“The “crazy ones” are those that push the status quo, that dream up the big ideas and shape our futures. Care less about what people think and more about creating. We need more creators. I don’t care how freakin’ weird the idea – just build it. Let your dream control you. Seriously, go for it.” – Dan Martell.
This entrepreneur’s net worth is $37 million.
And he built his million-dollar empire using cold email.
At least cold email had a significant role in starting some of his businesses. Including Clarity.fm
I’m talking about Dan Martell. He was kind enough to join us on the Cold Email Outreach podcast to talk about entrepreneurship and cold email.
Below, you’ll find the story, cold email template, and strategy that started Clarity.fm.
Who is Dan Martell?
(If you already know who he is, feel free to skip to the cold email template.)
Before we get into the details of the cold email templates that made Dan a millionaire, here is some background on who he is.
Martell is a Canadian entrepreneur and the founder of Clarity. Fm.
What is Clarity. Fm? It is a startup that makes it easy to connect with top business minds over the phone. (The perfect solution for getting in touch with the right person.)
He previously co-founded Flowtown and is also an investor to companies like Udemy, Intercom, and Unbounce.
His life wasn’t always an easy one. By the age of 12, he was in and out of foster homes and had even been jailed twice at the age of 17 for drug charges.
At 18, he went to rehab for drug addiction, and this was where he discovered computers, software, and programming. It’s quite inspirational because Dan mentions that one reason why this rehab worked so well for him was that all the councilors who worked there were ex-drug addicts.
They helped him get through this challenging time, which is also one major reason he gives back to others.
Before he made his break in business, he had one or two failed companies behind his name.
I don’t know about you, but the fact that he could turn his whole life around is quite inspirational, in my opinion. It gives us all a bit of encouragement that no matter where we are in life, there is always a chance that things can change for the better.
His first successful company name was Spheric Technologies, a social enterprise consulting and applications business. The company grew by an average of 152% per year. He then sold it in 2008.
From here on, he co-founded Flowtown and founded Clarity.
Dan’s first cold email ever sent (template included)
Interestingly, in the interview we had with Dan, he doesn’t call cold emails “cold emails” but rather “building businesses ‘.
The first email that he sent (he was 18 years old) was inspired by reading a book for entrepreneurs, and the book mentioned that you should build a mentor group or a network.
Martell then decided to cold email 20 of the world’s top tech entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, and Steve Jobs.
This was the first cold email that he had ever sent.
I’m sure you’re wondering how it went….
But first… Here is the template:
“Hey.
I’m a young entrepreneur from this part of the world, and I was just wondering if you had to rank these 3 things in order, which one would you put as the most important?
- Who you know ( Your network)
- What you know (Where you went to school)
- Pure tenacity (Your will to hustle).”
This was the email template that Dan had sent to 20 people, and 7 of them replied.
Mark Cuban replied, “ Doing all three when everyone else is trying to pick one.”
Quite amazingly, 20 years later, Mark Cuban became the investor of Dan’s company, Clarity.
The strategy Dan used to grow Clarity
(Which raised 1.6M from investors like Marc Cuban)
It took a while to figure out the code that cracked Clarity. How it began was that Dan knew that there are predominately 3 different channels that startups need to figure out.
- Paid promotion
- Paid publishing
- Inbound vs. outbound (inbound being content marketing)
He decided that inbound marketing would be too slow for what they needed to ramp up for different categories of expertise on Clarity.
They wanted to build a platform similar to Linkedin but with a call button.
Dan had a strategy for distribution and growth called OPN (Other People’s Networks) OPN figures out who has access to other people’s networks to find your ideal customer and how to present a message inside that network.
If you had to ask people where would they find a really smart network of individuals, they would most likely reply:
- Quora
All these answers are accurate, but it’s nearly impossible when it comes to growth hacking against LinkedIn. Twitter has too many false positives, and Quora makes it quite challenging to connect and reach out to members.
But Dan found a platform that had similar quality and proxy to Quora, which was Slideshare.
What made this such a great idea was that he was targeting a specific niche. He didn’t just choose to reach out to any consultant on LinkedIn or any consultant in any category, so he was focused on two things.
