Sell Domains with Cold Emails

Hello, fellow domainers and builders,

First of all, thank you very much for subscribing to this newsletter.

I am planning to send emails weekly, but if any of you have questions or specific topics that you would want me to cover in-depth, don’t hesitate to either reply to this email or reach out to me on Twitter.

If we can gain traction, I may make this newsletter a bi-weekly or even a daily thing.

As promised, I will share today all the email templates and the tools I use for selling domain names via outreach.

I don’t know if I can condense everything into a single email, but I’ll try my best.

Keep in mind, that this is not financial advice.

This is what works for me and I only share this for educational purposes.

There are a lot of strategies to sell domain names and outbound marketing is just one of those.

It’s not an “easy“ way to sell names, by any means. It requires a lot of hard work, consistency, time, nerves, and at least half-decent negotiation skills.

Let’s get into it.

Use Gmail or Custom Domain?

This is an important question that I get a lot.

Using an email with a custom domain will help you gain trust and will significantly boost your open rates.

Google's business email costs $6/month and is probably the best investment you can make in your domain outbound journey.

I use "me@firstnamelastname .COM".

You may wonder why I said Gmail and not Outlook or another email provider.

The thing is that Gmail is the #1 email provider in the world in terms of the number of users.

The chances are very high that your prospect is using Gmail too, and internal emails between 2 Gmail accounts are less likely to land in the SPAM folder.

If you use Outlook to write to a Gmail account, chances are higher that for some reason your email will land in your prospect's SPAM folder.

If you can't afford a paid email service, just use a normal Gmail account with your name.

Email Warmup

Email warmup is the first step you should take before mass-emailing your prospects.

Every email provider uses some kind of internal tool to measure your email activity and assign you a "health score".

When you create a fresh email account, even if just 1 person reports your message as SPAM, this can seriously damage your email "health".

That's why it is so important to have a healthy email account before writing tens or hundreds of daily emails.

We should let Google know (or any other email provider), that our emails are being opened, and responded to. They should know that we are not spamming.

This process is called "email warmup", and it is actually pretty easy.

Before starting to write to potential buyers and trying to sell names, use your email to communicate with your family and friends.

Just ask them to open your email, respond to you back, and mark the email as “important“ in the settings.

If you send 5-10 emails to your friends every day for 2 weeks, then you can start writing to other people without worrying.

You'll already have a "healthy" email account and it will not be easily damaged.

Keep in mind though, that even with a healthy email address, there are certain limits that you should not ignore.

There is no way to know the exact daily send limit for your account, but I always make sure to not send more than 1 email every 2 minutes. And you should too.

Tracking The Email

Before you send any emails, make sure to set up an email tracking tool.

I personally use the free email tracking extension from snov.io (it works with Chrome).

This extension will track and notify you when your prospect opens the email.

In case you don't get a response from your prospect, instead of making guesses, you will know for sure if the email was opened or not, and when exactly it was opened.

This is crucial information and will help us decide when and how to follow up with the email.

Outreaching

When doing cold outreach, I found that emails work best for me, but I also use website contact forms, in-website live support, Linkedin, Twitter, Discord, Instagram, Facebook, and even Telegram.

Emailing has a giant advantage compared to other methods; the ability to track if the email was opened or not.

This is crucial for follow-up emails.

If my prospect does not open the initial email, I use other contact methods.

If my prospect opens the email but does not respond to it, I follow up 4-5 more times before letting the name go.

After the 2-nd follow-up email, you can add this line at the bottom of your message:

If you don’t want more follow-up emails, simply reply with “NO“.

Give them the ability to “unsubscribe“. The last thing you want is to be added to the prospect’s spam folder, which will affect your email deliverability.

Finding Prospect's Email Address

Finding a company's/person's email address is usually easy because the majority of websites have a "contact us" section where you can see their email.

In case you can’t find it, here is what you can do:

• Check their social media handles and see if they included their email address there.

• Do they have a newsletter? Subscribe to it and you'll receive a welcome message from their email address.

• Use hunter.io or snov.io (not affiliated).

What are Hunter.io & Snov.io?

These are platforms with a giant email database, and I use the free plan for both platforms. These platforms are pretty easy to use, but if you have difficulties, there are a lot of great tutorials on YouTube.

Just enter Hunter.io or Snov.io and type a domain name to find all the email addresses associated with it.

Contacting A Large Company

When selling a domain name to a small company or an individual, it's pretty straightforward because the majority of them will have only 1 email address.

However, if you are contacting a large company that has 5-10 different email addresses and a lot of employees, it is very important to target the right person.

If the company you want to contact has a LinkedIn account, you can usually see who is for example the CEO (chief executive officer) or CMO (chief marketing officer).

