I tried outbounding brandable domains

Hey,

I tried something that many brandable domain investors don’t give much thought — outbounding.

Outbounding, or simply cold emailing, isn’t very popular for brandable domains because targeting is difficult and ambiguous.

If you had a geo-specific domain like newyorkdrywaller .com, it’s easy to know who to target.

Dry wallers in NY.

Or if you had a niche-specific domain like potatofarmer .com, it’s also clear who might be interested.

People who farm potatoes.

But if you have a domain like LoopStrike .com (one of mine), then its quite ambiguous. Shooting off random outbound domains to anybody in tech or to anybody living in San Francisco will probably be a waste of your time.

But I found a way to narrow down my target list and increase my chances of a successful outbound campaign for brandables. And the best part is, it’s completely free, and I’m about to share the whole thing with you.

What we’re going to do is:

• Find domain-market fit

• Build a list (for free)

• Email them intelligently

Domain-market fit

The best people to target would be people who are thinking of starting a business that fits your domain, but haven’t yet.

These people can be reached through search discovery or advertising, but not through outbound methods.

The next best target would be people who are already using a domain similar to ours.

But why would someone need two similar domains?

One reason would be if they are dissatisfied with their current domain and want to change.

Maybe upgrade from a .io to a .com, or to change the brand name altogether.

Another would be for them to use the second domain as a separate, but related digital asset. Like a branded campaign, or product line.

For example, I sent an email to the CMO of Clickfunnels pitching my domain madfunnel .com. I am on their email list, and I know that they often use separate domains for campaigns like ‘yourfirstfunnelchallenge .com’.

That would be a branded campaign.

A branded product line would be like HMO buying max .com (for a lot of money) for their rebranded HMO Max product.

Knowing why the buyer would want our domains will help us craft our message and make it resonate.

Build a list (for free)

OK, this is the fun bit.

I was able to get 100 extremely high quality emails to the c-suite of some massive companies all for free using a tool called Crunchbase.

Crunchbase is a high quality database of mostly tech companies, and their backend product allows you to extract emails and phone numbers.

It’s extremely powerful. The best part is that they offer a 7-day free trial.

The product is quite expensive, I was able to use this free trial period to extract the 100 emails (just hit ‘Start Free Trial’ on the upper right)

(sorry Crunchbase — once I sell more domains maybe I’ll actually sign up lol 😀)

The trick is to type in your actual domain into the top search bar. Then a whole bunch of companies with similar companies will show up which you can click into.

Then go to ‘people’, and simply select the person you want to contact. I suggest sticking to the founder or CEO for the most part and CMOs if it’s a huge company.

They are the ones who can make an immediate decision to buy a domain.

Email them intelligently

This has two parts. The first part being the copy, and the second being the logistics.

Copy

When it comes to the copy, I can only tell you what I did. I just kept it simple. First line was a customised comment on their company, then I introduced the domain and suggested what they could potentially use it for.

I actually put some thought into each email, so it did take me a while.

Then I ended up with a price incentive offer if they respond within 48 hours to give it some urgency.

Probably not the greatest copy ever written, but I think simple does the trick here.

Logistics 

When it comes to sending cold emails, there are a couple of things you need to know. If you do it wrong, your emails will land in spam, and your inbox will get flagged so even your ‘regular’ emails will start going to spam.

If you’re not used to sending lots of cold emails, it’s probably safest to send up to 20, 30 max emails from one inbox per day.

If you have multiple inboxes that’s great, but if not you’ll have to spread out the exercise across a few days.

That’s it in a nutshell. If you have any questions I’m happy to answer them if I can. Just shoot me a DM on X.

As always, appreciate if you can share the newsletter and get the word out.

Happy domaining,

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