To be effective, a cold email must be concise and compelling at the same time. To achieve this, every part of the email must hold a meaningful message and play an important role in communicating.
Here are 6 extremely important steps for writing a cold email that will work. We’ve seen many times what makes a message perform well. Check if you know them. Let’s first understand what a cold email is a today, and then we’ll look at how cold emails have changed over time.
Writing a cold email: what is it?
In the offline world, business relationships are developed by talking to each other. So, to understand how cold email works, let’s think about how business relationships develop…
For example, a salesperson attends a trade show or conference to meet new customers. As the event progresses, they look for occasions to start a conversation. Rather than pitching their offer or boasting about their business, they aim to break the ice and begin a dialogue. They want to find out more about the prospect’s business and build a rapport.
Cold email is an outbound sales strategy. It is a way to start a conversation in the online world with someone who knows less or nothing about your company. In other words, they are “cold” leads since this is the first time they have heard about you. The goal of a cold email isn’t the immediate conversion, but rather to build a relationship from strangers to business partners.
What has changed in the approach to cold emailing?
Over the years, cold emailing has evolved from its original use in sales. It was traditionally used to pitch a product. It was common to send a generic message to large groups of prospects without segmenting or personalizing it.
This mass-sales-oriented approach worked great as a lead generation tool because the email was new and very few people did business via email. However, the more copy-and-paste emails flooded the prospects’ inboxes, the less effective this method became. Cold emails gained a negative reputation for their salesy tone and generic content.
Since then, cold emailing has changed significantly. Sales pitches that are aggressive are now bound to fail. Additionally, impersonal, one-size-fits-all types of emails are no longer effective.
Today, everything revolves around building relationships with prospects. Rather than talking about your product or service, a cold email copy should focus on the recipient. Put yourself in the recipient’s position. Prospects should feel that you understand their business and the challenges it presents from the very first email.
Do not rush into making a deal right away. Instead of focusing on what to sell, ask your prospects what they struggle with daily. Then show them how to improve or maximize the efficiency of these processes.
Today, winning prospects’ interest requires personalization. In addition, prospecting is also critical to the success of your cold email campaign. A personalization strategy also involves designing different versions of a follow-up and creating a trigger action that responds to a prospect’s response.
You will be able to tailor your message to the particular prospect segment more easily if you know more about your prospects.
A cold email: how to write it?
Step 1: Start by editing the line beginning with “from”
You might find it surprising that editing the “from” line is included as a separate step. Usually, we set it up for a new email address, and after that, we don’t pay much attention to it. A cold email’s “from” line can be just as important as the body because it plays an important role.
When recipients see the “from” line, they will know who sent it. First impressions are formed by it. As a result, they decide if they should open the message and read it or if they should trash it.
Your addresses do not know you yet
They will likely be a little suspicious of our email since we are strangers to them. The “from” line is one of the first things people notice when they look at our email. By using the “from” line, we may either earn their trust or scare them off. If the first impression isn’t right, they may even delete our email without opening it.
This is why you should check your “from” line before starting a new cold email campaign.
There is no set “from” line. It can be altered at any time. Whenever you send a new campaign, you can mix and match the form of our “from” line.
How can the “from” line be written?
The line can be expressed in at least five ways.
- The first name of the recipient (Micheal)
- The first name combined with the last name (Michael Kors)
- First name, Last name, and Title (Micheal Kors, Head of Technology)
- First name and Company name (Micheal at growmeorganic)
- First name, Last name, and Company name (Micheal Kors at growmeorganic).
If you are conducting a cold outreach campaign, the appropriate “from” line will depend on the context of your message, the target group, and the goal you want to achieve with your emails, such as marketing cooperation, influencer outreach, or a possible sales deal.
You should follow a few rules when selecting the appropriate “from” line that fulfills your purpose and fits into the context of your email as well as into the list of contacts who will be receiving your message.
The following rules should be followed when editing the “from” line:
- Keep the tone and style consistent – Do not deviate from what you have already written. You can include the first name + company name if you use a casual tone in your email.
- Think about your prospect’s point of view – What would you expect to see in your inbox if you were one of them? How would you communicate with them? Write your “from” line in the same way.
- Find your own line that meets the expectations of your prospects – Don’t follow the advice you find online blindly. Be creative. You know what prospects expect to see because you know them best.
