underappreciated forms of marketing is cold emailing.
Simple: Most people are
performing it incorrectly, which leads them to believe that it is ineffective.
I’m going to explain how to
overcome that in this manual.
We’ll discuss the following
topics:
- Cold email marketing
is what it is - Which email marketing
techniques are available - How to compose a
convincing cold email and how to get past spam filters
Ready? Let’s get started
right away!
Cold email marketing: What is it?
The simplest approach to get
things started is by clearly defining what cold email marketing is.
Cold email marketing is a
method of contacting a list of potential customers by using email as the
primary method of contact.
If your cold email campaign
generates some responses in addition to being read by your prospects, it was a
successful cold email strategy.
Although sales teams
typically use cold emailing to establish relationships with prospects, there
are numerous additional reasons why a firm can choose to employ this tactic to
meet its objectives.
The interest in cold email
marketing is increasing with time, as we can see in the graph below.
Why?
Because this approach to
outreach and relationship-building frequently succeeds.
It follows that it is not
surprising that some companies have achieved success by including cold email
marketing in their strategy.
Take Shane Show, the
best-selling author of the book Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons
Accelerate Success, as an illustration.
Show details an experiment
he conducted in which he used cold emails to contact 1,000 busy executives in
order to determine what worked and what didn’t in a piece he published for Fast
Company.
The idea behind Show’s
investigation was straightforward:
Collect the emails of 500 C
and VP-level executives from the Fortune 500 and 500 C-level executives from
the Inc 500. Then, send out a cold email to each of these individuals to
observe what motivates a response.
For context, Fortune 500
firms contain the following names:
- ·
Apple - ·
Google - ·
Amazon - ·
AT&T
Therefore, as you might
expect, they are busy individuals who receive a tonne of cold emails each week.
Here is the email that Show
wrote:
Of
course, it would be a waste of time and effort to just send an email after
obtaining these executives’ emails.
Show
took things a step further and tested several variables in his list of 1,000
possibilities as a result.
He
tested several variables, including:
- · Subject line
- · Comparing the lengths of your emails
- · adding a “thank you” note
- · CTA: Requesting information vs requesting a favour
The outcomes of Show’s
comprehensive campaign are as follows:
Bounced 293 emails
The remaining 707 emails’
open rate was 45.5%.
1.7% of the group responded
overall, or 12 responses.
Obviously, these response rates
are far more encouraging even though open rates were good.
But we must keep in mind
something crucial:
These are C-level
executives; as a result, they are frequently too busy to react to unsolicited
communications.
We must take into account
the fact that only a small portion of them responded.
Additionally, an even bigger
one was the one who initially opened the email.
Thus, it seems sense that
many cold emails, regardless of their intended use, get read.
Less people respond, but if
we look at the economics of this approach, the return on investment might be
worth the effort.
Of course, these outcomes
just serve as an example of what can be accomplished through cold emailing.
The finest cold email
campaigns get open rates that are higher than the best industry averages.
Even the cold email
experiment, which we just described, had a much higher open rate than the
typical business-like email open rate, which is 21.33%, according to Mailchimp.
Whatever the case, sending
an outreach email to a list of carefully chosen prospects can be very
advantageous for your small business.
Deliverability (open rate),
the amount of answers you receive, and conversion rates are some of the factors
that matter most when it comes to cold email marketing.
However, because there are
several kinds of cold email campaigns, the effectiveness of each campaign is
determined by key parameters.
After explaining cold email
marketing, let’s move on to the section where we’ll discuss some typical cold
email formats.
6 Different Types of Cold Emails for Marketing
There are several reasons
why someone might send a cold email to a prospect, as we just mentioned.
Cold emails are widely
utilised by marketing and sales professionals across sectors and verticals.
They can be anything from survey questions to requests for links to one of your
target pages.
What are some of the
justifications for using cold email outreach as a tactic for marketing?
Here are a few of the most
notable:
Type #1: Media pitch email
Let me first define media
pitching before getting into the intricacies of this area.
The goal of media pitching
is to gain press coverage, brand mentions, and additional exposure for your
company by presenting (pitching) information about your product or service to
journalists, bloggers, and individuals with authority in your sector.
A survey of 1,300 top-tier
media publishers conducted by the content marketing firm Fractl found that most
of them receive between 50 and 500 pitches per week
Your email pitch can
therefore very easily get lost in the crowd.
Only 52% of those pitches
are helpful to the receivers in some way (the publishers).
This shows two points:
- The majority of publishers get too many emails.
- The vast majority of these emails provide publishers
nothing of value.
Therefore, the question is:
In such a fragmented environment, how do you stand out?
Simply provide the recipient
something that is well-targeted and offers genuine value.
It’s important to note that
our email does not resemble the spam emails that try to sell us something.
It’s honest, relevant
Type #2: Brand pitch email
When you want to propose a
partnership between you and a brand you like, you use this kind of email.
Your audience may be
pertinent to the business you wish to contact, therefore you could want to
recommend anything along these lines.
As a result, the company
you’re pitching to (your prospect) can exploit this “intersection”
between your audiences to increase audience awareness.
Nowadays, win-win situations
are frequently employed, particularly in sectors like the health and fitness.
It’s crucial for this kind
of cold email marketing to get straight to the point and focus on the
advantages for your prospects.
Additionally, by mentioning
the names of other brands we’ve collaborated with, we strengthen our social
proof and raise the likelihood of receiving a response.
You must demonstrate that
you are there to add value rather than just get rich quick.
Therefore, always strive to
address the prospect’s “what’s in it for me?” question while
remaining respectful.
Type #3: Link building email
What is a cold email for
link building?
An inbound link back to one
of your resources is the goal of the email.
SEO and outreach experts
frequently utilise this style of cold email.
Here, the decision-maker is
either the author of the article, who may have included a link to your
resource, or the person who has editorial access to the website’s blog.
There are numerous
techniques to build links for your website, as we’ve already explained in a
prior piece.
- ·
Link breakdowns - ·
visitor posts - ·
Reclaiming links - ·
brand references not
connected - ·
being highlighted in
list postings - ·
collaborating with
other brands to sell their products - ·
Creating links to
study or graphical resources - ·
Getting your press
releases printed in influential journals
Type #4: Content promotion email
One of the most obvious
justifications for using cold email marketing is content promotion.
The justification is
straightforward:
You want to promote certain
pieces of material because they are significant to you.
Another sort of digital PR
is content marketing, which can assist you in obtaining mentions, links, or
publicity for your best-performing content pieces.
It’s essential if you want
to draw more traffic to and attention to your blog.
Type #5: Networking email
Simply explained, networking
emails are emails you send to forge new connections or strengthen ones you
already have. There are numerous scenarios that can be covered in networking
emails. You might be emailing someone you only know online who is a complete
stranger.
Type #6: Sales email
This is a sales email that
the seller is sending to a prospective customer with whom they have no prior
contact. Through web research, sales representatives collect email addresses
and target companies and prospects that suit their ideal client profile.
The 5 Most Important Tips for Cold Email Writing
Writing a good cold email
requires a certain level of science.
Finding success with a cold
email campaign requires careful consideration of a number of factors, including
the prospects you include in your list, the subject line you write, and the
call-to-action (CTA) you use.
Even while there are
innumerable suggestions and pieces of guidance on how to do it correctly, in
the end, you must rely on your gut instinct and a thorough understanding of
your target market.
After all, you are the best
person to know who your target market is.
You’ll find some advice on
what to focus on and why down below.
Let’s look at it.
Tip #1: Identify who your target audience is (and find
the right contact information)
Clearly, identifying your
target audience should be your first step.
I don’t mean to suggest that
you create a list of the traits of your ideal customer when I say define.
You need to spend a lot of
time getting to know your audience.
You might be wondering why
it matters.
Backlinko’s analysis of 12
million outreach emails revealed that only 8.5% of them ever get a reply.
This implies that a significant portion of cold emails are deleted.
Therefore, it’s important
that you complete your research thoroughly to understand your target audience.
You won’t have a good chance
of getting a response until you do it this way.
Additionally, before sending
an email, i always advise to connect with the persons they wish to contact
on social media.
Even if your email is
excellent, connecting with your prospects first and engaging them in human
conversation is far more effective than sending them a cold email.
In other words, before
starting a cold email campaign, strive to get to know your audience.
Tip #2: Create a compelling subject line
You need an engaging subject
line in order for a cold email to get read.
Why does that matter?
In order to get the receiver
to read the email, your subject line must be both succinct and descriptive.
Take a look at the subject
line of the email sent by StefanosBournias to Sujan Patel, for instance.
If you know Sujan Patel, you
are aware of his busy schedule.
It’s crucial to get his
response to a cold email, even if it’s just a brief two-line response.
However, if you examine more
closely, you’ll discover that Stefanos used the following subject line to
request a response from Sujan:
Only three words long;
short.
In only three words,
Stafanos describes just what he needs.
Attractive—Anyone may easily
comprehend that his name will be posted on Sumo.com (one of the most well-known
blogs on all things marketing).
So it seems sense that
Stefanos’ chilly email received a response.
After all, the email wasn’t
promotional in any way.
The truth is that there
isn’t a single method for creating a compelling subject line.
However, it appears that
some of the best practises are to a) keep it brief, b) be specific about the
objective of your email, and c) add some personalization.
This leads to our next piece
of advice.
#3: Addpersonalisation
According to the Backlinko
study that we previously discussed, personalisation is important when it comes
to cold email marketing.
In actuality, subject lines
with personalisation have a response rate of 21.8%, compared to 16.7% for
subject lines without personalization.
Personalization, however,
goes beyond simply including your prospect’s name in the subject line.
Much more is involved.
Additionally, keep in mind
that personalisation varies depending on the kind of cold email you are
sending.
- ·
Personalization for a
content promotion email can involve complimenting a blog post that your
prospect has written. - ·
Personalization for a
media outreach email can involve bringing up a podcast or television programme
where your prospect has been featured. - ·
In a network email,
personalising could entail bringing up a mutual buddy or connection with the
recipient. - ·
In a sales email,
customization can entail highlighting a professional accomplishment of the
recipient.
Tip #4: Include a powerful CTA (but not sales-y)
How to make a strong CTA?
In my opinion, it’s
important to give your prospect a clear path to follow.
It’s also important to make
it simple for your potential customer to comply with your request.
Do you recall, for instance,
the chilly email StefanosBournias sent to Sujan Patel that we previously
mentioned?
We brought it up because of
the subject line, but let’s focus on the CTA in this case.
Stefanos
is quite straightforward about what he expects from Sujan.
He
even uses the precise words, “What I require from you:…”
Sujan
then responds with an incredibly clear and straightforward response knowing
exactly what Stefanos needs.
As
a result, it is quite simple to understand and respond to the CTA here.
Your
chilly email recipient needs to feel as though there isn’t much for them to do.
In
other words, the action you want people to take after reading your email should
be straightforward and uncomplicated.
No
matter what kind of cold email you are sending, you must use the same approach
with the CTAs you include.
Tip #5: Make sure you follow up.
Emailing
the same contact more than once generates 2 times as many responses, according
to the same study we discussed previously regarding include a follow-up in your
email sequence.
Most
people keep away of using follow-up emails in their sequence because they find
them unpleasant.
Sending
emails to total strangers, or at least strangers until you make first contact,
is annoying, though, if we think about it.
As
a result, you shouldn’t consider sending follow-up emails as a strategy to
annoy someone.
Instead,
consider them a strategy to raise your likelihood of receiving a response.
Respect
people’s time and don’t send more than two or three follow-up emails.
More
than this can damage your reputation and produce the opposite result from what
you originally intended.
Wrapping up
There
you have it, then.
You
now understand the purpose of cold emailing.
Additionally,
you are aware of the different kinds of cold email campaigns you may run and
how to write an effective one.
Despite
the fact that there are many cold email templates available, you must always
keep a personal tone in your emails.
Simply
simply, don’t expect to receive responses if you don’t personalise or
incentivise your communications.
Overall,
try to apply the advice I gave you and tailor it to the kind of outreach
campaign you want to start.
Feel
free to send me your cold emails if you want someone to give them another look
before you send them, and I’ll do my best to give you my comments as quickly as
I can.
Best
of luck!