You should identify the "decision makers" of the company and contact them instead of writing to their general support email.

In case you can't find any of the key people of the company, again, Hunter.io & Snov.io are your best friends.

Type the company's domain and these platforms will give you a list of their email addresses, from which you can figure out a lot of information.

For example: If you see something like "firstname @example .com", use google to see who that person is.

Google their first and last name with their company name, and in 2 minutes you can identify that person's position in the company.

If after doing all the above-mentioned steps you can't find any specific person from the company, write to their address for business inquiries or marketing inquiries. It is usually something like "business @exmaple .com".

Personalization

One of the most important aspects of cold emailing is personalization.

Researchers experimented with the email lists of three different companies:

1. 1,000,000+ emails of Mercadolibre - the largest online marketplace in Latin America.

2. 5,000 emails from Stanford University’s monthly newsletter.

3. 68,000 emails from an anonymous company that sells courses for professional exam preparation.

They found that when they included the name of the receiver in the subject line of the emails (e.g. “Hi [Name], etc, etc”), Open rates increased by:

1. Mercadolibre: +6%

2. Stanford: +23%

3. Exam prep company: +20%

Clickthrough rates (CTRs) increased by:

1. Mercadolibre: +7%

2. Stanford: +32%

3. Exam preparation company: +31% Leads generated

It's natural that when we see our name in an email (subject line), we pay more attention to it.

Using this tip will already boost your open rates significantly. Here are 2 subject line examples that work great for me:

• Hi {Name}, a quick question about {prospect's company/website name}

• {Name}, quick question

The “quick question“ thing WORKS. Trust me.

The more I wrote subject lines, the shorter they got over the years. Keep it simple.

Email Body Text

The body text of your email will be directly related to what type of name it is, and to whom you are trying to sell it.

I mainly sell 2 types of domains:

1. COM names that I sell to businesses with the developed CO, IO, or NET extensions.

2. GEO exact-match domain names to local businesses.

Here are the templates I use for different cases.

Writing to a local business. Let’s say the niche is Home Loans in Chicago:

Writing to a company that owns a non-COM extension

This one works well too:

Writing to a company that uses a longer version, or the hyphenated version of your domain:

Writing to a company that doesn't have a domain name (It’s also possible):

As you can see, all the email templates are very similar.

Keep it short, and straight to the point, and think about what can you leverage to positively influence the sale.

I always mention the traffic and the search volume, because this is what businesses care about. They want targeted traffic and leads.

If you own “SomeCityService .com”, the people who type and visit the website are most likely living in that city and interested in that service.

This has to be your selling point.

You will not convince anyone to buy your name just because it sounds good.

Follow-up Emails

Follow-ups are THE MOST important process in selling domain names via outbound.

If you don't follow up on your last email, I doubt you will sell anything.

You have to understand, that not everyone will buy your domain from the first email. In fact, the majority of domains I sell are conversions after 3-4 emails.

Here is what I do.

I send my first email and track it with snov.io. If the prospect opened the email but didn't respond, I write them the following letter in 2 days:

If this email is also opened but not answered, they are likely interested but don’t 100% trust if you own the name.

I send the following email in 2 more days:

At this point, I almost always get a response. But in case I don't, I send the prospect the fourth email:

If the email is opened and I still don’t get any response at this point, I send the fifth and final email:

If they say “Yes“, all you have to do is to finalize the transaction with your desired escrow service (for example Dan .com or Escrow .com).

You can also use Stripe or PayPal, but with third-party services, you have a dedicated support team that guides the buyer and makes it easier to finalize the transaction.

Important

I have to say it again; don’t expect this to be an easy “side hustle“. This is HARD.

It’s more so about buying the right name to sell, than being a fantastic salesman.

If you were a fantastic salesman but only had 2-3 prospects, your chances of selling that domain are lower than that of someone who is not so great at marketing, but has 10 potential buyers.

To maximize my chances of selling a name, I try to buy names that for the very least have 5 potential buyers I can reach out to.

At this point, I have a little more than 300 names in my inventory, and about 220 of them will most likely never sell.

Those are just names that I accumulated over time, did outreach, and couldn’t sell.

I usually buy 5-10 names per week, and as soon as I buy them, I set up a landing page and start reaching out to as many prospects as possible.

From those 5-10 names, I may only sell 1-2 or at most 3 names if I am lucky.

It’s an overwhelming and utterly repetitive process, but it works.

I honestly believe you can sell 1 or even more names per day if you invest all your time into this, and maybe hire one or two VAs to help you.

You may have noticed from my tweets that I am now trying to focus more on developing and monetizing names rather than straight-up flipping them.

I am specifically bullish on the rank-and-rent model, which is basically a lead-generation business model.

In short, this is how it works:

1. Buy an exact match domain name.

2. Set up a website.

3. Rank on the 1st page of Google.

4. Get traffic and send leads.

Do Not Add Links in the Email

Did you notice that in the template, I wrote the domain like this "example .com"? There is a reason for this.

You have to write the extension separately {word (space) extension}, especially if you have a freshly created email account.

If you insert links in your email, it is more likely to land in the SPAM folder and will affect your account's "health" if your email is not properly warmed up

Only when your prospect responds to you back, then you can include some links in your email.

Should You Include The Price?

I didn't include a price in the email templates shown above, but it’s up to you to decide.

I only include the price of the domain if I want to sell it for less than $500 USD. In my experience, this can trigger an impulse buy and will help you when selling domains for low prices (3-digit).

Otherwise, I would not include the price, and not talk about it until the buyer asks me about it or makes an offer.

Email Signature

An email signature is a block of your personal information (such as first name, last name, social media handles, phone number, picture, etc.) that is displayed at the bottom of every email you send.

It’s a powerful thing that CAN and WILL impact your conversions. It looks professional and helps you gain trust when reaching out to someone with a cold email.

I highly recommend you get a simple, clean email signature, and set it up with your Google business email account.

Here is a great article that helped me design and set up my own signature: 13 free email signature templates for Gmail (and how to install them)

The Best Time for Emailing

Contacting your prospect at the wrong time can also affect your email open rates.

In my experience, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the worst days to contact someone via email.

Here are the days of the week ranked from "BEST" to "WORST" in terms of opening rate and response rate.

1. Tuesday

2. Wednesday

3. Thursday

4. Monday

I try to reach out to my prospects in the first 3 days from the list above.

I set a reminder at the hour the company's working day is starting (it is usually 9 AM), and write them a letter 15-20 minutes before they open.

This way as soon as they open their inbox, my email will appear on the very top.

You can visit Time.is and see the company's local time, to adjust the alarm with your local time.

How to Price Your Domain

It’s all about finding the right buyer.

Someone can offer you $300, while another prospect will agree to pay $2000 for the same name.

In general, think about how much value the domain can bring to their business.

Let’s say you want to sell a “SomeCityService .com“, and the potential buyer asks about the price. Here is what you should do:

1. Research the average price of that service in the city.

2. Estimate how many conversions your organic traffic can get them per year + from ranking higher in search engine result pages.

3. Include a screenshot from the GoDaddy domain appraisal tool.

4. Include similar domain sales with the sold price.

I usually price my domains from $500-$1000.

Domaining Tools

Here are all the tools that I use to buy, sell, research, and develop domain names.

Similarweb

Similarweb is a fantastic tool if you want to estimate how much traffic a specific website gets.

Dynadot API

I use Dynadot's API extensively to catch names. I wrote a tiny script in "Bash", and it is able to make 3-4 "buy" requests per second with only 1 Dynadot account.

I was able to register a lot of great names using it.

ExpiredDomains

An amazingly organized platform that lets you see expired, expiring, and for-sale domain names.

The vast selection of filters allows you to narrow down your selection and output the names that you really want. This is the tool that I use the most.

DotDB

DotDB is a platform where you can check what other extensions of your domain name are registered. This also can be useful when you are trying to find domain names that are similar to yours.

Escrow.com

Escrow.com is an escrow platform that lets you safely buy and sell anything, including domain names.

Namebio & Dnpric.es

Namebio and Dnpric.es let you see whether the name you are interested in has been sold in the past or not. You can also see similar domain name sales. Very useful.

Semrush

If you want to see a detailed analysis of a domain name, Semrush will tell you how many backlinks the domain has, what keywords it ranks for, and the CPC for those keywords.

NamePros

NamePros is a great place to get connected with expert domainers from all around the world.

Read a lot, and you will be able to spot and register better names, quickly spot upcoming trends, and just be connected with really smart people.

Crunchbase & Apollo.io

These are great platforms where you can get insights about a company.

You don’t want to miss out big when you sell a domain for $300 to a company that can pay $5K for it.

Netlify

Netlify lets you build and deploy serverless dynamic websites very easily. It has a free plan that allows you to deploy up to 500 websites.

I use Netlify for hosting my personal website and other rank-and-rent projects for free. If you are interested in how I do it, just let me know.

Astro.build

I use Astro to quickly build blazing-fast, SEO-optimized static websites. My website is built on Astro.

Final Thoughts

Thanks again for reading this email. I know it was long, but I tried to cover all the main points.

In the future, I will talk about developing and monetizing domains, and how to buy unused aged domains with juicy backlinks.

If there are specific things you would like me to cover, feel free to let me know.

Also, if you liked this email, please share this newsletter with anyone you know who is into domaining or building things online.

Best Regards, and remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.