This approach is called the “five-touch” game, when each potential investor receives several letters in a row with a precisely adjusted period of time. The tactic allows you to create a good impression and get a high response rate. It is very important to correctly declare yourself, because even local investors receive at least ten letters a day, and large funds account for hundreds.

Game On: Turning Strangers Into Investors

All games have points that are awarded for successful actions and form the score. In the case of our “five-touch game”, the results will be metrics as a percentage of the total number of letters:

• Response rate – the number of responses received;
• Delivery rate – the number of delivered letters;
• Open rate – how many letters were opened.

The metrics show the relevance of your idea as a whole and the quality of the letter preparation, and whether your cold base is successful. By the way, if you see that the letter was opened several times, this is an occasion to build a separate process for working with such potential investors.

Touch one: writing letters

What should a letter look like in order to be answered? Structured, clear and justified. Well, if it starts like this:

Hello “investor_name”

I apologize for the cold email. Your contacts were on the list of investors “where” / you were recommended to me by “who”.

I have reviewed your portfolio and trades and I believe that our startup fits your investment profile. In addition, your decision to support us can help your current projects “project_names” develop more actively.

Then we introduce ourselves and describe the project in a couple of sentences:

My name is “your_name” and I’m the co-founder of the startup “project_name”.

If you have experience in this industry or launching other startups, be sure to write about it. If not, start talking about the project:

• General information – name, purpose, market segment and its features.
• Current stage – how old is your project, in which regions do you work, what is your competitive advantage and the results achieved. (It’s okay if you are looking for an investor at the initial stage of a startup. Preparatory analytics data is enough to build an estimated project unit economy and show prospects in LTV and CAC metrics, as well as projected growth and revenue).
• Why do you need investments, and why it will be profitable to invest in you. Here you need a clear rationale for what you will spend the money on and how much you need.

Below we ask the investor to allocate 20-30 minutes to communicate with us at a convenient time for him. We attach a presentation to the letter and politely say goodbye.

The letter may also recommend that you contact your other investors to get more information. Especially if these are well-known people and funds, acquaintance with which will be useful for a potential partner or characterizes you in a good way.

This is a simple and reliable scheme. With excellent conversion into answers, albeit not always positive ones. Most importantly, remember that 90% of the success of our “game” depends on the quality and content of the letter.

Important: in no case do not make an anonymous mailing with letters in the style of “ctrl + C / ctrl + V”, and also:

• with a complex technical description of the product;
• or vice versa too humanitarian without metrics and calculations;
• with a negative attitude “no one understands us, give us money at least you”;
• with a proposal to first sign an NDA;
• similar to spam, in the style of “don’t miss the opportunity to earn a million.”

I would like to believe that none of you even thought to do so, but as practice shows, not everything is so rosy with commercial offers on the Ukrainian market.

To make a victorious “touchdown”, we will write not one letter, but three, but the essence of this does not change. The first should be similar to the example above, the second should remind you of you, and the third should “finish off”, once again list the benefits of investing in your project.

By the way, as a reminder, and in general, private messages work well. The founder of a startup can send out a simplified version of the letters to potential investors on LinkedIn or a business account on another social network.

Touch two: building a funnel and improving reputation

Cold email conversions are always low. This does not mean that you need to accept and relax. On the contrary, it is necessary to activate all resources and find at least 500 investors and a little less funds for the first stage.

Where to look for an investor base? Google to help you! There you will find many aggregators like inventure.com.ua, platforms like Ukraine.Dealroom and just sites of funds and accelerators with which you can build your own unique crunchbase. The main thing to remember is that you need to choose potential investors who are engaged in your niche or may be otherwise interested in the project, and not everyone in a row.

At the same time, remember that an international organization, of course, may be interested in a Ukrainian startup , but the probability of finding someone who is not afraid to invest in a region that is not the most stable is much lower. First of all, you need to place bets on “ours”, and when there are really compelling arguments in your favor, start building a network of loyal contacts if your project needs it.

You can’t just create a new IP address and start sending thousands of emails from a mailbox without a corporate domain. More precisely, you can, of course, but you will be banned very quickly. The same sad fate awaits you if you buy or otherwise , except for honest data collection, get a subscriber base.

What to do next? Gradually warm up an IP address (preferably common to several company devices) and improve its reputation:

1. Setting. First of all, tell the provider and postal services that everything is fair with you. To do this, you will need to associate the IP with the site’s domain via a PTR record, specify DKIM and SPF confirming your ownership of this domain, and enable the Feedback Loop, which will inform you about complaints about your letters. It sounds complicated and good if you have an email marketing specialist, but in fact you can always talk to the support of email providers who will tell you how to set everything up.
2. Planning. You need to start small, Gmail generally recommends sending no more than 10 letters for the first time. If you were warming up a marketing email address, you would start with the most active users and those who have recently registered, gradually pulling up the inactive ones. In our case, we need to start gradually writing to investors.

Warming up usually takes from a week to a month. During this period, you may encounter the fact that the letters will not be delivered and will be given the appropriate status. This means that now the provider is checking your IP and, perhaps, the problem will be solved tomorrow. ISP blocking is a more serious problem. This means that your emails are not opening well, or you have overdone the amount sent per day. Luckily, you were going to write to other people anyway, and you can afford to take your time next time. And don’t forget to regularly check if your IP is blacklisted.

Third touch: launching chains and waves of letters

So, we have three warmed-up mailboxes on our domain. Each of them can send a couple of hundred letters a day.

It is logical that the mailing should be set up for working days and the same working hours. It makes no less sense that on Mondays, when investors are in meetings, and on Fridays, when everyone is already tired, your letter is less likely to be seen. For these days, we set up a mailing list only if we can’t meet the period from Tuesday to Thursday.

Statistically, the highest open rate for letters received from 11 to 13, so it makes sense to write to the most desirable investors during this period.

Now we write three letters for each investor and create a chain, for example, using the Reply or Revenue Grid services:

• we send the first letter when we deem it necessary, even immediately after we wrote it, but without overloading the IP;
• the second with a reminder of yourself in a week;
• the third with key benefits in another 7 days.

The waves will be quite uneven, especially if your investors are in different time zones. Moreover, you need to follow the main rule – no more than one letter to the fund per day.

Touch Four: Discussing the Details

Hooray! You have been answered! Now the main thing is to consolidate success.

First, write some response templates:

Good afternoon.

I’m sorry, I’m currently busy “specifying what exactly.” I will answer you as soon as I am free.

Secondly, redirect communication to managers: just put the main email address in the copy of the letter. It will be more convenient, because where there are mass mailings, there are a lot of unnecessary letters.

Now it’s up to your sellers.

Fifth touch: we stop in time

Your mailing list is a subtle game of engaging communication, not a brute force of spam. Be polite. If you are asked to unsubscribe from a mailing list, apologize and do so.

If only one of the fund partners is not interested in your project, you can safely continue to write to the others. Unless you were refused with the wording “we discussed the decision and do not want to participate.”

In case of a positive answer, you also need to stop and put the fund on the stop list.

Conclusion

Cold mailing is one of those fundraising tools that every startup should definitely try. To keep everything running smoothly, play fair. Gather a relevant database, warm up IP addresses and mailboxes. Write personalized, concise and specific letters. Send them out during working hours, especially in the middle of the week from 11 am to 1 pm. Be patient and methodical and you will find your business angels.

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