Anyone with an email inbox knows that, when it comes to sales, cold outreach is one of the most popular techniques today.
Your potential clients are being constantly bombarded by cold emails, many of them are from your direct competitors. If you want to stand out in their inbox and get that reply, you’re going to need to put some real effort in and dig below the surface.
Just like traditional advertising, it’s important that your cold email grabs attention and motivates action. No one enjoys receiving boring emails, selling generic products and services.
If the idea of creating a compelling email campaign seems a bit overwhelming, don’t panic! We’re here to help you with every step, from writing an email that will appeal to your ideal client, to making sure it’s delivered to the right person. We’ll even show you how to add an extra sprinkle of magic that’ll have potential clients filling your inbox with replies.
Before we go any further with cold emailing, it’s important that we’re on the same page with our definition. When we refer to cold emailing, we’re talking about reaching out to complete strangers (and potential customers) who’ve have had no prior relationship with you. Importantly, this isn’t to be confused with spam.
Spam emails will typically use misleading subject lines and bulk messages without any personalization. They’re untargeted and typically try to trick the recipient into opening or responding to the email. To make sure you’re not unintentionally sending spam, a good starting point is checking out the CAN-SPAM Act to ensure your email complies with the guidelines.
A successful cold outreach plan will typically use personalized cold emails to make contact with potential customers you’ve never connected with. With a professional, friendly tone and effective choice of words, the right cold email will get your potential customer’s attention and lay the groundwork for an ongoing customer relationship.
This is cold outreach and, love it or hate it, it has its purpose. Cold outreach is one of the most efficient lead generation tools you can use. If used properly, it can get you positive leads with minimal effort.
Better yet, when the leads generated from cold emailing actively respond to your campaign, their conversion rate is higher than leads gathered from other sources.
Cold emailing has been given a bad rep, with overflowing inboxes and annoyed customers. So why should you spend your time learning this technique? The answer is simple:
Leads!
When done properly, cold emails are one of the most efficient ways to generate new leads and find new customers.
The reason cold emails have such a bad rep is they’re often composed and executed terribly, with no thought or planning.
Most people treat cold emails as a poster advertising their business. That would be great if it were 2005, but now everybody advertises, and consumerism is at its peak.
You can’t list your services and expect recipients to call you up with their requirements and demand you take their money.
Instead, you have to put some real work into the email to ensure it’s liked by the recipient.
A great performing email campaign is one that is personalized to the last detail; that kind of hard work can get you significant response rates of 50%, or even higher.
If that’s not a good enough reason for you, here are some more reasons cold emailing is perfect for you:
To understand how to effectively use cold emailing, we have to understand the objective.
Many people think of cold emailing as a sales tool and sure, the goal is to, at some point, make a sale. But does that mean your email should read like a sales letter? Absolutely not!
Emails focused on sales are less likely to generate leads than emails providing value.
Your aim should be to start a conversation, rather than selling your product. Unless you’re in retail, a direct conversion from your email is simply not going to happen.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Their inbox is flooded with emails daily, most of which they have zero interest in. An email saying “Grab our new data science course!” may be straightforward but it’s impersonal and practically invisible in a crowded inbox.
Instead, a great way to boost reader engagement is by providing tangible value, along with any marketing message. This is a great way to boost reader engagement. For example, the subject line “Learn how to survive in the age of automation” promises valuable, useful information for readers interested in the topic. It’s then easy to include sales information for your product/service, without appearing like a pushy car salesman.
To get the balance right, this checklist will help you compose an effective cold email that your recipients will actually want to read:
Hopefully you’re now convinced of the benefits of cold emailing and you’re ready to get started. Use these hacks to make sure you’re getting the best response rates possible:
Using the above hacks you now have the principles of a great cold email campaign, but what about composing the actual email copy? What are some great ways to do that? USe the following list is something you can use as a quick tool to devise any cold email:
To see this in action, take a look at some templates that have worked well in the past.
Template #1: HubSpot calls this a repeat website visit template and this is one of our favourites.
Hi {CONTACT.FIRSTNAME},
You and a number of your colleagues at {!Lead.Company} have visited our website and << INSERT ACTION ON SITE >>.
I was wondering whether they were trying to figure out how you might << YOUR BUSINESS SOLUTION HERE >>? So, I did some research and found some areas of opportunity for you.
One idea I have is to << INSERT SUGGESTION FROM RESEARCH >>.
