In November 2020, I interviewed Yogi Solanki, a domain name investor who started as a domainer just eight months before. During those eight months, Yogi sold over $25,000 worth of domain names via outbound sales.
He then published the popular “Domain Outbound Marketing” ebook and has recently launched OutboundDomains.com.
After almost a year in the domain industry, Yogi has developed a significant knowledgebase around outbound domain sales. I’ve invited Yogi to give his top ten tips for outbound domain sales success, aimed at helping you to improve your outbound sales outreach.
Yogi is taking it from here.
Table of Contents
Free email or business email?
Selling domains is a B2B process. Your email address is the first thing that can either strengthen or weaken your credibility. In this case, business domain emails have an advantage over the free ones.
Free email accounts ending in @gmail.com,@yahoo.com, @outlook.com, etc., make you look unprofessional. They don’t inspire trust. In outbound sales, gaining trust and building credibility in your prospect’s eyes is a top priority. Prospects don’t know you personally, and they won’t engage with you professionally unless they verify that you are a real company.
If you are new, you can start with a free email account, but I would highly recommend getting a custom domain email.
For business email, I have been using Gsuite; it is not that expensive, and most of all, it easily integrates with Gmail.
Email warm-up
Properly warming up your email account is a crucial step to take to avoid having your emails flagged as spam. It is vital to building a good email reputation and having a high delivery rate. Email warm-up also increases your sending limits.
Here’s how you can warm up your new email address:
For the first couple of weeks, start the process by sending 10-20 manual emails to your friends/family and build a conversation. These people should open your emails, report as ‘not spam’ if the email was delivered to their Spam folder, reply to you, and forward your emails if possible.
Positive interactions will help you to build a good sending reputation.
Customize and Personalize.
The first rule of cold emails is to personalize them and send them to the right people. Personalization can significantly increase your open rate.
Your email template should contain variables that are customized for each recipient. Things like the name of their company, their industry, prospect name, and customizing these elements make the prospect feel you’re sending a one-to-one email.
Here’s a quick example:
If you see this email, I’ve personalized it by adding the industry, company, and prospect name.
Personalized emails stand out within the inbox as highly relevant, tailor-made material. Customized emails make an email more likely to be opened and clicked on.
Subject Lines
I treat subject lines like a movie trailer. Subject lines are meant to tell recipients exactly what they’re going to get in the email body, and the email subject line is the key to unlocking the door.
If you are using the domain name in the subject line, make sure your subject lines are in the title case, not lowercase.
Title case example: DomainName
Lowercase example: domainname
If you have prospects first name in the subject line, you boost open rates by up to 30%
- Subject line – Hey there ❎
- Subject line – Hey (Name) + 30%
Make sure your message is catered to the recipient – whether that’s their name or company. It helps build a rapport and increases the likelihood of your email getting opened in the first place.
A/B testing
Email marketing is all about A/B testing. Keep on testing completely different email templates against each other to see which one generates more response.
In A/B testing, you can test out two or three variations of subject lines/emails to check which one is getting the best response.
A/B test your subject lines: Run a split test with 2 separate subject lines. Test to see if throwing a relevant question grabs the prospect’s attention or if adding a personalization variable like prospect name or company name attracts the prospect. Based on the result, pick your winner.
Similarly, you can spilt test your email copy and check which email copy gets your more click and response based on the result check if you have a clear winner.
A/B testing is critical, allowing you to significantly increase the open/response rate.
Best time/day to send out emails
If your emails are not getting any response, maybe you are sending them at the wrong time. It is essential to identify when the best time to send your cold email campaigns.
Various studies have concluded that emails sent in the morning between 6 am -10 am (recipient’s time zone) tend to receive the most opens.
Based on my success and other marketing companies’ studies, these are the best days to do email outreach.
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
The best time to send emails are:
- 6 AM
- 10 AM
- 2 PM
- 8 PM
In general, every new day brings a unique opportunity, but in email marketing, sending emails at the correct time can make all the difference.
Email Follow-up
Real money is in follow-ups; some say that they would follow-up for as long as there is a reply from the prospect; well, I don’t recommend following this strategy.
How many follow-up emails and how often?
I recommend following up at least 4-5 times after your first email with a gap period of 2-4 days.
In sales, you have to be persistent; one email will not get you a sale; it can happen, but chances are dim, and following up doesn’t mean you are annoying or spamming them. If your follow-up email is well crafted, prospects usually may feel grateful, enjoy your interest in them, and admire your persistence.
While doing follow-up, it is essential to keep teasing your prospects with every follow-up email you send, add something valuable to every email, and avoid sending everything in one email.
If I have a domain with good search volume and CPC, Here’s how my follow up emails looks like:
Hi {First Name}, I sent you an email a while ago about this domain (DomainName) and how I think this could be an excellent fit for your company{CompanyName}.
I forgot to mention this in my previous email: This keyword “Domain Name” has a monthly search volume of over () with a cost per click up to ($).
Owning an exact match keyword can potentially cut down your marketing expenses.
I hope this makes more sense to you. Do you have any questions?
Thanks for your time
(YourName)
Take care of your online presence
Ensure your website, LinkedIn profile & email signatures are neat and clean. Prospects will check you out beyond email, so make sure you give them some reasons for positive replies.
For best results, include the following details in your email signature:
- Name
- Job title
- Phone number
- Website
- Linkedin profile link
Email Signature Sample:
Avoid talking about yourself
Prospects want to know what you can do for them and how the domain you selling can benefit their company, not about how wonderful you and your company are.
You don’t need to introduce yourself or ask them how they are doing; they don’t care. Keep your email short and up to a point. Focus on a single benefit. You can focus on other benefits in follow-ups.
The first sentence in the cold email is critical as that’s what they see in their email preview panes, and to be honest, recipients don’t really care what you are doing and how you are doing. All they care about is what you are offering.
Avoid doing this- ” My name is (This), I’m a domain expert blah blah…
Your email signature is enough to tell them who you are.
Don’t give up on the negative responses
Selling domains by outbound is not easy; you will rarely find someone saying, “YES, I will buy your domain,” especially during your first email.
If someone is replying “not interested,” rather than giving up, you need to find out the reason why they are not interested.
A quick example of how to reply to “Not interested.”
“Hi (name). Thank you for getting back to me; I appreciate it! I would like to ask you for a couple of extra minutes to understand why you are not interested. Do you think that’s possible? Your feedback would be vital for us.
I really appreciate any feedback you can provide.
Regards,
(Your Name)
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Thanks to Yogi for providing us with his top 10 tips for outbound domain sales success. Outbound domain sales marketing should be done selectively and it should be highly targeted. Please ensure that you abide by any rules, regulations, or laws before you consider outbound marketing.
Great thoughts…