With the right cold email tips, strategies, and tricks, you’ll be able to excel at cold emailing.
The following cold emailing tips are proven to have increased response and conversion rate.
1. Research your prospect
Before building a cold email strategy, know your prospects well. Understand their industry, role, and recent activities. This will help you craft better cold emails that are personalized and can connect with your prospects.
But including a “Hi [first name]” does not count as a personalized email. To truly personalize your cold emails, you need to personally know your prospects. And to understand your prospects on a deeper level, use Zintlr.
An AI-powered chrome extension for LinkedIn, Zintlr, provides you with personality insights like personality type, preferences, motivations, engagement drainers, and contact information of your prospects.
2. Write an engaging subject line
Subject line is the initial point that decides the performance of your cold emailing. It’s what can push your prospects towards opening an email.
An average of only 23.9% of sales emails are opened. The remaining lose business opportunities.
So, keep it specific, and intriguing. The subject lines can be long or short, just not confusing. Complex subject lines that do not hit the recipients with a connection will easily be ignored. An ideal and good subject line might refer to a mutual interest, an industry insight, or a pain point of the prospect.
A few examples of well-written cold email subject lines:
- A (benefit) for (prospect’s company)
- (Mutual connection) recommended I get in touch.
- 5X (company name) (prospect’s responsibilities).
- Struggling with (pain point)? You’re not alone.
3. Short and direct
If you want your prospect to know everything about a subject, write a blog. Not an email.
Always keep your emails short and straight to the point. Also, people tend to check emails on the go. So, aim for around 100 – 150 words for your cold emails, getting straight to the point but also providing enough information that can make the prospect interact with the email is crucial.
While writing either long or short cold emails, add sales hooks at the beginning of your cold emails. These sales hooks can lure your prospects towards taking action.
4. Start with a hook
After the subject lines provoke the prospects to have a look at the email, the first sentence of the cold email body is pivotal for the recipient to read the rest.
To gain the interest of your prospects, avoid generic introductions and start with a marketing or sales hook right in the first sentence of your email. Add a personalized hook that shows you know something about your prospects.
A good hook might mention a recent achievement of the prospect or prospect’s company, a shared interest, a LinkedIn post, or even a tweet.
5. Focus on the needs of prospects
No one wants to receive or read a random unsolicited email with content about a product or service that does not add value to their life.
Even if your business can be beneficial for your prospects, when you do not address the needs of your prospects in a clear way that is visible, people tend to ignore cold emails.
So, don’t lead your cold emails with the features of your product unless it is necessary. Highlight benefits that can be meaningful, would add value, and address the pain points faced by your prospects.
6. Personalize the email body
As we had discussed earlier, adding the first name or company of the prospect does not count as sales personalization. Dig deeper and identify specific traits or characteristics of the prospect that strap itself to the tone or vision of your business.
Personalization is the fastest emerging trend in sales and marketing. Cold emails need to be personalized to add a human touch to the email in this AI generating future!
To personalize, find psychographic data about your prospects and segment them based on shared interests, common groups, industries, and job titles. With these segments, you’ll be able to define your target audience better for your cold email outreach.
7. Display social proof
Building credibility is easier when you have social proof like success stories, reviews on product listing websites, and client testimonials to display on your cold emails.
These build trust in the minds of your prospects as easy as a walk in the park. When your prospects look at results shared by companies that cater to the same market as them or even their competitors, they tend to consider the product.
So, while running cold email campaigns, display social proof that can gain the trust of the recipients of the cold emails, reinforcing that you understand their industry and business.
8. Be conversational and authentic
The B2B space is more dull and grey when it comes to sales conversations and marketing campaigns. This is something that has to be addressed when you cold email your prospects.
Give a human touch to your cold email subject lines and body. Draft an email that looks like it is being addressed to a peer and not just delivering a sales pitch.
But don’t be too friendly and don’t deviate from the tone of your business, stay authentic. Be friendly yet professional and avoid corporate jargons.
9. Ask a question
Asking open-ended questions in cold emails is one of the best and proven strategies to get higher response rate from a set of target audience.
Some of the top questions are:
“What are the biggest challenges you’re currently facing with <goal>?”
“What are you looking to optimize in <business goal>?”
“How has <recent industry trend> impacted your business?”
“What is the one thing that you want to make it easier for your team in <role>?”
“How are you measuring success for (specific target program)?”
These questions can improve the reply rates for your cold email outreach as they are customer centered.
10. Showcase your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
Distill what makes your product or service unique and valuable into a short and impactful sentence.
