Tips on cold emails?

Euler07 · Mar 18, 2025

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on cold emails for the purpose of getting new clients? I am a solo structural engineer and am finding that my current approach, waiting for referrals and advertising online, is getting low quality clients. I'm thinking of picking a well paid industry / niche and emailing everyone I can find online who might provide work.

Has anyone done this and do you have a list of do's and don'ts? And what was you success rate? Thanks.

dtimberlake · Mar 18, 2025

Usually I delete cold e-mails and then block the sender.

Once in a while I don't.

Lomarandil · Mar 18, 2025

Cold calls and emails must be the least effective way I've ever tried to garner business. I would never recommend it.

phamENG · Mar 18, 2025

Join your local AIA chapter. Go to hard hat tours and lunch and learns. Talk with the architects there and get to know them a little. Let them know you exist and what you have to offer.

You can do the same with contractor organizations if that's your preferred client base.

Or you can wait and get lucky. I got hired by a low quality client who happened to be using a really good architect on a project. That project sucked, but the architect called me the day after we submitted to invite me to his office and discuss other projects. He's now my largest and best client. A mentor of mine tells the story of how he answered a call for $300 letter (this was quite a while ago) that his partner wanted him to turn down. That client went on to use him for over $1M in billing over the next 2 years. So you never know where opportunities will come up. Go for quality over quantity both in work and pitching to clients, and keep your eyes open.

Eng16080 · Mar 18, 2025

I wouldn't expect much success with this approach unless there's a mutual connection you share. If you're a complete unknown to the email recipient I think your odds are quite slim. I think you'd be better off physically going to an architects office, introducing yourself, etc. I would personally not enjoy doing this, but I think the ROI would be a lot better than the email approach. Nowadays, I automatically assume most email I receive from an unknown sender is some form of spam (same with phone calls).

I agree with pham's post above. Long term, I find what works best is to:

focus on doing quality work, regardless of how small the project might be
be very responsive to clients and potential clients

You'll eventually get plenty of potential work if you do 1. and 2. well enough, although that probably doesn't help you in the short term. For that, I might consider contacting realtors and home inspection companies.

Euler07 · Mar 19, 2025

Thanks all. I have no problem getting work, it's just it seems that the work is the dregs that no one else wants. Essentially if no one wants to do the work then the client will be searching online or asking around. I also generally avoid architects since the work is not time efficient (and also cannot be automated / designed remotely).

dtimberlake said:
Usually I delete cold e-mails and then block the sender.

Personally, if I get a cold email from a local company that is related to my business then I won't delete it, although I would probably just ignore it. But I rarely get cold emails from local companies, they are usually overseas companies doing outsourcing.

Lomarandil said:
Cold calls and emails must be the least effective way I've ever tried to garner business. I would never recommend it.

Thanks Lomarandil. Does this mean that you've attempted cold emails with a specific strategy and couldn't get it working? Or did you not attempt it?

phamENG said:
You can do the same with contractor organizations if that's your preferred client base.

Do you mean going to seminars? Or do you think I would be able to contact the members through the organization?

Regarding doing quality work and relying on word of mouth, I agree with this. However, it is very reactive and serendipitous. How would you branch into more profitable industries? Or, if you were in a profitable industry but your clients were direct competitors, then they won't be letting their competition know about your service.

Has anyone tried strategic and targeted cold email outreach over a longer period of time? I was speaking to the top sales person in a different industry (selling equipment) and they were saying that cold email outreach was one of their main strategies.

Thanks

phamENG · Mar 19, 2025

Euler07 said:
Do you mean going to seminars?

Yes. I see now that you're in Australia, so perhaps AIA isn't applicable, but I'm sure you all have a similar organization down there.

Euler07 said:
I also generally avoid architects since the work is not time efficient (and also cannot be automated / designed remotely).

Sounds like you don't work with the right architects. My margins on fixed fee design work are much better than what I can get from an hourly rate.

Euler07 said:
How would you branch into more profitable industries?

What do you mean by this? My 'industry' is structural engineering. I don't have the training or qualifications to do anything else as an engineering consultant. I could go get a job somewhere and get the training, but I'm not going to start offering mechanical or aviation engineering services to clients.

