How to Acquire Initial Clients for your B2B Startup

Keep it personal, short, and non-promotional. The subject line “{first name} — quick question” generally yields a 70%+ Open Rate after 3 touches (3 emails).

Email content should be extremely brief: 2–3 sentences. Avoid formal language and business buzzwords.

Personally, I find that taking the “product research” or “feedback” angle works pretty well. Gets people on the phone or clicking the link, and honestly, you should be just as happy getting feedback as getting the sale.

Regardless of your strategy, AB test your messaging to see what happens to your Response Rate and CTR

• Brainstorm topics that would be useful or interesting to your users
• Think of how that content intersects with your product
• Write down the search terms that your users would search to find this info
• Use Google's Keyword Planner
• Cross-reference with Google Trends to find new terms that are gaining popularity
• Create a content plan of articles on helpful topics using the best keywords
• When you write, don't be too promotional about your product.

Start by asking yourself a few questions:

• What products/companies exist in your space that have similar client bases, but are non-competitive?
• Is there a group of professionals (i.e. marketers, developers, designers, data analysts) that would find your product particularly useful and advocate for your product?
• Are their agencies or other resellers of products and services that have clients who would benefit from your product?
• What can you offer as a partner? Would your product drive more engagement for them? Is your client base valuable? Can you offer commissions on sales?

• Set up an incentive program for selling each other's product
• Find a deal that makes sense for both parties
• One time payout: A lump sum of money is paid to the affiliate per conversion
• Recurring: If you have a subscription plan with your client, you pass a percentage of the monthly or annual subscription along to affiliate for a period of time
• Initial payout and recurring: A combination of the two aforementioned.