- Consider who your prospects will be most keen on talking to – Be specific. Make changes to your “from” line based on that information.
Step 2: Write a captivating subject line
You can view the subject line of a cold email as the key that unlocks the message. Upon reading the subject line, prospects form their first impression of us. Therefore, it should be positive.
When we use a poorly written subject line, the addressee may become biased against us. Email delivery may suffer if they don’t open the email, or worse if they manually mark it as SPAM.
As long as we follow these rules, we can avoid such situations:
- Take your prospect’s perspective – consider what your subject line will mean for them after they open your email. Does it answer their needs or satisfy their curiosity? It should be about them, not about you.
- Personalize it – The subject line isn’t the place to promote yourself. Rather, it’s the place to prove to the recipient that you have taken the time to reach out to them. Make sure they understand you are not a spammer who sends out so many identical emails that nothing sticks.
- Engage their attention by asking them to think about a problem they have. Try flattering them to get their attention. Intrigue them – don’t let them off the hook just yet.
- Write as if you’re addressing a real person. Don’t sound robotic. Don’t sound ‘salesy’ or too formal. Your subject line should sound natural, friendly, and casual.
- If you use a subject line, you should connect it to the rest of your email. By all means, don’t succumb to clickbait. Make sure it is relevant to the rest of the email.
Step 3: Create a clever cold email introduction
The moment you get your addressee to open your email with the ‘from’ line and the subject, you are halfway there. Now you have 3 seconds to grab their attention and persuade them to read further.
To attract attention, we need an intriguing introduction. It can be difficult to start a cold email. We tend to talk about our company and ourselves. It may be because we don’t know how to start, or maybe we just want to close the sale right away.
What is the best way to write a cold email introduction?
You should not write more than two or three sentences in a cold email introduction. It’s not meant to introduce our company or ourselves. Rather, it is about the person who receives the message, their expertise, achievements, work, and company. This is what helps us capture their attention.
For instance,
It may be best to flatter a little bit. Do not overdo it. Telling them everything they have done is not necessary.
Also, don’t stalk. Do not look for information about their family. Remain professional.
Step 4: Create value with your pitch
What’s the best way to write a cold email pitch?
Every time we talk about the product/service we offer, we should have a formula at hand. So that the potential buyer understands exactly what we are offering, it should be spiced up with benefits. We shouldn’t use that method when we’re writing a cold email.
Sales pitches should be avoided
The pitch should be subtle in a B2B sales email. Our goal is not to close one more sale. Our goal is to create a business relationship with a potential buyer through it. For that, we need to be personally involved.
We will only evoke the response “Good for you” in our prospects’ minds when we write a standard pitch.
Don’t talk about features, talk about benefits
Don’t list the features of the product. Instead, focus on the value you offer. Explain how it may benefit your prospect. Make sure you are specific. If you are too vague, your message will be lost.
In addition, you should seamlessly link your pitch to the previous part of your email. The pitch should seamlessly flow with the previous paragraph. Avoid making the pitch seem forced or sales-y.
Step 5: Be sure to terminate your cold email with a call-to-action
If you want your addresses to take action, your CTA should:
Simply state the aim of your email in the CTA – the CTA should explain the reason for your email. In other words, it should communicate what the recipient should do.
Your call-to-action should not extend beyond one sentence. Keep your message as brief as possible. Avoid blurriness.
Give your prospects something they can do now
You may get better results by asking for a simple action or a quick response rather than an invitation for a 30-minute call. Try something simple. The first email you send to your prospects may not be the best time to invite them to meet with you.
Step 6: Polishing your cold email signature
Finally, the signature is often and widely ignored. We must consider the signature to be part of our message as it is a fully-fledged component. In it, we should introduce ourselves to our recipients and tell them where they can find out more about us or our company.
When working on your signature, keep these tips in mind:
Your email should make you look trustworthy – too little information and no hints on where to find you will reduce your chances of receiving a response.
Keep only the information that is necessary and cut out all the extraneous information. You may need to provide your phone number sometimes, but it may not be necessary at other times. Consider how useful each piece of information is. Discard useless information from your email campaign.
HTML signatures should be clean – a messy HTML signature can cause delivery issues. Short messages can cause delivery issues. You can mess up the text-to-HTML ratio if your signature includes a great deal of HTML. You’re safer going with a simple text signature if you don’t have someone who can check the HTML of your signature and clean it up.