Euler07 said:
I was speaking to the top sales person in a different industry (selling equipment)

You're not selling equipment. You're selling a relationship. That equipment is going to be something the buyer already knows and understands - a flashy picture is going to catch their attention. You are much more abstract. As a professional service provider, they likely are not familiar with what your work entails. At least not at the same level of sophistication. They know what the machine does because they have one already that isn't working or they have guys on the line doing it by hand. Or maybe they are the ones doing that work by hand. It's a lot easier to say no to a random email from a person they don't know and they don't know why they need you.

XR250 · Mar 19, 2025

Euler07 said:
it's just it seems that the work is the dregs that no one else wants.

Great. Charge a shit-ton for it.

CWB1 · Mar 19, 2025

If you're chasing corporate clients, the best way "in" IME is simply to (voice) call the public contact number for local sites, ask for the purchasing dept, then ask for the appropriate commodity manager. They might not have work for you today, but a major part of their job is to identify potential suppliers for future projects so they should be more than willing to listen to pitches. Back when I was in design, I attended at least one pitch most weeks for both my knowledge and to give our purchasing dept feedback on whether/not a supplier was worth the risk of doing business with.

Cold-emails OTOH arent worth the effort for small businesses IME. Unsolicited emails generally go into a spam folder unless the name is recognized, so that may work for large national/international businesses but not the small ones.

A mentor of mine tells the story of how he answered a call for $300 letter (this was quite a while ago) that his partner wanted him to turn down. That client went on to use him for over $1M in billing over the next 2 years.

That's very common. In the private sector I often sent new suppliers small projects via a dealer to test the customer service and quality. If they're not taking small projects/customers seriously there's no way I'm risking large/pricy projects.

Euler07 · Mar 20, 2025

Thanks everyone. I guess I get tired of quoting and people window shopping for an engineer. I'm trying to attract well paid on-going clients that I don't need to do custom quotes for on every single project. And if they don't know I exist then how would they send me work.

phamENG said:
What do you mean by this? My 'industry' is structural engineering

Sorry, I mean building industries such as residential, renovation, heavy industrial, light industrial, commercial, education, cold form, glass etc. I find there is a large difference in profit margin for different industries, with the owner builder renovations generally being at the low end and the large business-to-business being at the high end.

It looks like cold emails are maybe not the way to go, or they are not popular in this industry (untapped market ?

)

LOTE · Mar 20, 2025

I have had success sending a personalized email (or LinkedIn message) to a targeted company. In my case, reaching out to precasters and manufactures in my industry with a cold email and explaining how my services can benefit them has had good success. However, I am in a very small niche (mainly MSE, SRW, and rockery retaining walls), and I am usually fulfilling a pain point for that precaster/manufacturer in them selling more product if their clients can get engineering performed. So, them being able to send a quote to a customer with my contact information for engineering helps them sell more product without costing them anything.

I have also had success taking on projects from contractors that seems slightly sketching at first, but were doing high end residential work. Turns out they were not sketchy, and they introduced me to their architect doing high end residential, and now they send me all their retaining wall work.

Attending contractor trainings has also been a huge success. In addition to being informative on what questions contractors are asking, I had about a dozen people come up and tell me their pain points with engineers and ask if I could help them and get my business card. It helped that I was the only engineer there in attendance, and I made the presenter aware of that.

Now, I do very little cold emailing because I have plenty of work. I get a lot of new clients through my website now. When I first started out, I did a lot of blogging, and it didn't pay dividends up front, but now that SEO has really kicked in even though I don't consistently post blog posts now.

I think the biggest question you first have to answer is what pain point are you solving for your customers or what can you provide that other firms cannot (be careful not to compare yourself to other engineering firms in any marketing as this violates engineering ethics). If you have that solution, then include that solution in your cold email, LinkedIn message, website tagline, etc., you should get higher success aquiring customers.

Euler07 · Mar 21, 2025

@LOTE
Thanks, that's lots of useful info. Regarding the focus on pain points, I did not know that this should be a central theme to the marketing. I'll think about what I'm doing now and try and incorporate that.

human909 · Mar 23, 2025

If I was cold contracting it would likely be targeted, a direct call and an attempt to arrange a visit to their office. It shows that you value their business and it isn't just spam. Even better if you share something in common with the business.

