Dmitry Dragilev

Dmitry Dragilev is the dude who scales startups through unconventional means. He single-handedly grew a startup from zero to 40 million page views through SEO and got acquired by Google. He has translated his know-how into JustReachOut, a SaaS launched in early 2016, which is now used by more than 4,000 small businesses and startups (as well as big ones such as Airbnb, HubSpot, Leadpages and Nickelodeon) to pitch relevant journalists and get press coverage without the help of PR firms.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Dmitry’s success

Personalization of each email and really doing a TON of research on each person before reaching out

Result if you follow the steps in Dmitry’s session

50% response rate

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

You can do different types of stuff, but number one is delivering value upfront.

So if I want a journalist to cover me, I’m not going to email a journalist and ask him or her to say, “Hey, this is what I do. This is what I’ve done. Here’s, you know, I got a company acquired by Google. I have this blog that has 30,000 visitors a month. I have this company, a software company has got 4000 people using it. This is what I’ve done. Look at me, would you be able to cover me on Forbes?”

You know, that’s just like playing promotion and it just feels unnatural. I always say the very first thing, and if you remember anything from this interview, if you just hit stop and leave and if you need to go to the John wherever you do, and watching this interview, remember this one thing and then you can just stop if you really gotta go.

If you’re writing an email, would you say this email out loud to the person that you meet at a conference? So you writing that cold email to somebody, would you come up to somebody and actually say it to their face?

And if the answer is no, rewrite that email, so read it out loud to yourself, even in you know, your voice inside or maybe out loud is even better and just honest opinion, 100% honest with yourself, would you say this to somebody?

And nine out of ten usually says no. And so you really got to write your emails like you should be able to say that to that person. And so if you don’t know that person, chances are you have all these tools to give them value up front.

So if it’s a journalist, reference their writing when you’re answering a Quora question, reference they’re writing when you’re answering a Reddit question or just plain old tweet in and put something. some kind of quote that’s interesting about it, when you tweet it or comment on that writing, and then email them about what you said and reference another article in the same space that has some information that they didn’t have in their article.

That type of a discussion is natural, that journalists or blogger who you have at the conference we meet at the first very first time will probably talk to you and nod their head and start conversation with you about it.

And my so my approach to cold email is provide value up front and start a dialogue. Don’t try and go for the close right away. Don’t ask and try and get them to click and buy right away. Wait a bit, try and build a little bit of a relationship.

And I know you’re cringing and listening to this thinking, it’s just a lot of work to meet you. I want sales. I want people to just close and get that sale done. I don’t have time to build these relationships.

And I’m saying, I know. But in the long term, you’re going to get that sale, right? And you might even get a bigger sale once that person knows more about you and you guys have a little bit of a bond, right?

You’re talking about hopping in a bed with somebody right away on off first date vs. dating somebody and marrying them and building a family with them, right? Two different approaches.

If you want to just get laid right away really quick, maybe that’s your choice, you know, that’s what you’re going after. We might approach long term relationships, bigger sales, and who knows that person might introduce you to other journalists or other influencers or other bloggers or somebody else that you can do business with, you never know.

So approach people as you would your friends, your potential friends, you know, that’s the type of cold email that I go after. And it all depends on what you’re doing, specifically, like sales or partnerships or PR, but that’s basically the tactic.