This is the cold email plan we'd run for an agency that builds custom websites for one industry. A website is the most public thing a company owns. You can judge it in thirty seconds and so can their buyers.
Your market is every established firm in your industry whose website no longer matches the business. Firms grow and add services and merge and the site stays the same.
These are the signals worth looking for.
The Wayback Machine shows how long the current design has been live. An old copyright year in the footer is a quicker tell.
Google's PageSpeed Insights scores the phone version. A red score means buyers on phones are left waiting.
BuiltWith shows the platform and the plugins behind the site. Outdated setups are slow and hard to update safely.
Two firms joining or a new name means a new site is coming whether they planned for it or not.
A service they announced on LinkedIn that their website never mentions.
A new marketing manager often wants the website fixed first.
Lead with the year the current design went live.
Lead with their score.
Lead with the news.
Lead with the service they announced and the page it deserves.
A law firm site and a manufacturer site are built for different buyers. Keep them in separate campaigns.
Their homepage redesigned as a single image. Their own content and their own brand in a clearer layout.
It works because they see their own firm looking the way they wish it did. Building it is the project. The mockup takes real design time and it makes sense because a custom site is a big project.
A Loom of browsing their site on a phone and marking where a buyer gets stuck.
It works because partners rarely look at their own site on a phone. Seeing it once is usually enough.
A short paid project at a fixed fee that produces the sitemap and the wireframes and the content plan. Credit the fee against the build.
It works because they get a usable plan either way. Once the plan exists the build is the obvious next step.
Deliver within two weeks.
Hi {{first_name}},
The {{company}} homepage looks the same as it did in {{wayback_year}}.
We build sites for {{industry}} firms only. Mocked up what the homepage could look like today.
Want to see it?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
Ran {{company}}'s homepage through Google's PageSpeed Insights on a phone. It scored {{mobile_score}}.
Recorded a quick walkthrough of where a visitor gets stuck.
Should I send it?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
We design and build websites for {{industry}} firms and nothing else.
{{proof_line}}
Worth a look?
{{sender_first_name}}
Swap {{proof_line}} for one real result of your own. A site you built and what changed after launch. If there is no result yet then leave the line out.
At firms the managing partner or the CEO signs off on a new site. The marketing director runs the project.
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.