A True 4HWW Case Study: Part 8 – Outreach

Hey guys and gals!

I'm back from a bit too short week holidays. I did use that time wisely though, as I used it to do some assesment on the site situation, what the best next route should be etc.

I also got new articles ready for publishing (HPD's content) and did some good ole research on email outreach so I do it properly.

Also, I got another sale on the site which is GREAT news and proof that this WILL work If i just keep doing what every single niche site pro recommends: Publish good content and get good links 😀 (How many businesses are this simple? Not many!)

So all in all things are moving forward, and even though they do move slower than I projected initially, i'm progressing nonetheless and I guess that's all that matters.

To get things done, slowly slowly until I reach the my goal.

Week 7 Summary

Email outreach (Infographic and Skyscraper) - Check
Create Scholarship page - Check
Get universities email list - Check

Time input and Expenses for the week

During last week and this week i've probably put ca. 10h of work. Not straight on the site though, as most of it was researching and learning how to conduct a proper outreach campaign. I've learned that, for beginners, the best possible time investment is done studying the next steps, then doing stuff.

While a hands-on approach is great, it's always better to know where to put one's hands.

I've spent just 4€ getting gsuite for my blog's email address for the outreach part.

Email outreach: Tools and tips

So if you guys remember well, I paid a guy on Fiverr to collect email addresses of other blogs inside my niche, published an infographic and a high-quality skyscraper post on a "best X ways to do Y" fashion. Now it was time to reach out to those blogs and pitch them my awesome new contents.

The tool of choice has been GMass (free) which has a limit of 50 emails per day, which isn't a big deal because my list isn't that big. It also allows me to take it easy and see what the results are before going full-on.

Then there are two choices:

Free and easy but amateur, or cheap, slightly complex but pro.

I went the Pro approach, which is getting gsuite to work on your website's email address so you can use gmail with your [email protected] and send mass mails with GMass. There's probably another 100 ways to do this but was the simplest one I found.

How to setup gsuite and GMass for outreach

So let me show you real quick what the process is so you too can do outreach like a baws.

Gsuite: https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome

The proccess is quite straight-forward

Getting started

Setting up the account.

The basic plan costs $5 per month per user, so if you're doing outreach and don't have any VAs or anything else that would truly justify another user, just get one. You can add more later anyway.

I created an address like "[email protected]" quite simple and works well for any PR, outreach and other purposes.

Enter your business location in the next step and click next

What? Of course I'm in the French Polynesia Google! you know nothing...

You'll be prompted to give an email address that you check frequently and you'll be asked whether you have an existing website or not.

Then you'll be asked for your domain details, to create a new email address for it and the name you want to use. Confirm captcha, click on "confirm and create account" and you'll be redirected to the account setup.

If you're only using one address, click on the box below and proceed:

Verifying the address

Then you'll have to verify the ownership of the domain, again quite straight simple and different possibilities so go with whichever seems simpler for you. I took the "upload HTML file" route.

Then you'll have to change the MX records inside your hosting's cPanel (should be simple. I use Siteground and it was very easy)

Verify domain, submit payment details and you're good to go.

Then you'll need to add GMass to your gmail dashboard, upload your spreadsheet with all the emails to google drive (so that you can merge it with GMass and send it to all contacts) and templates.

Good all mighty email templates

Remember when I said that one of the most important things any of us (newbies :D) can do is to keep learning and keep doing research for the next steps in our strategies?

So off I went to find some good email templates to use for my infographic and skyscrapper campaign and I found out this awesome resource from the guys of Human Proof Designs. Like, exactly what I needed LOL.

So, with all these things combined, I sent emails pitching my infographic to half of the list and the skyscraper to the other half. No particular reasoning here, just testing stuff.

MMG: Current State of Affairs

So like I mentioned above, I've had another sale (a whooping $1.88 comission) and ranks are getting better:

Next Steps

In the following two weeks I'll be handling responses to the outreach campaign, hopefully sending guest posts over and getting the scholarship page ready. Once I've got all that I'll get someone on fiverr to get me a list of scholarships and emails like I did with the blogs and pitch them the scholarship using GMass.

So again, same process just different targets and angle. I'll be doing some more keyword research and adding more KGR articles, as I keep reading on the FB groups about people having great results with them!

Have you ever conducted an outreach campaign? What were your results?

Share them in the comments below and let's talk!