I have once company on my radar to approach if I need to. I know a draftsman who works for them and I believe they could benefit from my services.

At the moment though... I'm too busy to try to actively grow my customer base. (It is still growing organically.)

Euler07 · Mar 25, 2025

Thanks @human909. I'm swamped with work at the moment but I'm planning on doing some targeted emails once work slows down. I'll let you know how it goes.

MRob909 · Mar 25, 2025

Another way I would recommend is to network with other Engineers/ Consultants locally to you. I have had some 'overflow' work passed on from other firms and generally find that larger firms will pass on some of the more obscure jobs as it would be too time intensive for them to take on.

I also find that cold emailing other engineers directly has a much higher response rate rather than emailing a generic mailbox or salesperson.

timlodge · Jun 11, 2025

LOTE said:
I have had success sending a personalized email (or LinkedIn message) to a targeted company. In my case, reaching out to precasters and manufactures in my industry with a cold email and explaining how my services can benefit them has had good success. However, I am in a very small niche (mainly MSE, SRW, and rockery retaining walls), and I am usually fulfilling a pain point for that precaster/manufacturer in them selling more product if their clients can get engineering performed. So, them being able to send a quote to a customer with my contact information for engineering helps them sell more product without costing them anything.

I have also had success taking on projects from contractors that seems slightly sketching at first, but were doing high end residential work. Turns out they were not sketchy, and they introduced me to their architect doing high end residential, and now they send me all their retaining wall work.

Attending contractor trainings has also been a huge success. In addition to being informative on what questions contractors are asking, I had about a dozen people come up and tell me their pain points with engineers and ask if I could help them and get my business card. It helped that I was the only engineer there in attendance, and I made the presenter aware of that.

Now, I do very little cold emailing because I have plenty of work. I get a lot of new clients through my website now. When I first started out, I did a lot of blogging, and it didn't pay dividends up front, but now that SEO has really kicked in even though I don't consistently post blog posts now.

I think the biggest question you first have to answer is what pain point are you solving for your customers or what can you provide that other firms cannot (be careful not to compare yourself to other engineering firms in any marketing as this violates engineering ethics). If you have that solution, then include that solution in your cold email, LinkedIn message, website tagline, etc., you should get higher success aquiring customers.

Sorry to jump in, and just want to tack on the back of what you mentioned about SEO:Been looking at companies like WebFX or Electrician SEO Pro but not sure if they're worth it or if I should try the DIY route like you did with blogging.

Talking to a few people and a lot of them say NOT to get into SEO right now, as its going by the wayside due to AI. And perhaps should look at something like Google Ads but, well, I'm really unsure if I'm being honest.

Did you figure out the SEO stuff yourself or get help? The technical side of it all goes over my head but sounds like it really worked for you in the long run.

Cheers,

Tim.

LOTE · Jun 11, 2025

@timlodge the 80/20 of SEO is provide valuable content consistently (once a week or bi-weekly), make sure that content is "tagged" correctly, then post it everywhere (facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever are your main social media). I used some of the free wordpress tools to make sure I had a meta description, all my images had alt text, title length, etc. Now I have chatGPT do all that. You can fully write the content (or have AI help you), then feed it into ChatGPT to give you all you need to know to make your content SEO friendly. No need to pay for a special service anymore.

Since my last comment, I have hired an admin that keeps consistent content churning out on our website and social media, and in just one month I already see a lot of new leads generated from the website. We have 4 years of good content history prior to this new push, so don't expect a one month return on your efforts there.

Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

Tips on cold emails?

Euler07

Structural

dtimberlake

Mechanical

Lomarandil

Structural

phamENG

Structural

Eng16080

Structural

Euler07

Structural

phamENG

Structural

XR250

Structural

CWB1

Mechanical

Euler07

Structural

LOTE

Structural

Euler07

Structural

human909

Structural

Euler07

Structural

MRob909

Structural

timlodge

Electrical

LOTE

Structural

Similar threads

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor