46 Tips for Writing A Cold Email That Actually Gets A Response

Jennifer Harder

Does cold email work?

To measure the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy, you may rely on Google Analytics to learn how your email campaigns are performing, which content is most popular with recipients, and how you can improve your strategy to bring in more qualified leads. Now you can quickly assess the performance of your email marketing campaigns in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:

  1. Signups from email. Are your email campaigns driving signups? Track the number of signups attributed to your email campaigns and use this information to make adjustments to your list segmentation, email copy, CTAs, and more.
  2. Sessions by email campaign. How many website visitors do your email campaigns generate? Which email campaigns drive the most website visits?
  3. Landing page sessions from email campaigns. This is a custom metric that allows you to track the volume of landing page traffic a specific email campaign generates from CTA clicks in your emails.
  4. Sessions by Device Type. How many of your recipients opened your email on mobile devices vs desktops? Should you optimize your emails more for mobile devices?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our email marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for tracking the overall performance and success of your email marketing strategy. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

email-marketing-dashboard-template-preview

Send your emails to the right person

“One important thing when writing cold emails is to try your best to get the email to the right person on the first try,” says Andrea Loubier of Mailbird. “Do your research when compiling your email list and utilize a program to help you curate the emails. If your email pops into the right inbox, without having to be forwarded several times, it will be read in a more timely manner, which will ultimately increase your response rate.”

Morgan Taylor of Let Me Bank says, “You have to target the right people, even with cold emails. If you just bulk blast lots of email addresses, you will end up with a blacklisted, or at least devalued sender rating. You absolutely must only send your message to people it may be of interest to.

Tom Walsh of Kingpin Private Browser adds, “Targeting, targeting, and targeting. It does not matter how many times I repeat it – still some people will not get it. Many salespeople write cold emails without even mentioning the name of the recipient. This email has close to zero chance to resonate.

You would have much higher chances when you focus on the recipient instead of yourself or your company. Do a little bit of research, then write 80% of the email about the recipient and the rest about how it connects with your offer. It is better to send fewer emails, but emails that are personal. That is a targeted email.”

Jered Martin of OnePitch says, “Make sure you use the correct name (and spelling) and company name (if applicable). Then make sure your message is tailored to the individual. Think about their role, their pain points, and how you are providing them something truly valuable.”

Do your research

“It’s absolutely essential to do thorough research on your target prospect before reaching out to them,” says Alejandro Rioja. ”It will help you ask the right questions, and draft your email keeping in view their interest — which of course increases the chances of receiving a response.”

The goal of this previous research is to try to figure out how my email should interest or help this person. Besides in this research, you will also get some interesting keywords to add inside your communication that can attract his attention.”

Gabriela Park of Btwn adds, ”One thing that I find effective when writing cold emails is to research in advance the contact and mention something of interest to them. Personalization is the key to getting replies from a cold email.”

Know your prospect’s pain points

“Understanding your prospect’s pain points and showcasing how other companies got rid of them with your solution/product is the key,” says Peter Manikowsk of AppJobs GAP. “Hit the right tones explaining how you helped competitors to save time/money/effort.”

Thimas Bradbury of GetSongkey says, “The best tip I could give for cold emails is to really know who you are sending the mail to. Have a targeted audience and make sure you know as much as possible about them. The subject of the email should be able to grab their attention – think of their pain points, as this will motivate the receiver to open up the email.

How to track email engagement in Databox

One of the best ways to get better at writing cold emails is to track and analyze your results using an email marketing dashboard. Whether you are sending emails from Hubspot, Pipedrive, Sharpspring, Outreach, Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, or just using UTM parameters, it is easy to track all of this in Databox.

Open Rate and Email Clicks

Using this datablock, you can clearly visualize how your open and click-through rates are faring throughout the month. For example, if you notice an email generates 2x as many clicks as normal, you can apply that format or strategy to future emails.

Email Pipeline

One of the most helpful things to keep an eye on is your email pipeline. Using this multi-metric Datablock, you can clearly see all emails sent, the number of emails that were delivered, opens and clicks.

Email Performance

Email Opens Vs. Sessions

Using this line graph, you can see how email opens compared to website sessions. This allows you to see if emails are driving more traffic to your website, which can be an indicator of new leads, sales, etc.

Bounces

Bounces are the number of emails that bounce instead of being delivered during a specified date range. If you see a spike in the number of bounces, this can be an indicator that your email list is out-of-date and old contacts need to be verified and cleaned.

In sum, cold emails can be an effective lead generation channel. One of the best ways to improve your cold email writing is to practice, employ many of the messaging tips shared in this post, and track your response rates.

email-marketing-dashboard-template-databox

Jessica Malnik Jessica Malnik is a content strategist and copywriter for SaaS and productized service businesses. Her writing has appeared on The Next Web, Social Media Examiner, SEMRush, CMX, Help Scout, Convince & Convert, and many other sites.

