99% of people suck at writing cold emails.

I get about 1,000 emails per day, here's what catches my eye 🧵
Clear introduction with social proof.

There's no need for "Hope you're doing great" or "How's the weather in NYC?"

Get to the point: "My name is Nik, I run Sharma Brands, and we scale DTC brands like JUDY, Poo~Pourri, and Bacardi."
Setup the context.

It's helpful to understand the lens through which you're reaching out.

"I saw you just launched Jambys, and we work with Eight Sleep. I wanted to explore what a partnership looks like."
Explain what you bring to the table (aka, why should I care?)

Add numbers, facts, and/or more social proof.

"We've been featured in Oprah's Favorite Things, and have a customer database of over 125,000 sleepers."
Go for the ask.

Don't waste anyone's time. Definitely don't ask if you can ask a question.

"We have an idea for a collaborative product that we want to send to our and your existing customers."
Finish with a CTA.

Learned this trick from @ShaanVP.

You want to get a "Yes", "No", or "Talk to this person" response.

"If you're interested, we'd love to talk next steps with your team."
The key to a good email:
• Clear introduction w/ social proof
• Steup the context
• Explain what you bring to the table
• Go for the ask
• Finish with a CTA
If this was helpful, feel free to follow me: @mrsharma & retweet the first tweet:

If you really enjoyed this thread on emails, sign up for my weekly email.

Over 18,000 DTC founders, investors, and operators read it and it's free! nik.co/email

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More from @mrsharma

15 Nov
5 years ago, it was easy to launch a DTC brand:

✅ Find a good product
✅ Put it up on Shopify
✅ Run some ads
🎉 Make money!

Today, that’s the path to failure.

Instead, build a brand people want.

Here are 8 secrets to doing it:
A reason to exist & a problem you're solving.

If you're not solving an active problem, you have no reason to exist!

No one needs another copycat product of what already exists. Solve for something new & be clear in your story-telling of HOW you're different.
A story to relate to — the "Why?"

You need to have a clear solution for when someone buys your product and their friend asks them, "Why did you buy it?"

The answer shouldn't just be around the product, it should be around WHY it was this specific brand/product vs competitors.
Read 11 tweets
13 Nov
12 months ago, @MentorPass asked if I would take $1,000 per hour to talk with founders who want to pick my brain.

Today, I've done 100+ hours of paid calls with founders and marketing teams, around the world.

Here are 8 common revenue-generating tactics that brands miss:
Drive traffic to landing pages, instead of your homepage.

Prospecting traffic to your homepage does nothing to educate a customer on WHY you're worth trying/buying.

Send traffic to landing pages where you can educate and leverage social proof.

Stop selling, start storytelling.

When advertising, don't sell "WHAT" you're selling... sell "WHY"

Use your copy and creative to explain how your product will benefit the end consumer.

@hint is not flavored water. It's a solution to your diet soda addiction.
Read 10 tweets
11 Nov
When I dropped out of college, it was all about finding smart people to accelerate my career.

Following the right people transforms your Twitter feed from a college cafeteria to a mastermind dinner at an expensive restaurant.

Here are 25 of my favorite people to follow 👇
Jesse Pujji — @jspujji

I've known Jesse since I was in high school. I saw him starting @Ampush in San Diego & it's what got me so interested in marketing.

He tweets about being a bootstrapped founder, his learnings, his mistakes, and how he invests.

Amanda Goetz — @AmandaMGoetz

I met Amanda first through @helena to invest in @house__of__wise and she's nicknamed "Amanda GOATz"

Her routines, hacks, and mental frameworks are oftentimes the motivation that can turn your day around.

Read 23 tweets
15 Oct
The old playbook of building a brand is dead:

1. Raise $2M from angels
2. Hire a NY/LA branding firm
3. Use some BS stats about Gen Z
4. Pretend all competitors are stupid

If you want to win today, you need to build around a persona, not a product.

Let me dive into this... 🧵
A few years ago (call it DTC 1.0), it was easy. You didn't even need a proper "brand" behind you.

Setup a Shopify store ✅
Get a FB ads ad account pumping ✅
Ensure your product is high quality ✅
Manage customer service ✅

Today that doesn't work anymore.
If you want to build something great, it can't just be around a product. It needs to be built around a:

• cause
• mission
• persona/demographic
• community

Whatever you're trying to sell, I'd bet 7 other companies sell the same thing, with the same quality.
Read 4 tweets
29 Jul
One of the biggest mistakes brands make is spending money on PR teams that only get a small amount of eyeballs.

Here is how you should approach PR, and how it's led to over $20,000,000 in revenue for me.

You're going to learn about Performance PR in less than 3 minutes: 🧵👇
Performance PR (PPR), is the content that:

1. Tells a good story

2. It's not cluttered (no pop-ups, banners, etc)

3. It goes into depth about the product (you understand the benefits)

It should get someone interested in trying what you're selling before they get to your site.
How can you spot a PPR opportunity?

Sometimes you'll know right away.

You'll have a press piece go up, & almost instantly you see the sales being generated are tied to that article.

If you don't notice a bump right away, it could just be a result of being a small publication.
Read 9 tweets
28 Jul
The easiest way to decrease your CAC/CPA by 30-40% is: use landing pages.

• what you’re selling
• why?
• how it helps them

That’s why today I’m excited to launch the Sharma Brands Landing Page template with @builderio 🎉

Anyone can do it in <5 min!

producthunt.com/posts/ultimate…
Traditionally companies with smaller teams & leaner budgets don’t get the benefits of larger DTC teams:

• in-house developers
• video editors on standby
• heavy on-site CRO testing

So being able to make landing pages accessible to everyone was a no brainer for us.
We partnered with @builderio because 4 years ago, I wish I had a simple & effective drag & drop tool for @Shopify.

It would’ve let me probably go from a 3% conversion rate to ~6%.

And for these landing pages, we wanted to make it just as easy to build.
Read 8 tweets

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