Do you still think that cold emailing is dead? Then, you are completely wrong. In fact, cold emailing is changing gradually and adding value to the businesses using it correctly. The people who do not gain any benefits(responses or open rates) from cold emailing talk wrongly about it. There are many amazing Cold Email guides available on the internet today, but still, there are people who fail in sending cold emails. Gmass is one such that helps you with best email practices and templates.
Did you know sending cold emails and getting a huge conversion rate is not that difficult? Agreed that cold emailing is not that fun, but it is not hard anymore, the only thing is to understand the basics and do it in the right way. This article explains you clearly the 10 simple and important tips to make cold email work for you. So, let’s get started…
10 Best Tips that Actually Work for Cold Emails
- Be Friendly and Sound like a Human
Cold emails are more like door to door sales. You won’t get the most number of conversions unless you do it right. But you don’t really need to sound so professional or use any typical long fancy words. All you need to do is write a friendly email focussing on the purpose. Because conversational emails are the best ones anytime. Your emails stand out when they are conversational, clear, and concise. So keep them short, and write in a way you talk and just be yourself. Also do not forget the basics, respect them although you talk in a friendly manner.
Also the most common mistake that people commit is using templates. Templates save time, agreed. Your emails remain unopened or pushed to the Spam section just because of the template you used, though you have great content. There are high chances for your email to look exactly similar to that of many emails in your prospect’s inbox. So, what’s the solution?
Just create your own template right from the scratch. It is no wrong taking references from existing templates. Also when you receive really an impressive cold email from other vendors, save it and use it or atleast take reference from it. Finally, make your email look more as a human avoiding the pre-pitched templates.
- Know your Prospects
Personalized emails bring a high reply rate of at least 17% when compared to non-personalized emails. Hence, customization and personalization are the most important factors in cold emailing. So, in order to gain a higher conversion rate or reply rate, the best and effective way is advanced personalization.
Before you customize and personalize your prospect, you need to know them well. For this to happen, you need to study them well. This is what advanced personalization is all about.
Here are couple of ways for how to do that:
- Mention them by their name -remember to spell their name correctly.
- Customize different variables like prospect’s company name, geo- location, industry etc.
- Know what they have inquired about on your website.
- Analyze what you need to exactly offer them.
This simply shows how well you studied them and how well you reached them with a useful deal. In fact this is the key to reach your goal.
- Serve a Purpose
You cannot pitch your sale directly to your prospects in the first line of your mail. There is a productive format of a cold email which includes
- An attractive subject line
- Your introduction
- Purpose of the email
- Reason why should they read the email
- Pain point they are suffering or going to suffer
- Tips to how to overcome the pains
- How can you help them better
- A free offer for them such as a free demo or a free trial
- At the end provide your details to get back to you
Hope you know what is the importance of an attractive subject line. As impressive is the subject line, the more are the chances to get it opened.
Nobody wants to open a boring or useless email with boring content in it.
Secondly your content in the email also should be impressive. Introduce yourself in a friendly way and quickly state why did you reach them.
Remind them the pain points they are suffering from. For instance, tell them how much traffic they are losing due to wrong analysis of their website. And tell them what to do in order to overcome the issue.
Explain them shortly about how you can provide the exact web analysis and offer them a free trial.
Provide your name, phone number, company URL etc. to help them in reaching you directly.
That’s it! This is how you can serve the purpose of your cold email without making any mess.
- Do Not Forget to Give Them before You Ask
As said above, you need to offer them something for free or at least for a reasonable price as it is you who reached them. Also said there might be hundreds of unopened and opened emails in your prospect’s inbox, you need to stand out among them. There are only two ways: either you should be too innovative and impressive in reaching them or provide exclusive offers to them. However, there is no meaning in you compromising a lot to impress them. Therefore, your cold email should be a win-win situation for you and for your prospects as well. The best thing is to offer them a free trial, or a free report of their website analysis or a free demo at least.