Tips for Writing a Cold Email

After you’ve completed the preparation that will help your emails be successful, it’s time to start writing them. Follow these experienced sellers’ advice for drafting powerful emails that will make your leads want to respond:

Leadfeeder

Follow a Checklist to Stand Out

Dustin Porreca

Make Your Subject Line Enticing

“Consider your topic line very carefully. This is the first thing the recipient will see and will be used to determine whether to open your cold email. It must entice the consumer to continue. In reality, there is not much difference between subject lines for emails and other headlines. Any good subject line for an email should contain at least one or more of the following elements:

Mention Your Lead’s Goals in the Subject Line

“The subject line should look natural. Like a friend or colleague sent it. If you use Title Case, it’s a dead giveaway that it’s a promotional email. Use sentence case and keep the subject simple. We use the following subject lines: ‘Strategy to get more users,’ ‘Translations for global expansion,’ ‘Grow globally with localization.’”

Personalize Each Email

“Avoid sounding like a template. The more personalized, the better. Templates can be very useful especially as it is time-saving; however, if you want your cold email to stand out and not be disregarded, put some effort into how not to make it sound like a template. Make your email sound more genuine so you’ll get higher chances of getting a response. Start by tweaking your language so it will sound more real.”

Petra Odak - Better Proposals

Avoid Burying the Lede

“People hate it when you waste their time. Don’t try and build interest over a series of emails — state what you want in the first email and be clear about your offer. That way, your prospect can immediately tell if they want to dedicate time to you or not. Also, if you’re halfway through a sequence, it’s a good idea to send a proposal rather than a typical email. When you use proposal software, you’ll be able to see whether the prospect opened the email, how much they read, and where they spent the most time. These bits of information can help you greatly in making the sale.”

Include All Key Components

Follow the AIDA Model

“We recommend building your cold email based on the AIDA copywriting model that presupposes four elements: attention, interest, desire, action. First, catch the prospect’s attention with a hooking opening sentence. Then, appeal to their interest by highlighting their pain points. After that, stimulate desire for your product or service by sharing how it helped others, providing social proof, etc. Finally, end your cold email by asking the prospect for a specific action (e.g., watch your demo, agree on a sales meeting).”

Sherry Morgan

Mention the Lead’s Pain Points Early

“Hit a pain point and be relevant. For most salespeople, this is what converts to sales most. This is because hitting pain points will make prospects feel like they are valued, they are seen, and they are heard. This then results in getting their interest into your business because they feel like they have someone or something to lean on just by how you hit a pain point you didn’t realize would take effect to begin with.”

Inspire the Lead to Solve the Pain Points

“Provide stakes. If clients don’t solve the issue with your solution, what exactly are they losing? You don’t need to say it in visible terms, but trying to allude to the risk factors of your sales pitch can help you secure a straightaway buy-in.”

Add Videos to Your Emails

“In your cold email, include a 30-second video for your prospect that addresses one of the major problems that he might be facing and how you can solve it. This tactic is simple and straightforward, but few people use it, so it can help you grab your prospect’s attention and stand out from the rest of the salespeople sending cold emails.”

How to Write a Cold Email Using High-Converting Formulas

1. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

2. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

3. Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA)

1. Collect contact information

LeadFuze uses artificial intelligence to automatically find the best leads for your business, so you can spend more time closing sales instead of wasting time on inefficient marketing activities.

Receive highly accurate leads from real people who are ready to buy right now – no manual sorting needed! Just tell Fuzebot (LeadFuze’s AI) what you need, and it’ll do all the hard work for you.

2. Write your cold email template

3. Register to an email outreach software

When choosing a system, make sure to consider how much effort is required on your end. You don’t want something too complicated or with lots of requirements — or else it’ll be more difficult for you.

4. AB test cold email templates

One of the best ways to find out what’s working is by testing different templates. Test your emails with one group and their results against another group, splitting them up based on whether they’re getting clicks.

5. Optimize your performance

Use the data collected from the AB test to improve your cold email results. If you notice that the group of people who got a certain lead generation email template has more clicks, update your original copy and send it to another AB test.

25 Cold Email Subject Lines to Use

  1. [Product/Solution] empowers [company] like never before
  2. You’ll love this article, [name]
  3. How [company] used [product/solution] to turn their business around
  4. Let’s cut to the chase
  5. [Topic relevant to prospect] trends you should know about
  6. Free to talk at [date]?
  7. Save [number] hours per week with [product/solution]
  8. You missed it
  9. Got problems? We’ve got solutions!
  10. Request to connect
  11. Discover what’s possible with [X]
  12. [Name], I need your advice
  13. [Relevant topic] resources that can help you right now
  14. Where do I even start?
  15. What would you do with [number] more hours per week?
  16. Hey [name], check this out
  17. Remove the guesswork from [task/activity] today
  18. Can I help you with [reaching a specific goal]?
  19. Why [company]? And why now?
  20. Let’s talk about [topic/idea]!
  21. [Company] increased sales by [amount] with [product/solution]
  22. I am the walrus!
  23. 5 things you don’t know about [topic relevant to prospect]
  24. A [better/smarter/faster] way to [reach a specific goal]
  25. Quick question regarding [project]

In conclusion, learning how to write a cold email is a skill that will serve you well as a professional in today’s workforce. Though cold email prospecting emails can be difficult to write, putting the time and effort into crafting an excellent one pays off tremendously.

The next time you find yourself needing to reach out for assistance or introduce your company’s offerings, take some tips and sample cold email from this blog post to optimize your cold emails.

Sources:

https://databox.com/tips-for-writing-cold-emails
https://sellingsignals.com/cold-email-tips/
https://www.leadfuze.com/how-to-write-a-cold-email/

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