Let's admit it - Striking up a conversation with a stranger can be intimidating and awkward in many situations, especially when there is a financial motive involved.
That's perhaps the biggest reason why cold email outreach doesn't work for many businesses.
The thing is, most people do not like getting their inboxes clogged with emails that practically have zero relevance to them.
Thanks to advanced email marketing tools, it is easier for online businesses to keep track of their cold email strategy. But the real issue arises when recipients open your emails but never respond to them.
Sending cold emails that capture your customer's attention and convert can be tough to pull off. But it is not impossible.
We have composed this post to help you create an effective cold email strategy. Moreover, we'll also highlight some of our tried-and-tested cold email tips to help you draft the most intriguing cold emails in 2023 and beyond.
What Is A Cold Email?
A cold email is a message a business sends to someone it has never interacted with before.
The concept is more or less like cold calling when you call potential clients to figure out if they're interested in a product or a service. But unlike cold calls, cold emails sound less pushy and more natural.
When done right, sending cold emails can do wonders for your brand. It all depends on how well you have created your cold email strategy.
With cold emails, you can provide your prospects with all the necessary and relevant information they might be interested in before buying anything from your brand.
Does Cold Emailing Work?
Definitely, yes.
Cold emails are popular because they're easy to create and send. You only need the email addresses of your potential customers to reach out to them.
Also, emails, in general, offer massive ROI, which isn't possible with any other form of marketing.
Last but not least, cold email marketing efforts are scalable, and you can increase your reach using the best cold email tools available on the market.
But yes, cold emails can become challenging in some cases since you don't have a direct relationship with your customers.
You can't still call them spam. Why? Because you only send cold emails to qualified leads. On the other hand, spam goes out to a random email list.
Cold emails are usually personalized, whereas spam emails flood recipients' inboxes with the same message.
Also, the cold email contains tons of valuable information for the recipients. Spam emails, in comparison, are used by senders as a hard-selling strategy to spread malicious content.
When To Use Cold Emails?
There are several ways you can use the cold email strategy to your advantage.
- Lead generation: The main purpose of sending cold emails for any online business is to create brand awareness and generate leads. Businesses send out these emails to introduce new products and services. The recipient responds if they feel you two make a good fit.
- PRs: If your brand story is powerful or you have anything compelling to share with the general public, you can use cold emails to reach out to journalists to see if they're willing to publish your story in their magazines and news journals.
- Link building: If you have invested in your blog and want it to be reviewed by millions of people, you need to increase its visibility through the right SEO strategies. Link building is an effective off-page SEO tactic that enables you to get more traffic by placing your blog/content links on high-DA websites. And cold emails are a perfect way to reach out to those websites.
- Market research: A well-crafted cold email strategy not only will provide you with a chance to introduce your products or services to your target audience, but you can also use it to know your customers better. With cold emails, you can identify the pain points of your prospects. Also, you can use these emails to conduct market research and surveys.
- To connect with influencers: With influencer marketing gaining more momentum, you can leverage cold emails to reach out to influential people working in your area of expertise and ask them to promote your products on their social media accounts to increase leads and conversions.
Now that you know what cold emails are and how you can use such emails to your advantage, it is time to highlight the steps you need to follow to write successful cold emails for your business.
Steps To Creating A Successful Cold Email
In all honesty, writing a successful cold email is no different from writing any regular business email.
The syntax is more or less the same. What differentiates cold emails from other emails is that they target people who don't know anything about you, your brand, and your offers.
So, it's basically the content that makes all the difference.
As a general rule, every cold email should include these essentials.
A Compelling Subject Line:
As they say, the first impression is the last. Your subject line is the first thing your recipients see when they receive your email. Whether they open it or not depends on how well you're able to hook their interest through your headline.
According to research, more than 33% of recipients open an email if they find the headline engaging.
You don't really have to go overboard with the number of words. Choose something that is short and simple yet sensational and interesting to drive and capture your recipient's interest.
The key here is to build curiosity while still highlighting what your email is all about. It's also critical to create subject lines that look natural and not pushy.
Element Of Personalization:
Your prospects receive hundreds of emails daily. They're not going to check your email if they don't find a reason to do so.
When we talk about cold emails, personalization is key. Don't expect a response if you want to send the same message to everyone.
Lots of research goes into the process of creating personalized emails. Know the needs of your target audience. What do they want? Evaluate how you can help your prospects accomplish their mission.
Remember, the more targeted and tailored your cold emails are, the higher the chances a potential customer will acknowledge and respond.
