Tiramisu cold email that got us great interviews

In two campaigns where I used Tiramisu cold email strategy, the results were amazing.

The idea was to bring industry leaders to our live webinars where we'd aim to produce the most actionable sales and growth advice that people can use to close more deals and become better at their craft.

On top of that, they could also ask questions since all interviews are recorded live, exclusively for lemlist family community.

So far, we've been able to bring amazing guests like Rand Fishkin, Aaron Ross, Jill Rowley, Anthony Iannarino, Tim Soulo, Morgan Ingram, etc.

In this short and sweet article, you'll see how we did it.

"Let's create lemlist TV"

Guillaume and I brainstormed about having our own show more than once, but we couldn’t take on such a large project.

Eventually, we scaled, brought in more people, and were able to take on more responsibilities.

So one day, my Slack rang.

"Heeeeeeey lemlister!", G was laughing. (This greeting became like a mini-tradition).

And G announced, "I think we can finally add that one level of content we always wanted to do".

A few minutes later, we were chopping up ideas. Here's what we came up with:

• Host live webinars exclusively for The Sales Automation Family, so our members can enjoy quality content + ask questions live

Why go live in TSAC only?

The reasons are twofold. First, you're part of the family and we really mean it.

There's an exclusivity that comes with, like priority access to the lempire updates, along with the option to ask all our guests questions live.

• Invest time in inviting the right guests and creating a scenario

A great guest brings a lot of listeners, some of whom can become valuable new TSAC members or high-quality prospects down the road.

On the other hand, a well-thought-out scenario leads to actionable, authentic content.

Both require work and good preparation.

• Address key sales and growth questions to produce ACTIONABLE advice

For this, we already have a policy in place.

lemAIR content policy:

‍Likeable → does it have our brand character?
‍Empathetic → do we understand the pain?
‍Monumental → how does it help our business?
‍Actionable → can people extract value?
‍Inspiring → what makes it unique?
‍Result-oriented → are we doing what we’re preaching?

The same rules apply to our webinars.

This is the reason why we didn't jump into this project too early. It required a lot of time and work.

No law abides entrepreneurs to host a webinar or podcast if they want to become successful.

Walk before run!

Prioritizing projects that matter most at that moment is what makes it happen. Go step by step, from the ground up.

Tiramisu cold email strategy

You might have seen me talking about the Tiramisu cold email strategy in the TSAC family a few times now.

It's precisely the one I used to organize webinars with such amazing guests.

Why do we call it Tiramisu?

Well, as a cake, a Tiramisu is quite tasty. So is this cold email strategy.

It's about writing genuine intro lines and adding custom sentences that change for each prospect.

The entire work happens in your .csv file that you eventually upload to lemlist. Here's how it looks.

Imagine the following cold email structure.

Hey {{firstName}},
{{Tiramisu}}
The rest of the email...

The {{firstName}} tag is replaced with Guillaume, and {{Tiramisu}} becomes... ⬇️

"I've checked out your $1M ARR article the other day.
It's brilliant and congrats on reaching this huge milestone.
I remember reading the first episode (the $250k ARR one you wrote)
and really appreciate that we can follow your journey in such a detailed way."

The result is a unique email that no one will receive but Guillaume.

And it works like a charm because it gets attention and shows you’re a baller, not some lazy person emailing everyone the same 💩 and issuing fake compliments.

You may think this takes a long time.

It does! But then again nothing good should come easy.

Plus, if you do the research right, your cold emails will write themselves, believe me. 😎

Back to our campaign... We've delivered two to be precise.

The first one was sent to 20 people we wanted to interview.

Here's why it worked:

1. {{Tiramisu}} tag is replaced with a genuine compliment for that person. In most cases, it consisted of 1-3 sentences where I'd comment on their recent work and add another sentence on why we admire that person
2. {{Tiramisu2}} was changed with our topic proposal. In other words, the topic of the webinar we aimed to make with them.
3. The goal was to show how their participation would bring them exposure to our audience
4. Credibility is key! We want everybody to know that we are practitioners of our craft with a real track record
5. Always make sure the next step is clear.

I also decided to A/B test two subject lines as I was curious.

Pro tip: Always A/B test

It's always a good idea to let your prospects decide what subject line, image, call-to-action, or sequence works best. Don't waste your time debating these in your internal meetings.

Split-test it instead!

Recommended read: How to run A/B tests in lemlist?

After a few months, the second campaign began.

Having already interviewed sales and marketing experts, we now had more credibility so we wanted to introduce some changes to the pitch.

We targeted 12 + 3 people for new episodes.

The first 12 were part of the Tiramisu campaign.

As for the other 3, I decided to leverage my own inbox.

But what were the changes?

1. Having recorded several episodes already, it's okay to brag about them a bit. These names bring respect and credibility to our prospects' eyes
2. As you can see, simple and clear calls to action.I don't want them to think too much about what to do next

And the strategy worked fine for both campaigns.

Three people that were approached from my own email were Rand Fishkin, Tim Soulo, and Ryan Stewart.

Since I already had on-going email threads with them, I decided to play on these.

Pro tip: Manual reviews in lemlist

lemlist allows you, just before you send your campaign, to add last-minute changes for specific people.

By doing this, you can make your cold email even more personalized for a specific person or group of people.

You'll see this feature in the “review” stage.

More info:
Personalization superpowers for cold emails

But overall, the results were awesome, our community members loved the webinars, and it's mind-blowing to connect with people you admire and get to pick their brains.

You can see all episodes on our YouTube channel. 🤙

The most important things to remember about the Tiramisu cold email strategy and how to make it work for you:

• Everything comes down to your research. The end result of it are custom sentences for each prospect
• Anything can be a {{Tiramisu}} tag → your intro, your proposition, your CTA, name it...
• Remember the rule! Every prospect "eats" their own Tiramisu... one sentence for each prospect

Bottom line

If you were here for some cold email ideas, Tiramisu strategy or just to get inspired to do your own show, I hope you've found what you were looking for.

Essentially, the Tiramisu strategy is adding a hyper-personalized line at the beginning of your email to show that you’ve researched your prospect.

Start your 14-day free trial with lemlist now and start winning your prospects over!