Edtech Angels

How to write an engaging investors' cold outreach campaign

Fundraising is tough. Warm contacts and intros work best. Still there are thousands of cold contacts who might be your potential investors, advisors, partners or those who may refer you to your clients and investors. 

One of the difficult tasks when reaching out to cold contacts of investors is creating catchy texts for your campaign. We went through this stage several times in several startups that we launched and developed. We participated in accelerators' programs, webinars and bootcamps teaching startups on copywriting and writing selling texts, we consulted with native-speaking advisors, marketing and sales people. Every fundraise we tested and changed texts dozens of times during one campaign. We believe we are well-versed in writing selling texts and can give some advice for those who only start their fundraising campaigns.

Keys to succeed in investor cold outreach: 

  • Be short and precise, as the vast majority of investors are time poor.
  • Create a clear blurb with the core points of your pitch that can be easily forwarded: 1) one-liner, 2) progress/achievements/highlights/traction (2-3 bullets), 3) why your startup, 4) what for you are raising (your big idea and use of funds of the current round), 5) ask to schedule a call.
  • The outreach should come from the CEO's email and name, as it's the CEO's job to raise money.
  • The outreach should be personal - no bcc or cc. Try to personalize emails where possible. When an investor answered our outreach, we rechecked his/her profile to refresh the information about the investor and personalize the answer.
  • Subject line is one of the most difficult parts of the outreach. It has to grab investors' attention. We tried several different subjects, and these two worked best for us: <Startup Name Intro> and <Investors' Name <> CEO's Name>. There are couple other great options of the subject line - https://alexfmac.substack.com/p/founder-toolkit-cold-outreach-playbook 
  • Always follow-up. Based on our experience, the best length of the outreach is 3-4 messages (emails or messages in Linkedin) in the campaign chain. The first message should be your blurb. The 2nd is a follow-up, that can contain some more important highlights or news, for example commitments from other investors or traction. The 3d message may explain your big vision and what for you are raising - show investors that they become a part of a success story. The 4th is one last try to reach out and get a response. 
  • Create a separate mailout about the progress of your startup. It can be sent once or twice a month or on a quarterly basis. Show your traction, metrics, highlights, and that you are still alive and do your best to develop your startup. 
  • Use different channels to reach investors: email, Linkedin, Twitter, other matchmaking platforms. Some people may miss the email but answer in Linkedin. 

We are ready to share with you our examples of texts for investors. I want texts.
Read these great articles on cold outreach, that helped us a lot: