The Outbound Audit: How To Use Your Experience as a Founder to Enhance Cold Email Performance

New RevBoss clients often look to our expertise when deciding who the designated sender for their outbound email campaigns should be.

There are many factors that go into that decision — for example, who’s going to be following up with prospects who respond — but seniority and whether it hurts or helps to send as a founder is almost always on our clients’ minds.

You’ll often hear our CEO say that clients are buying a founder just as much as they’re buying a product or service. That’s especially true of early-stage companies, but even established ones have an opportunity to use their founder’s story to their advantage in cold outreach.

Obviously, not every founder’s journey is going to speak to every prospect. But when there’s alignment between your target audience and the experiences a founder has in their particular industry or role, we recommend that the founder be your sender.

By weaving that experience into your email campaigns, you can spark an instant connection with the recipient

Here are some examples of high-performing campaigns that have used the RevBoss-dubbed “Founder Story” approach.

The above email went to CEOs and founders of growing CPG brands and had a lead rate of 0.86%.

This campaign targeted founders, executive directors, and other titles at youth-centered nonprofits. It achieved a 1.07% lead rate.

Telling Your Founder Story Using Cold Email Best Practices

You may think that framing an email around a founder’s experience contradicts the prevailing wisdom that effective cold emails should be about the recipient and their pain points.

In our experience, the key is to tell a balanced story that clearly relates your background as a founder to your current offering and what the prospect stands to gain.

Your goal in talking about your experience isn’t to boast or hog the spotlight. You’re simply giving them another reason to trust your solution while connecting with them on a human level.

Let’s look at an example of a founder story that missed the mark initially and what we did to improve it.

Connect The Dots Between Your Experience and Prospect Challenges

This email was written on behalf of a client that we’ll call Kevin Malone Accounting. It was sent to fellow owners, founders, and CEOs of architectural and engineering firms, offering outsourced financial and accounting services.

This campaign had a reply rate of almost 1%, but none of the replies were leads. 

There was no question for us that Kevin’s experience running his own businesses would be relatable to other company leaders in need of financial help. 

The problem was that we made Kevin the focal point of the message instead of the prospect.

That’s evident in how many times “I” and “my” appear in the first two paragraphs alone (6, in case you weren’t counting). By contrast, the name of the company we’re emailing doesn’t appear even once.

Rather than pivot away from the founder story, we looked for ways to make sure the prospect’s needs weren’t being overshadowed.

Here is our revised message to the same pool of prospects:

Instead of speaking in vague terms about the services Kevin Malone Accounting provides (e.g., helping with “whatever numbers-related issues are keeping you up at night”), the new message references concrete outcomes they achieve (“executing business plans,” “ensuring goals are well funded”) for the specific type of company they’re reaching out to.

It still highlights Kevin’s financial expertise and how he developed it, but that information is coupled with an observation that the prospect will likely find pertinent — that growing companies like theirs often struggle with cash burn. 

And this time, the ratio of “I” to “you”/”your company” is much more balanced.

Overall, the updated message does more than just convey to prospects that Kevin understands finance. It conveys that Kevin understands businesses in their industry and the specific financial challenges they’re trying to overcome.

That distinction has made all the difference. With a 0.68% lead rate and a reply rate of 1.02%, this campaign is Kevin Malone Accounting’s strongest performer so far.

The Takeaway

The title of “founder” will always have clout in the world of outbound, but it’s most effective to send your campaigns from a founder when part of their story overlaps with the solution you’re selling and the personas that are buying.

If you’re a founder, using your story in a cold email can boost engagement and inspire people to want to back you/your offer. 

Just be careful not to lose sight of who you’re trying to help when you talk about what makes you qualified.

Need An Honest Outbound Partner?

Our outbound email campaigns are informed by years of experience building sales pipelines for companies with a desire for steady growth. Schedule a call with us to find out how we can help you win more clients.