This is the cold email plan we'd run for an agency that builds online ordering for distributors and manufacturers in one industry. The signal is easy to see. Go to their website and try to place an order.
Your market is every distributor and manufacturer in your industry that sells to repeat business customers. Many still take orders by phone and email and PDF order forms.
These are the signals worth looking for.
Their site has a request a quote button or a PDF catalog and no customer login. Orders all go through a person.
A downloadable catalog means the product data exists and nobody has put it online.
Job posts for customer service reps or order entry clerks on LinkedIn or Indeed mean orders arrive by phone and email and someone types them in.
Check their competitors' sites. A rival with a customer login and online reorders is easier to buy from.
Job posts often name the system that runs their inventory and orders. That tells you what the ordering site has to connect to.
A distributor bought by a private equity firm often gets a push to modernize. Press releases announce the deals.
Lead with their catalog and the reorder a customer can't place online.
Lead with the job post and the orders a portal would take instead.
Lead with the competitor's customer login.
Lead with the acquisition and the growth plan that often follows.
Electrical parts and medical supplies have different catalogs and different customers. Keep them in separate campaigns.
A mockup of their best product category as an online ordering page. Customer pricing and quick reorder and order history built from their own catalog.
It works because they see their own products sold the way their customers wish they could buy them. The build is the project. The mockup takes real work and a portal project is big enough to justify it.
Screenshots of how two competitors take orders online next to their own quote form.
It works because nobody likes seeing a rival make buying easier. Closing that gap is the project.
Load one product category into a demo store with sample customer pricing. Give them a login to try it.
It works because their sales team and their best customer can click through it. Once they have used it the full build is the next step.
Deliver the demo within two weeks of getting the catalog file.
Hi {{first_name}},
Downloaded the {{company}} catalog. There's no way to reorder online and the site asks for a quote instead.
We build ordering sites for {{industry}} distributors. Mocked up how {{product_category}} could look with customer pricing and one click reorders.
Want to see it?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
Saw {{company}} is hiring a {{job_title}} to handle phone and email orders.
A customer login takes a lot of those orders without anyone typing them in. Happy to show you one built with your own catalog.
Worth a look?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
We build online ordering for {{industry}} distributors and manufacturers.
{{proof_line}}
Worth a conversation?
{{sender_first_name}}
Swap {{proof_line}} for one real result of your own. A portal you built and what it changed. If there is no result yet then leave the line out.
At smaller distributors the owner or the president decides. At bigger ones it is the COO or the head of sales with IT in the room.
Results depend on the offer and the list. Three outbound agencies that publish their own numbers land between one booked meeting per 1,000 people contacted and one per 2,000. One of them also tested 650,000 cold emails with a plain offer and got about 3 to 6 interested replies per 10,000 people.
Those are other people's numbers and not a promise about your market. Your market's number only comes from testing it.
We build and run this campaign for one agency per industry.
Thirty minutes on your market and how we'd reach it.