Your Offer:
The next step is to specify your value proposition. What sets your offer apart from your competitor's offer? What do you have in store for your buyers that your rivals don't?
A Powerful CTA:
CTAs are an integral part of ecommerce emails. Especially when it comes to cold emails, you can't leave your recipients in curiosity about what they should do next to proceed with the process.
Include clear and action-driven CTAs that keep the conversation going between you and your recipients.
Read our guide on "How To Create Powerful Calls To Action (CTAs) That Can Boost Your Ecommerce Conversions" to know how to create well-crafted CTAs that can help you to boost your e-commerce conversions.
Signature
A well-crafted cold email is incomplete without an email signature.
An email signature is something that tells your recipients about who you're, what your brand is, and how they can contact you for future collaborations.
12 Effective Tips For Writing Cold Emails That Get Responses In 2021
1. Reach The Right Audience
All marketing campaigns start with knowing your prospects. If your cold emails are not targeted, they're SPAM. Remember, what differentiates cold emails from spam is they're always sent to qualified leads.
So, invest your time and resources in knowing your potential customers and their needs.
If you send out your emails to everyone listed in your address book, you'll end up getting your ID landed in the spam folder.
2. Figure Out What Your Prospects Care About
Why should the recipient care about your email? Identify their pain points and determine what they expect from your brand.
For instance, if you're sending out an email to a sales rep, you should talk about how your products will help them achieve their sales goals.
Clearly highlight your offer, and do not hesitate to get personal. Do a little market research beforehand to identify the areas your customers are having issues with. Based on your research, you can offer a personalized solution that addresses their pain points.
3. Create Short Messages
Present-day buyers are busy. You can't expect them to spend hours reading emails from someone they don't even know.
Also, many studies prove that short and to-the-point emails are likely to get more attention than long emails.
Keep your email copy short and meaningful. Ideally, you should write your cold email the way you'd talk.
Add a little intro, specify your offer, and close strong. That’s it.
4. Work On Your Opening Lines
Opening lines are important. It is something your recipient will see as a preview on their email client. Also, it hooks your reader's interest and helps them decide whether or not they should continue reading the entire mail.
Avoid boring, run-of-the-mill openings. Start with something surprising (any info that you collected during market research).
Your goal as a sender is to hold the reader's interest. Having a powerful and optimized opening line will ensure your prospects will go through the entire email without losing their focus.
5. Include Social Proof
It's a psychological phenomenon that we like to follow what others are doing. It gives us a sense of security and confidence that we're making the right decisions.
Adding social proofs in the form of reviews and testimonials to your cold emails will give your customers assurance that they're partnering with a reliable brand.
The social proof doesn't need to be in the form of reviews always. You can also share your past work, and specify the number of active users you have on board, or certifications.
6. Offer Credibility
Including statistics and valuable data proves you know your work. It shows you have done your homework and that you hold empathy for your prospects.
7. Emphasize ‘You’
Another million-dollar cold email tip to consider in 2021 is to emphasize 'you' instead of 'I.'
Sure, you have your goals and objectives. But when it comes to cold emails, your customers come first.
Identify your customer's needs and desires and create an irresistible offer they can't refuse.
8. Highlight 'Benefits' Not 'Features'
You may have the best product in the world. But it can only drive conversions if it is in demand. So instead of bragging about your product's features, highlight what specific benefits they can offer to the customers.
You can talk about specifics and product features somewhere on the product page. But your content should mainly focus on the benefits your product has in store for the buyers.
9. Don’t Use A Template
The worst you could do to your cold email campaign is to use pre-built email templates.
You can find hundreds of them with a simple Google search. But the fact is they're used by almost everyone. So if you want to stand out, you should come up with something more interesting and unique.
Even if you're going with pre-built templates, make sure you personalize them according to your needs.
10. Make It Personal
The best cold email tip for 2021 is to keep the factor of personalization in mind when creating emails. Don't send generic messages to everyone on your list. Create personalized messages and only send them to targeted audiences.
11. Create Interesting Subject Lines
Since we have already discussed this tip in the previous section, we will not repeat everything again. Create short and compelling subject lines that encourage recipients to open your email and find out more.
12. Always Proofread
Never send out your cold emails without proofreading. There's nothing worse than sending out something to your prospects having spelling and basic grammar mistakes.
So, always proofread (once or twice) before you hit the ‘Send’ button.
You can either do it yourself or hire a professional to go through your cold emails before sending them out to the final recipients.
Trisha Ballesteros