- He wanted to find a specific niche that he knew was in demand, for example, social media marketing.
- He found the experts in the specific niche on Slideshare.
Why did Dan choose to use Slideshare?Well, when it comes to Slideshare, you can search any topic and see who has presentations with the most views and influence, and 70% of the time, that person has listed their contact details on the last slide.
Dan then manually created a spreadsheet of contacts that he found on Slideshare and used social media as his first category. He then sent a batch of emails to this first group of people himself.
But you’re probably wondering how did he find entrepreneurs who needed advice?
Well, he prompted his users. They had just launched something called “Clarity Answers,” and most users felt that it was like Quora, but it had a difference.
Everyone who responded to the questions were verified, experts.
So people would post a question and then tag it. Dan then went to Slideshare to recruit the experts.
Case Study:
The first example he shares in the interview is one of an entrepreneur named Lisa. Lisa needed advice on social media marketing.
Dan then went to Slideshare, as we mentioned above, and looked for all the experts in the field of social media. He then crafted an email that was impossible for the experts to refuse. (You will see why when you read it. The template is listed below)
These experts could then connect with Lisa on Clarity and hopefully answer her questions. This created SEO on the platform, which helped with their distribution strategy.
But that one post from Lisa was sent out to 250 experts on the topic. Whoever was the fastest to respond got the job.
But, those who had all signed up were still part of Clarity and were excited for what the platform had to offer.
Clarity had a very structured onboarding process for experts to get them to share their profile on the “drive more calls volume.”
The Template that started Clarity
“Hey
Clarity allows entrepreneurs to get advice from other entrepreneurs over the phone; I have an entrepreneur named Lisa who is looking for advice on social media.
I found you on Slideshare, and you look like the right person to talk to.
Click here if you want to sign up and connect with Lisa and get paid for your advice.”
Why did this cold email work?
- The email resonated with the right audience (So the list was correct)
- The value proposition was right. Dan used the right selling point to get a response from their target audience.
Note: It’s important to remember these two points when drafting your email. First, find the right target audience, and make sure that you are offering the prospect something that they can’t refuse.
That was the magic of this cold email template. Dan offered people to get paid for their expertise, and they could set their price at whatever they wanted.
It was an offer that people couldn’t refuse. A complete no-brainer.
All they had to do was click a link and subscribe. What could be easier?
Good copywriters have a saying “It is not how you write your message, but what your message is.”
Don’t get caught up in what you say in your emails, but rather focus on the value that you are offering your prospects.
BUT NOTE: This does not mean that if you copy this template exactly, you will sell your saas company for $20 million, but rather focus on the cold email strategy.
The 3 phase cold email setup that Dan used
Step 1: Manual
The first step to Dan’s strategy was him sending the emails manually by himself. During this phase, he also created the body copy of the email so that he had a template to share with a team to execute; this brings us to step 2.
Step 2: Leverage
Dan then hired two sales reps to execute the cold email. He gave them keyword categories to find the experts in each field on SlideShare and then email them. The categories, for example, were things like SEO, Social media, Facebook, and so on.
In 3 months from when this process started, the two team members had emailed thousands of people.
Step 3: Automation
This was when automation tools came into play. In this case, specifically, Dan used Bonjour to automate his cold email campaigns, eventually over time.
This is why Clarity got funding of $ad6 million. Dan had a vision of creating a network that would self-organize based on the volume of demand driven by users. They had a rank order of topics that needed to be filled by expertise based on what our users were searching for.
The program became self-regulating regarding supply and demand, which was exactly why Clarity became such a hit.
What we can learn from Dan Martell
Some of the most incredible things we can take away from this article are that no matter how you started out in life, there is always an opportunity for success and growth.
He built the right kind of list and offered his target audience an opportunity that they couldn’t refuse.
His tenacity and determination made him millions, but the best part is that he can now help others to achieve their dreams.
Keep an eye out for our next article on cold email tips from Dan Martell.
PS: If you need any help with your outreach, contact us today. We have 12 years of lead gen expereince, and would love to help you get those qualified leads.