Focus on how it can benefit your prospects rather than showcasing the features. To showcase UVP, you can:
- Use numbers or data: Back up your UVP with concrete results or data and build credibility.
- Highlight specific solutions for pain points: Anchor your UVP to a known challenge that is present in the recipient’s industry or role.
- Mention relevant success stories: Segment your target audience and add relevant success stories and social proof to their cold emails.
- Short and clear: A UVP must be short and concise, one simple, impactful sentence that delivers the strongest message.
- Frame your UVP as solution: Position your offering as a direct solution to a common problem. Instead of just stating the UVP, show it in a way that you’re solving a problem.
11. Limit the Call-to-Action (CTA)
Too many CTAs affect the decision of the reader. Because the reader gets confused about taking the next step and may click the one that does not push sales or even worse, may just ignore your cold email.
Give one, low-pressure, actionable CTA like,
- “Would you be open to a quick call next week?”
- “Would you like to download our case study?”
- “Are you available for a quick chat?”
CTAs like the above make it easy for the prospects to answer “yes” by reducing the decision fatigue. Also, place the CTA where you think your cold email peaks. Placing the CTA randomly won’t help.
12. Try light humor (If appropriate)
A little humor in your emails can help you stand out and make the recipient continue reading your email. It humanizes your cold emails and gives a friendly tone that B2B prospects usually don’t see in their emails.
Try something subtle like,
- “I know another email isn’t what you asked for today…”
- “Cold emails can feel like those annoying pop-up ads, so I’ll make this brief…”
- “This email is not a dream vacation, but I can transform your work life a vacation…”
Using humor in your cold email marketing results in a relaxed interaction. But use it only as long as it is appropriate to the context.
13. Express appreciation
Sincere compliments are always well received. Appreciating the work of the recipient or the recipient’s company will gain their attention.
To appreciate,
- “It is inspiring to see [company] innovate in the [industry]….”
- “The impact [company] has on [market] is remarkable…”
- “Your expertise in [subject] is exceptional….”
- “[Company]’s dedication to [value] and [value] is admirable….”
This shows that you are familiar with them and their company, and that you have done your research before reaching out. Also, appreciation displays respect towards the prospects which makes them more likely to engage.
14. Follow-up, but don’t overdo it
To close a deal, sales reps usually have to do 5 follow-ups after the initial email. If you don’t get a response, you can follow-up in 4 to 7 days. Be gentle and easy, don’t be pushy.
No one likes a stranger pushing them to do something.
Dos and Don’ts while you write follow-up emails:
Dos:
- Mention past interaction
- Add value with every follow-up
- Add clear CTA
Don’ts:
- Don’t overwhelm
- Avoid dull or generic tone and message
- Avoid guilt trips
These might help you draft better follow-up emails after the initial email that can progress your sales prospects further down the sales funnel.
15. A/B test your approach
While cold emailing, testing it in different ways is necessary. Because a cold email that did not work best with a certain set of audience could work better with another set.
The same goes with the subject lines, email body, text length, CTAs, humor, and every part of the email.
So, test what works and what does not for every set of audience before settling with an average performing cold email list. Also, check for the email types and cold email templates that work well, whether images or texts or links, mix and match every possible email and learn what performs well in your market.
16. Avoid self-focus
Keep the focus on your prospects, not on you. Try to minimize the ‘I’ parts in your cold emails. People enjoy getting attention, so when you draft cold emails, make sure that you address your prospects more and the email’s energy must be revolving around them and add value to the recipient.
For example, instead of saying “I do [service or product] and this can solve [pain point]”, try “I noticed that you are expanding into [expansion area], and you must be facing [pain point]. Our [product or service] can help you here.”
17. Acknowledge their time
This is something that is never considered but has a greater impact when it comes to performance.
While addressing your prospects, add a few words like “I’ll be brief,” or “I’ll make this short,” or “I know you’re busy.” This makes your email feel considerate, conveying that you value the recipient’s time and attention.
18. Close with a gentle nudge
Ending your email with a “let me know” equals to not ending your email.
Always add a gentle nudge that may influence the receiver into clicking the CTA.
Use statements like,
- “I would like to discuss how we can work together….”
- “I’d be happy to share more details….”
- “Feel free to reach out if you need further information…”
- “I am eager to find out how we partner together….”
- “Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and answering your queries….”
Words like the above push your prospects to the CTA.
Write Cold Emails That Convert
I hope the above cold email tips help you draft improved cold emails that accelerate your sales prospecting and add value to your sales process.