With the number of people researching our company, would it make sense to talk for 10 minutes?
Hope to hear from you, {CONTACT.OWNER_NAME}
Template #2: Here’s a helpful sales template by the guys at Right Hello:
Hi <First_Name>,
I just wanted to tell you that I really love what you’re doing at <Company>. If I could ever help you in anything, that would be awesome!
You might find my experience in <Your_Experience_Domain> useful. I blog a bit about it – here’s a link <Content_Link> if you would like to check out if I’m the real deal.
I’d love to steal some of your time to talk about what you do. Would you mind, maybe at least a 15 minute call?
Template #3: Pipetop’s Focus on benefit Template is no nonsense, which is why it works so well:
(CONTACT.FIRSTNAME), In working with other (INSERT INDUSTRY OR POSITION), one of the key issues they’re struggling with is (INSERT KEY ISSUE). This past year we helped numerous companies to (INSERT BUSINESS DRIVER), resulting (MONEY SAVED, REVENUE ADDED, PRODUCTIVITY INCREASES). If this is something you’re challenged with too, let’s set up a quick call. I have some ideas that might help. All the best, (CONTACT.OWNER_NAME)
This template addresses real issues concerning the recipients as an introduction and then offers a viable solution. It also offers social proof that the sender isn’t a complete newbie and knows what they’re doing. It’s also specific and has a nice clear call to action. It’s likely to get appreciated by busy professionals who don’t like people taking their time for granted.
Try these templates and see the results for yourself. These are tried and tested templates that will ensure a good response rate, and serve as a ideal starting point for setting up your own tests for optimization.
What’s the bane of cold emailing?
The dreaded “Mark All As Read” button.
Many of us pass a cursory glance over the emails that have arrived in the morning, select them all, and mark them as unimportant.
So how can you get past this mental Adblock that people have developed after years of being subjected to relentless advertising?
Well, there’s a few tricks to that.
Let’s break down the process of email marketing, starting with the first major hurdle – are your emails even reaching your target audience?
Plenty of us have this unfortunate belief that bulk marketing has very low returns.
The truth is, returns on cold emailing can vary greatly. The latest figures show an average CTR of anywhere between 4% and 13% depending on the industry. A highly targeted campaigns can receive much better rates, and conversely, a poorly thought out campaign can do much worse.
So what’s the difference between the guys who send ten thousand emails and get one response, and the guys who send a hundred emails and get twenty responses?
The answer is twofold – data quality and targeting.
Rather than compiling their own email lists, most people buy them instead. Due to the assumption of a low return, very little care gets put into curating the email addresses. The low quality of this data means that only a small percentage of the recipients will actually be interested in your product or service, further lowering the response rate.
The second aspect flows out of the first. Low quality data makes targeting your desired market that much harder.
The worst case scenario? Sending emails to too many uninterested people can have you tagged as spamming.
While getting tagged as a spammer isn’t a death knell, it does make your job much harder. Even though spam filters are getting smarter over the years, plenty of them still take a blanket approach towards blocking spam. This results in completely legit emails getting sent to the spam folder for reasons as ridiculous as mentioning Oprah. No joke. Other examples of words that have previously been known to set off alarm bells include ‘Earn $,’ ‘f r e e’ and ‘Urgent.’
My point is, once you have identified your market and acquired the email addresses, it’s time to figure out how to get through the ever-upgrading spam filters.
So here’s the secret to getting past every single type of spam filter: You don’t.
It would be pointless to list all the requirements to avoid all the spam folders. Reading a six hundred page book to write one amazing mail is counterproductive, and that book would be out of date as soon as it was released anyway.
Instead, here are the overall best practices to make sure that your emails don’t wind up in the spam folder.
Following these best practices will help your emails get into inboxes. Once they’re delivered though, the next step is to capture the recipient’s attention! What better way to do this than craft the perfect subject line?
A good subject line should do three things –
Let’s break each of these down.
Invoke the desired emotion in the reader – There are four emotions particularly effective at getting readers to open your emails: Curiosity, urgency, fear and excitement. Blatantly transparent efforts at tugging on heartstrings get ignored, but piquing the reader’s interest can pay off. Here are some examples of each type of subject line –
Be relevant – Putting in a reference to current affairs or a recent event can improve CTR.
It implies the email contains fresh content or an opinion on recent events that could prove insightful.
A general rule of thumb is your references shouldn’t be older than a month. Depending on how often the story is running in the news cycles, the time to reference an event may increase or decrease. Keep an eye on trends.
Engage attention with interesting preview text – In many email clients, the first few words of the email will often appear as preview text, making them a vital part of getting your email opened.
The same rules for evoking emotions apply here too. If the preview text is engaging, the odds of opening the email shoot up.
If these guidelines are followed, people will open the emails you send them. But unless the content is good, well, there go your customers. So once they’ve opened your email, how do you make the most of the opportunity and keep them onboard?
Like any good relationship, you need to keep the spark alive and woo your readers!
All the information given in this book shouldn’t be treated as a simple checklist. Instead, it should be viewed as a foundation to build your relationship on. What does this involve?
Pay attention to what your audience wants, as well as what they could want. Give them your time and attention. Treating your audience well benefits them as well as you, for the simple reason that reputation (whether good or bad) spreads.
If you create a product with care, catering to the requirements of your audience, they will respond. High-quality products attract a high-quality audience.
If you manage this well, you win the elusive prize marketers chase: a loyal customer base! Once you’ve built your email campaign on this solid foundation, all that’s left to do is wait.
Once an email campaign is launched, and everything that can be optimized has been, it’s time for the hardest part of the campaign.
The wait for responses.
If your campaign has been crafted properly and carefully targeted, the responses should start trickling in soon enough.
While the number of responses will likely be low, the quality of the responders will be high. They will be far more likely to buy your products and use your services because they will have seen the value you provide. After all, while scams and poor quality products may have a brief short-term success, only products providing true value will succeed long-term in the market. If you become known for providing true value to your customers, nothing will stop you from running a successful marketing campaign!
It’s a great feeling to pull off a successful campaign and watch the results unfold in front of your eyes.
You can’t wait to do it again, right? Wrong?
Planning and executing an effective email campaign is a lot of work, after all.
If you were to spend all that time on email campaigns every day you wouldn’t have time to work on the rest of your funnel, such as actually converting those leads you’ve generated into loyal customers.
So what can you do in order to achieve the same results, without going through all that work every time?
The best way is by automating your campaign, creating new campaigns with minimal effort based on the foundation laid by you in the initial campaigns. This will help free up your time to work on those conversions and other business activities.
As you send out campaigns you will start noticing patterns in the responses.
There will be certain campaigns that will perform better than the rest. You’ll notice the same with subject lines, formatting styles and a whole host of other factors.
This data can help you find your optimum campaign for your audience. Just follow these simple steps:
This testing gives you the data for the best setup you need to follow for your automated campaigns. For maximum effectiveness, this will need to be updated at frequent intervals, but between updates, you can be sure your campaign is still performing well.
Using this pattern you can change the content and send out a new campaign without having to go through the entire planning process every time.
Now you know how to automate your campaign, there are certain other pointers you need to keep in mind too.
Scheduling is also a very important part of a successful campaign.
The frequency of your emails, the precise delivery time of each campaign and the right content at the right time will all contribute to the success of your campaign.
Consider the following when you schedule your next campaign:
As we come to the end of what’s hopefully been an informative experience, we’d like to ensure you’ve understood the mechanics of cold emailing down to the last detail, so you confidently execute campaigns flawlessly.
The easiest way to get the most out of a campaign is to automate it.
Tools like Reply do all the work for you and help you reach the most people in a low time frame.
This whole purpose of this ebook has been to help you reduce your time and effort spent executing your campaigns and ensuring your emails are opened and replied to.
Automation helps you do all of that in a more effective manner as automation ensures:
You can create a checklist based on the pointers in this book and use it to create an optimum strategy for yourself that will replicate great results every time you execute a campaign.
To get you started, here’s our checklist of top tips to remember:
If you’re still staring at a blank screen, wondering how to get started and implement all this knowledge, don’t worry. We’ve compiled a few sample templates for you. Read through them, see which ones would fit in with your brand and your industry, then modify them to make them your own.
The respectful openHi <First_Name>,
I know you’re very busy as <Professional_Title>, but I’ve been wanting to have a quick chat about bringing <Product> to <Company> because I think it could really help you.
If 15 minutes of your time isn’t too much to ask, then maybe we could jump on a quick Skype call to discuss this?
Hi <First_Name>,
I’ve been watching Westworld lately and I’m not sure who’s a robot, and who isn’t anymore. But my system is telling me that our companies’ storylines might be connected.
There’s no maze, however – it’s really simple. I’d like to talk to you about <Product> for <Company>.
If that doesn’t look like anything useful to you – let me know and I won’t bother you anymore. And if this sounds weirdly familiar, maybe we could jump on a call?
Hi <First_Name>,
Because we do <Product_Page_link>, I was looking for companies that might be in need of such a solution.
Visit our website – <Main_Page_link> to see what we’re up to, or skip straight to our FAQ section – <FAQ_Page_link> – to learn exactly what we can give you.
I’d love to jump on a call with you – if you have 15 minutes for a chat, please pick a suitable time slot in my <Calendar_link>. It will make it easy for us to connect.
Hi <First_Name>,
I just wanted to tell you that I really love what you’re doing at <Company>. If I could ever help you with anything, that would be awesome
You might find my experience in <Your_Experience_Domain> useful. I blog a bit about it – here’s a link <Content_Link> if you would like to check out if I’m the real deal.
I’d love to steal some of your time to talk about what you do. Would you mind, maybe at least a 15 minute call?
Hey [First Name],
I’ve heard amazing things about [Company Name] lately and I just had to reach out.
[Your Company Name] is showcasing [Company Name] to over 100,000+ potential new customers.
When we asked our customers if they'd be interested in a product like yours, we got a huge resounding "yes".
I think they would make for great lifetime [Company Name] customers.
Here is some more info on our reach, our customers, and who we've worked with in the past: [Company Website]
Please email me by the 30th and we'll make it happen.
Cheers,
Hey [First Name],
[Your Name] from [Company Name] here. Hope you don’t mind me reaching out
We help businesses like [Client 1] and [Client 2] to [What you do].
I’m curious who might be best to speak with about [What you wish to sell] at your company?
Cheers,
[Your Name]
Hi [First Name],
Based on your [social media], you’re a fan of [idol] – inspiring me to reach out to you here.
What would [idol] be without [point of relation]? [Funny commentary].
[Your company] is the [idol] of [industry or market niche]. Our platform provides [benefit 1]and [benefit 2]. Features like [feature 1], [feature 2], and [feature 3] make your team [benefit 2] – making them ready to boost their fame (much like [idol] and their team).
[First name] – might you be willing to connect for just a few minutes to talk about how we can get your team onto [idol]’s level?
Best,
[Your Name]
Hi [First Name],
I see that you’re a [team] fan, so you must be excited about [player] [player’s achievement].
As [company] continues to scale, your [department] team needs [pain point that you solve for] just as [how same point applies to team]. We’re the [player] of [industry/market niche]…[funny comparison].
[First Name], I’d love (if possible) to be referred to the best person on your [department] team to introduce [Your Company] as a mean to hit your [goal].
Best,
[Your Name]
Hi [First Name],
[Your Name] reaching out from [Your Company] – [Shared detail].
Yep, this is another #coldemail that says who I am and asks for a meeting; but I’ve [specific research you’ve done on person].
[Connection/uncommon commonality].
[Details of your service] – does this sound like something of value to [Company] or maybe something you’re actively looking for?
Here is [piece of content].
Are you open to chatting next week? [Incentive to call].
Thoughts?
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Hey [First Name],
We’ve been hearing from several existing [Competitor]’s customers that they’ve been experiencing significant application performance issues recently. We can imagine your team would be getting frustrated if that’s also happening at [Company]
We’ve developed our solution to support leading enterprises such as [Customer 1], [Customer 2] and [Customer 3] with stability, security, and reliability in mind so you won’t have these problems with [Your Company].
Are you available early next week to discuss why companies like [Customer 4], [Customer 5] and [Customer 6] moved from [Competitor] to [Your Company] this year? If not, please let us know when’s best to reconnect.
Best, [Your Name]
Hi [First Name],
On average, [pain point statistic]. Is [Their company] achieving its goals?
[Statistic about most teams].
[benefits of your service]. [pain points company relieves].
[accomplishments of company]. If you are looking to [achieve what product serves], it would be great to connect for a 15 minute call next week.
Best, [Your Name]
And there you have it. I hope you’ve found this useful, and you’re now ready to get cracking with your next campaign. Remember, if you ever have any questions about optimizing your cold email campaign, check out our resource library, or get in touch at sales@reply.io and we’ll be more than happy to help out. Here’s to having a great business sales@reply.io and better sales!
Whether it's inbound, outbound, new user trials or existing customers — we put your email communication on autopilot while keeping it personal.