:47.32
Andrew
All right. are you

03:48.38
Sean
It depends.

03:48.87
Andrew
when are When are we cutting off the results, by the way? What's...

03:51.67
Sean
What are the results that?

03:54.65
Andrew
So, currently, in fourth place in open rates, and tied for lowest response rate, I think.

04:03.73
Andrew
oh i There's an asterisk on response rates that I'll explain later.

04:06.58
Sean
OK.

04:09.17
Andrew
Newsletter.

04:10.39
Sean
Oh, damn.

04:11.29
Andrew
But all of these have gotten crazy good open rates for cold email.

04:16.19
Sean
OK.

04:16.80
Andrew
That is the lowest open rate at a 42% open rate so far.

04:20.22
Sean
What's the highest?

04:21.26
Andrew
Highest, I'm sorry to say, is the interview. Is the interview request at a 62% open rate.

04:27.67
Sean
pretty good.

04:30.75
Andrew
62 is pretty damn good. No replies on that one, though. No replies, no clicks that I can tell. no No interest coming out of that. So my guess is people are, like, opening it and then going, this is some no-name company that's trying to, you know, sell me something.

04:45.44
Sean
Right, right.

04:46.35
Andrew
i don't care about this.

04:48.41
Sean
Okay.

04:48.85
Andrew
That would be my guess. I have booked two demos.

04:57.58
Sean
Okay.

04:58.43
Andrew
And have gotten direct feedback on our pricing from a third person who may still has expressed interest in booking a third demo.

05:06.39
Sean
And this is from what? Which email?

05:08.61
Andrew
So here's the thing. One of them I don't know.

05:12.15
Sean
Okay.

05:12.74
Andrew
Which sounds dumb. It's like, how could you not know? It seems like instantly missed the tracking. And I have had a... damn hard time figuring out i know the email but i've had a damn hard time figuring out which version they got sent uh in instantly software i think maybe if i paid for their crm version i'd be able to like track all of the the activity in more detail but i'm not paying for their crm right now and so it's like it yeah

05:24.81
Sean
Yeah.

05:30.07
Sean
Gotcha.

05:36.24
Sean
Probably, yeah.

05:40.51
Sean
and Unless, unless Incidentally wants to sponsor us, because we're both users.

05:45.04
Andrew
True.

05:45.50
Sean
Yeah.

05:46.06
Andrew
So all I see ri...