sending cold emails

10 Cold Email Tips Every Marketer Should Follow

Before you lift a single finger to cold email your prospects, take a few seconds to think about how many emails you receive on a daily basis. Great. Now, think about how many emails you open, better yet, how many you actually respond to. Not that many, right? Well, the people you are trying to cold email do the same. So, why would they open your email and respond to it? We’ll show you exactly how you can get them to do that.

Cold email tips and tricks

Here are the 10 best cold emailing tips that every digital marketer should have in his/her arsenal. Let’s begin!

Guest post by Shaira Williams.

Approach the right person

If you’re sending your email to the wrong person, that’s a surefire way to get your email in the Trash folder. Find out who the actual decision-maker is at the company and contact them. Make sure you are sending your email to the person who’s actually in the position to take action on your offer.

Make it personal

Long gone are the days when adding just the first name of the recipient was enough to grab their attention. You need to put in some extra effort if you want to be heard… err, read. It’s your role to find out some personal information regarding the contact and add it in the first few lines of the email. This strategy allows you to connect with the recipient on a more personal level.

For example, if the recipient is a Rangers fan, add a simple line like, “Did you catch the Rangers’ game on Saturday?”, etc.

This will often grab their attention and show them that you’ve done your homework.

Show them the value

If a stranger emails you out of the blue asking for your money or business, you will most likely ignore them or worse, report spam.

You don’t want that happening to you, so focus on providing actual value in your email. Tell them what you do and how it’s going to help them.

According to Amanda Brown from Consumers Base, you should not just focus on what you are offering instead focus on how it’s going to help them achieve their goals.

person looking a consumer base on her mobile phone

Keep it short, keep it sweet

Nobody wants to read an entire essay in their inbox. If your email is lengthy, chances are nobody’s going to bother reading it. So, make sure that you keep your email short and come to the point quickly.

A few lines of value are much better than a couple of paragraphs of fluff. The recipient is more likely to read your email if it’s short and to-the-point.

Related: 25 cold email tips for more opens and better response rates

Right time, right place

Marketers are constantly running tests to find out the best time to send emails. There are multiple companies that specialize in optimizing and scheduling your emails in such a way that you get the highest open rates.

Well, you can keep track of when your recipient is at their desk and ready to answer the emails with a few Google searches.

Even when you don’t have any actual data, you can use your common sense. People are most likely to be at their desks in the morning, right? So use such information to your advantage and schedule each email accordingly.

Related: How to write a follow-up email after no response

The subject line matters

This is often going to make or break your email campaign. A good subject line will give you the highest open and response rates, while a bad line will send your emails directly to the Trash or Spam folder. Make sure your subject line is under 50 characters.

When it comes to subject lines, you can use any of the following ways to curate your email.

– Flattery – “Loved your speech at X event”

Referral – “John Doe told me I should talk to you about X”

– Ask a question – “Can you shed some light on X topic?”

Another tip is to add each recipient’s first name to the subject line. This requires a bit of extra effort on your part, but can lead to a massive boost in your open rates and responses.

Related >>> What is cold email? Definitive guide – 2019

email validator

Don’t oversell

You’ve already shown them how you can help them. So, it’s better to play it cool and calm. You don’t want to bombard them with multiple call-to-actions.

Instead, strive to sound as natural as possible and not put any pressure on the person on the receiving end. No one likes that, so why risk getting deleted? Offer them all the info they need if they decide to contact you, including a way to schedule a call with you.

Follow up

Follow-ups are a common practice, and there’s nothing wrong with implementing it in your strategy. However, you don’t want to become a nuisance, so plan your follow-ups carefully.

You can send another email in three to five days after the first one. Then, if you still haven’t gotten an answer, try again a week later.

Many times non-responders will convert into a response after a follow-up email, so always follow up at least once with each recipient.

Add your details in the signature

Your email signature can sometimes make the difference between getting a response and being ignored. So, before you start cold emailing, run a few tests to ensure your signature looks good.

Also, you want to take a closer look and see if it offers your prospect all the info they need abut you. Add your name and job title, business address and as many ways for people to contact you as possible.

Avoid images

Last but not least, it’s often a good choice to avoid images in your emails –unless absolutely necessary. Images take up a lot of space and tend to be distracting.

So, only use images when they make an excellent point or they add humor to your message. Otherwise it’s safer to steer clear of using any images or graphics in your email.

email checker

Conclusion

Cold emailing is one of the oldest online sales practices and it’s going to stay with us as long as email exists. We hope you now have a better understanding of how to optimize your cold email to grab people’s attention and persuade them to take action. These 10 tips for cold emailing will get you the response rates you want.