Giving them something useful for free will build trust on you. So when you ask them a favor they won’t mind doing it. For instance, it looks fine and effective when you give them a web analysis report for free and then ask them to visit your website. Isn’t it? Remember never ask them something before you give them something -not just it applies to cold emailing but to any other business strategy.
- Never Mention Your Product in Cold Emails
People often make mistakes by adding sales pitch in the cold emails itself. Did you know it simply puts your email in the Spam folder?
Though multiple (usually 4 to 7 email touches) emails either with the same offer or related offer to the same prospect makes a high reply rate. Ensure that you do not sell any product or service directly by pitching them. You just need to mention the pain points and their solutions in your email.
So, next time you send you a cold email remember to only sell or mention your offer not the product or service.
- Build a Good Rapport
Cold emails are the ones sent to complete strangers unlike the warm emails which means emails sent to people you know partially. So, the target prospects of your cold emails are completely new to receive the emails from your company. Therefore your email creates a huge impact on their perspective towards your company.
So, you need to be very careful about the following points:
- Respect them.
- Address them by their names correctly.
- Do not irritate them with long descriptions.
- After all this is an email to attract them to your business, so do not dedicate it to introduce yourself or your company so much.
- Build a friendly relationship with them and ask them questions to help them better.
- It is solely in the hands of a cold email whether to lose or gain an ideal customer.
- Make it Short
As said, keep your email as short as possible. These days nobody has the time to open and read a promotional email. So put your subject line short(below 50 characters) and the email content simple. So that you do not eat your prospect’s precious time. Moreover, keeping your email short will help you save your time, so that you can concentrate on other important tasks like customizing and personalizing the targeted prospects.
- Focus on your Subject Line
Well, you know how important is the subject line in your email. People open an email to read seeing the subject line, right? Moreover, it is the visible line to judge your email even before people open it. Hence, it is the deciding factor to get your email read by your prospects as it is a short headline. So, how do you make your subject line impressive? It is simple! Yes, your subject line should be in such a way that hooks interest, promises useful information, and builds excitement. For a company with innovative talents, making an eye-catching subject line isn’t that hard, right? So, you even passed this step to increase your reply rate.
- Prove Yourself, Get An Offer & Call them to Action
As said earlier, you need to remind your audience about the pain points and tips to overcome them. You should also explain them how you are going to help them to overcome their sufferings. However, this isn’t enough! You need to prove your promises too. Give them the reports, stats of success rate and testimonials by other businesses, etc. So that they will accept your offer and favors you back.
Then call them to action asking to revert back to you inorder to access free trial or signup for downloading the free report etc.
- Give them Easy Options to Respond
Your prospects might be interested in your offer after reading the email but may not have time to visit your website or may forget to visit the site even later. All your efforts will go waste if this happens. So, provide easy ways for them to reach you. For example, mention your contact details, website URL, company name etc. Thus you do not miss any potential customers to your business.
- Do it at the Right Time
Though you follow all the above tips sometimes you may not reach your goal. Reason – the time. Time really matters when it comes to email opens and reply rates. Let us see what is the best time to send your cold emails:
Sunday: 40,000 email opens
Monday: 80,000 – 1lac email opens
Tuesday: 90,000 – 1lac email opens
Wednesday: 80,000 – 1lac email opens
Thursday: 85,000 email opens
Friday: 80,000 email opens
Saturday: 40,000 email opens
This shows the open rate is high on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when most people are available in their offices.
However, the open rate and reply rate depends on your industry, you need to be a little innovative to make use of the stats. Research well about your prospect’s time zone before you send the emails.
Final Thoughts
As cold email is one of the best and effective ways to gain new potential customers, it’s worth working hard to study your prospects and personalize your emails. Above are the useful and working tips to experience a higher open rate and reply rate of your cold emails. Said that all the above tips are important including the right time to send your emails, make sure you send it to the right person. Due to busy schedules and a large number of subscriptions, there is a chance where reps follow only a few tips(from the above) which doesn’t make any difference. So, next time you are sending a cold email ensure you follow all the rules and tips to enjoy a high success rate.
