Cold emailing is a common lead generation tactic where marketers reach out to individuals and businesses that currently have no relationship with your brand in an attempt to sell your products or services.
Of course, the fact that these contacts are essentially complete strangers makes this a rather tricky marketing tactic. That said, with the right approach and a little fine tuning, you can write cold emails that have a much higher chance of not only being opened and read in the first place, but leading to further nurturing and potential business.
In this article we’re going to talk about how to write cold emails that won’t make your prospects hot under the collar – and ultimately lead to business growth.
1. Try to personalise the email as much as possible
If you send the same ‘generic’ information out to thousands of cold prospects with very little in the way of personalisation, your open and response rate will be incredibly low.
At the least, you should aim to include the recipient’s first name in the subject and opening line of the email. We humans are an inherently self-indulgent bunch and love hearing / reading our own names and it shows (emails with personalised subject lines are 30.5% more likely to be opened).
But, if you truly want to make the most out of each contact, you should dig a little deeper and try to find out as much information about each prospect as possible. That way, you can tailor each email to the specific recipient.
This is much easier in B2B when you can research their business and draw from that when talking about the products or services that you offer.
In doing so, it demonstrates that you’ve made the effort – which can go a long way.
2. Edit the “from” line before sending
Neglecting the “from” line when sending a cold email is a wasteful mistake. This is because the majority of email owners will not bother opening an email at all if the “from” line appears to be from an untrustworthy source.
As such, you should put some serious thought and consideration into what yours should be; whether it be your first name, the name of your business, or a title.
Again, this might not necessarily be the same for every single recipient in your cold email campaign.
3. Write an awesome subject line
The subject of your email is arguably the most important aspect. This is how you capture your recipient’s attention and compel them to open the email.
You want to aim for around 41-characters (average of 7-words). If you can say what you need to say in this sweet spot, you’ll be onto a winner.
- Engage personally.
- Add value.
- Offer insights.
- Inspire curiosity.
- Ask questions.
4. Authenticate yourself
Starting a cold email with a flat out sales pitch is rarely a good approach. The fact is, they have never heard of you before and since you have their contact details and have decided to reach out, doing so without first introducing detectmind yourself is often a big turn off for most people.
So, make sure you start off by authenticating yourself. This is because the primary purpose of this initial cold email is to start a relationship / get a discussion going.
5. Get to the point in the body of the email
Now that you’ve grabbed their attention with an awesome subject line and they’re past the introductions, you’ve got about 3 seconds to reel them in.
Avoid the boring “I hope this email finds you well” nonsense. Show some character!
Here are some examples:
- Who are you and what do you want from them?
- Consider complimenting them on a recent success in business.
- Lead with questions that set the stage for your service / value proposition.
- Include statistics.
Don’t waste time or stuff your email with too much content. Get straight to the point, cut the fat, and use bulleted lists to break up the text. Your emails should be scannable.
Final thoughts: Trial, error, and persistence
The above tips should set you in good stead when starting a cold email campaign of your own. Of course, these tips are merely scraping the surface. There truly is an art and a science to email marketing – especially when contacting cold prospects.
There will be a lot of trial and error and if you are persistent, you should be able to find your groove and start attracting some excellent leads.
Alternatively, you should consider hiring a marketing agency who specialises in email marketing. That way, you can leverage the expertise of a company that has carried out dozens and dozens of email marketing campaigns before.
In any case, we hope you’ve found this article handy!
