The Daily Carnage

Here’s how to write cold emails that people open:

1. Know your audience. Verify that your contact is a legitimate lead, and assess their online presence to find opportunities for personalization.
2. Know what sets you apart. What are your value propositions, which offer specific solutions to bad alternatives? These will constitute the subtext of your message.
3. Know what good cold-email writing is. It’s concise, personal, personable, focused, authentic, original, and clear.
4. Choose your sender. Opt for a name in your sender field instead of a company, like “Rob from The Daily Carnage.”
5. Land the subject line. In 60 characters or less, write a relevant, self-evident subject line. Your open rate will tell you if it’s working.
6. Hook the reader. Ask a question, address a pain point, demonstrate value, throw in some personalized flattery, or mention a mutual connection to kick things off.
7. Make a great first impression with a five-minute favor. Write a review of the contact’s book or podcast, donate to a cause they support, or share their work with your audience to break the ice.
8. Warm up your outreach in your email body. In a few sentences, describe the benefits you’re offering. How will your product or service improve their life? You’re starting a conversation, not selling.
9. Include one low-friction CTA. Just one, offered without risk or commitment. Make it natural and organic, not a high-contrast button. Keep proposed chats short (15 minutes), and include a calendar link for ease.

Read the full guide at Demand Curve.

To create an effective homepage, you need to be clear about what your product is and does, and who it is for. Unfortunately, as companies grow in size, message clarity often deteriorates.

Anthony Pierri has identified the four main bad habits that lead to this breakdown in clarity:

1. Speaking to multiple audiences at once. Copywriters often try to summarize the value and functionality for every potential segment of an infinitely flexible product—so as not to alienate potential customers. This results in a “bad-messaging epidemic.”
2. Choosing the wrong champion. It’s a common strategy to write for the C-suite, but choosing a target that is too senior limits your audience. Instead, speak to the people CEOs delegate day-to-day decision making to, like VPs, directors, and managers. CEOs aren’t the champion of the sales cycle unless you’re targeting small biz.
3. Sharing multi-order benefits. Any given benefit leads to saving time, increasing revenue, or minimizing risk. Leading with a series of benefits that beget other benefits can make you sound like everyone else, obscuring what your product actually does.
4. Using vision-messaging. On the startup messaging spectrum, there’s the founder’s vision on one end, and there’s what the product is capable of doing today on the other. The former is for investors, but customers care about the latter.

Check out Product Growth to develop a better homepage.