You know you need more clients. You have heard cold email works, but every guide either sells you five tools or drowns you in theory. You just want to know what to do first, second and third.
This guide walks you through one small campaign you can set up this week: around 50 to 100 businesses, one email, two follow-ups. Small on purpose. You will learn more from one careful campaign than from blasting thousands of addresses.
Step 1: Pick one narrow type of customer
The biggest beginner mistake is emailing "small businesses." Pick one kind of business in one or a few cities. For example: HVAC companies in Austin, or veterinary clinics in Leeds.
A narrow target lets you write one email that sounds like it was written for them, because it was. Ask yourself:
- Who have I already helped, or who would I most like to help?
- What problem do they have that I can fix?
- Can I find them easily? Local businesses on Google Maps are a good start because their details are public.
If you want ideas, look at how different trades think about growth, such as HVAC companies or veterinarians. Their busy seasons, pain points and language are different, and your email should reflect that.
Step 2: Build a small, real list
For each business you want: name, website, city, category, and an email address. An owner's first name is a bonus.
You can collect these by hand from Google Maps and websites. It is slow but teaches you the market. Or use a scraper: in GetClient, the Google Maps scraper searches by keyword and location and can return the business name, category, phone, website, emails found and, where public, the owner's name with a confidence score.
Whichever route you take, keep the list in one place with a column for each detail. You will use those columns as merge fields later.
Step 3: Clean and verify before you send
Bad addresses bounce, and a high bounce rate tells mailbox providers you are careless. Before sending:
- Remove duplicates and obvious junk like noreply@ addresses.
- Prefer a named person's address over info@ when you have it, but info@ is fine for small local businesses.
- Run the list through an email verifier and drop invalid addresses.
Use our lead list cleaning checklist and read why you should verify emails before a campaign.
Step 4: Set up the account you send from
Do not send cold email from your main business address on day one. A common approach is a separate domain that looks similar to yours (for example, getyourbrand.com instead of yourbrand.com) with its own mailbox. That way, if something goes wrong, your main domain is protected.
Then:
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on that domain. Your email host has guides for each.
- Add a real signature with your name and business details.
- Send a few normal emails from it before starting your campaign.
Not sure whether to use Gmail or another provider? See Gmail vs SMTP for cold email.
Step 5: Write a short first email
Keep it under about 100 words, as a rule of thumb. Plain text, no images, at most one link. A simple structure:
- Why them: one line showing you actually looked at their business.
- The problem: something they likely deal with.
- What you do about it: one sentence, specific.
- A small ask: a yes or no question, not a 30-minute call.
Example:
Subject: quick question about {{params.name}}
Hi {{params.firstname}},
I was looking at {{params.website}} and noticed there is no way to book online. For {{params.category}} businesses in {{params.city}}, that often means calls go to voicemail after hours.
I set up simple booking pages for local businesses, usually in a week.
Worth sending you a 2-minute example?
Sam
Check every merge field has data. If a lead has no first name, either fill it in or write a version that opens with "Hi there." A blank greeting looks worse than a generic one.
Step 6: Add follow-ups and a sensible schedule
One email is easy to miss. Plan two follow-ups:
- Day 3 or 4: a short nudge that adds one new detail or example.
- Day 7 to 10: a polite last note saying you will stop emailing. Our breakup email templates help here.
Stop the sequence as soon as someone replies. Send on weekdays during business hours in their time zone, and keep daily volume low on a new mailbox, perhaps 20 to 30 a day to start, as a cautious rule of thumb. More on timing in sending on weekdays only.
Every email should include a clear way to opt out, and you must honor it. Rules differ by country (CAN-SPAM in the US, GDPR and PECR in the UK and EU, for example), so check what applies to you and your recipients. This is not legal advice.
In GetClient you can build this as a flow with delays in days, branch on If Opened or If NOT Opened, limit sending by weekday, and include a one-click unsubscribe link so opted-out addresses are skipped automatically.
Step 7: Send, then read every reply
Launch, then check in daily. Treat replies as the real result:
- Interested: answer within hours, not days.
- Not now: thank them and note a date to check back.
- Unsubscribe or annoyed: remove them right away and move on.
- Bounces: remove and note which source they came from.
If you send from more than one mailbox, keeping replies in one view stops leads slipping through. See how to manage replies in one inbox.
What to change after your first campaign
After about a week, look at what happened. Few opens may point to a subject line or deliverability problem; read why cold emails go to spam. Opens but no replies usually means the offer or ask needs work. Change one thing, send to the next 50 businesses, and compare.
That is the whole loop: narrow target, clean list, short email, polite follow-ups, fast replies. If you want to try it without stitching tools together, GetClient gives new accounts 100 free credits with no card needed; plans are on the pricing page.