TLDR
We’ve released our app to the AppStore so now anyone can access it here.
The test campaign I’ve sent about a week ago showed promising results.
You can create your test outreach on Postaga completely for free through Appsumo.
Finding reporters covering topics relevant to your company/project can be done automatically.
Drafting a good message by following two simple rules: BFB and GLCTA (God-Like Call-To-Action)
Using merger fields can drastically increase your response rates by making cold emails sound personal.
Current metrics on the app usage are pretty low since we’ve only shared it with a very limited number of people.
Before I start this post, I’m happy to share that we are live on the AppStore and you can test out AI Keys yourself here. For those who missed the last post, I’m working on a side project with my brother that utilizes DALLE-2 technology to allow users to create AI-drawn images right from their keyboards. And in the next couple of posts I’ll cover my approach to figuring out ways to get more users onboard so if you are working on a D2C solution, I highly recommend keeping your eyes peeled!
Just like I promised in the last post, I’ll take a deep dive into some of the tools that I’m using to generate sales and overall growth. In this article I’ll cover the process of outreach automation to the reporters through a tool called Postaga.
And I’ll start by sharing the results of the campaign I’ve launched while writing the previous post:
1 - Number of emails sent.
2 - Delivery rate. This number is wrong, real delivery rates for this campaign were ~75%, a lot of emails bounced.
3 - Open rate. This number is also exaggerated, many of these “opened” emails are actually auto-opened by automatic responses from people who are Out Of Office so the real open rate was ~35%-55%.
4 - Response rate.
The results are good for an automated cold outreach but there are some of the key things I’ve learned from this test campaign:
Postaga is pretty bad at finding good emails of prospects. More than 10 emails out of 47 bounced and that’s a poor deliverability rate.
Sending an email campaign in a week between Christmas and New Year is a bad idea. That one I already knew but did it anyways because a bad test is better than no test at all.
Overall this strategy might work since I got responses from 3 reporters say that they are interested in writing a piece that will mention AI Keys (we’ve recently renamed the app).
The most important lesson here is that this strategy is feasible, which means that we can launch the next campaign. Let’s get into it!
Setting up your outreach to reporters.
I’ll be using Postaga to setup my outreach because it has a decent free plan and because it’s one of the few tools that specializes in this type of outreach. And just a reminder for all my new readers, I don’t receive any type of compensation for mentioning tools that I use in order to keep my writing unbiased.
You can get a free version of Postaga on Appsumo. Once you get the free version, your dashboard will look like this:
One of the perks of Postaga is that it is pretty much fully self-explanatory so I won’t be doing a complete step-by-step setup instruction and instead focus on the two main aspects of setting up a successful outreach to reporters: 1) Picking the keyword to target reporters and 2) Constructing a compelling message.
Picking the right keyword.
This is where you will plug-in your keyword. This will identify articles and blog posts that mention the keyword you select:
In my case, I’ve used the keyword “DALLE-E” in my last campaign so this time I decided to use something more generic and here is the result:
I could load more than 194 results however this will be more than plenty for my next campaign and knowing that Postaga has a high bounce rate, sending more than 194 emails in one campaign could result in my email getting burned. I recommend sticking to 50-100 leads/campaign, however, if you have a well warmed email that you aren’t afraid of losing, you can go for a higher number of leads per campaign.
Once you analyze the results, you’ll be able to click the button to find all the relevant contact information and that’s where Postaga kicks in with its sweet automations. At my last role as a growth executive, I had to do that manually quite a few times and it’s not fun at all so while the software does the heavy lifting, we’ll go and draft a good email for the reporters.
Creating a message.
As always with writing cold emails, make sure you’re following the 2 simple rules:
BFB - Be Fucking Brief. Main mistake as always is writing an essay in your opening cold email. Give a one-liner about who you are and then cut straight to the chase, bringing us to the second rule.
GLCTA - God-Like Call-To-Action. If the person doesn’t instantly understand what they are supposed to do, chances are they won’t do anything at all.
Sample that I’ve drafted for the campaign for AI Keys:
Subject: Your article about AI art
Body: Hello {{contact_first||there}},
I was looking for articles about AI art and ran into your post ("{{link_title||ai art}}") which I genuenly enjoyed!
I'm working on an app that allows users to create AI-Generated images straight from their keyboards in any chat they use. I think this can be interesting to your readers to see how AI-generated art is being implemented in our day-to-day lives.
Would you cover this in your next piece?
P.S. We've recently laucnhed on the AppStore so you can check out the app yourself: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai-keys/id1660546173
All the content in {{ }} are merger fields - aka content being pulled by Postaga and automatically plugged into the email to make it sound personal and human-written. As you can see on the screenshot below, there are dozens of merger fields you can use. I keep it simple just to save some time but if you want even better results, you can definitely use those as well for an even greater level of personalization.
Follow-up emails are also drafted in a similar matter with a link to our demo and a slightly different CTA in each email. Below is an example of how the email with merger field will look like to the end user:
Now you just have to schedule the campaign and you’re all set!
Current stats for AI Keys.
I decided that it’ll be a good idea to share our progress at the end of each post so I’ll be sharing the metrics that we have on the app usage.
So far we’ve shared AI Keys with friends, family and a number of people reading this substack so here is our current usage metrics:
That’ll be it for today, don’t forget to check out AI Keys here and keep an eye out for a next post!