The must-read guide to cold emailing
Contacting people via email may be intimidating — it’s about launching a written missive out there into the universe,
not knowing who will read it or whether it will even be read at all.
For example, if you have hundreds of thousands of leads you want to reach out to but have limited resources, you can
create drip sequences and start “pre-qualifying” clients before calling them.
Even if you have a quality list and personalized emails, it takes some work to finesse cold outreach. Whether you are
seeing less than 10 percent open rates on your emails or would like to improve your overall cold emailing technique,
this guide can help you.
Find the best time to cold email
Before you figure out what to say on the phone, you first need to determine when to call. According to research
conducted by GetResponse, 23.6 percent of all email opens occur in the first hour of delivery, with the rate decreasing
continuously as time passes. The study shows that 8am and 3pm are the best times to send cold emails. If you are sending
emails from US overseas, 9am EST is said to be the most effective time.
Set the tone
According to Impact Communication, 70 percent of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems, while the
remaining 30 percent of people purchase to gain something. Therefore, your email should highlight that you are there to
solve their problems.
_“People will remember the emotional tone of an email more vividly and longer than the content.” – Psychology Today _
You can convey a “tone” for your email, through word choice, syntax, punctuation, letter case, sentence length, opening,
closing, and other graphic indicators like emoticons and emoji.
According to Psychology Today, when you are in a conversation with another person, you share the same physical space and
psychological climate, while an email exchange shares neither. With that in mind, consider writing with the
understanding the recipient may not be in the same psychological or emotional state.
It’s all in the subject
Length
The email open rate is primarily driven by sender name and subject lines — after all, those fields are the first things
recipients see.
The best advice is to keep it simple, and include a subject line whose content the receiver will immediately understand
without having to open the email. Generally, shorter subject lines work better than longer, more detailed subject lines.
In a study by FastCompany, two identical emails with different subject lines were sent to the same number of busy execs.
The email with the longer subject line (eight words) received a 4.9 percent lower open rate and half as many responses.
What’s your point?
Your subject line should have a call to action and a clear message telling the recipient what the email is about. If you
are sending the same email to hundreds of prospects, your subject lines can be slightly vague. If you are narrowing down
your audience, then you need to be more concise and straight to the point.
Rules of thumb
According to MailChimp‘s study on subject lines, here are several rules of thumb for effective subject lines:
- Length: 50 characters or less. Except for highly targeted sequences, recipients appreciate the additional
information.
- Avoiding pro-spam words such as “Free” and “Help.”
- Get personal but don’t cross the line: adding recipients’ names did not improve open rates much. Adding city names,
however, worked well.
“Great cold emails present a problem while offering prospects a solution. If you can pique your prospect’s interest
enough to open your cold email, then you can use the body of your email to show your prospects how your product/service
can help them prevent this loss.” —SalesFolk
Examples
SalesFolk listed a few effective subject lines:
- How competitive is {!Company}’s sales team? Fear of losing out is one of the most powerful motivators for buyers.
- 10x {!Company}’s traction in 10 minutes. Be clear on what you do and what your business is about and the solution
you are offering.
- Question about employee loyalty at {!Company}. Asking questions in subject lines is a way to engage the audience.
All in all, whether you are writing an email for a marketing sequence or a cold email, you should always invest in
optimizing subject lines.
The body
_“When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.” –Elmore Leonard _
Short emails are far more effective than longer ones. A study conducted by Nielsen reveals people spend 80 percent of
their time looking at the top of the page and the rate of attention decreases as they go down the page.
The study found that people were highly inclined to skip the “introductory blah-blah” text, while the post-email
signature area got more focus, indicating people care about whom and where the emails are from. When you are writing an
email to your prospect, avoid long introductions and make sure to always include a relevant sign-off, which is enough of
an introduction itself.
One point to consider: According to Experian, more than 50 percent of emails are opened on mobile or tablet devices.
Therefore, making an email too long won’t improve the engagement.
Include a call to action
David Silverman in HBR writes that the difference between business writing and all other forms of expressions is the
call to action — a part of your email you should consider crucial. Whether it’s “a memo, report, business plan, email,
and so on, all have in common that they ask the reader to do something,” he writes.
Engage the recipient as early on as possible
It has been discovered that the average attention span of an adult is eight seconds. Even so, this does not mean shorter
is better — when emails are too short they seem too abrupt, but when they’re too long no one will read it. Guy Kawasaki
writes in FastCompany that five sentences is the perfect length, as far as he’s concerned.
The trick here is to engage the recipient as quickly as possible. Chances are, you’ll lose them in the time it takes
them to read the first couple of sentences, or worse yet — your message will end up directly in the trash. To avoid
that, get personal in the first line. If there is important information, reveal it at the beginning. Always place
important keywords at the top. If you want to provide a reference to a video or a web page, the sooner they discover it
the better.
Presentation & formatting
Appearance and formatting matter. Use line breaks. Emails with single or double line breaks seem easier to consume at a
glance.
Other important things to remember
- Never write in all caps or use “!” — they are digital equivalent of “screaming”
- Along with subject lines, the Fast Company article also points out that of the emails that were opened, the ones
that performed best both thanked the recipient, and never asked for a favor (but do ask for knowledge).
- Take a look at the email you’ve crafted. Would you reply if a stranger sent it to you? If you wouldn’t, chances are
your recipients probably wouldn’t either.
Start tracking
And finally, start tracking. Include relevant links to your website and sign offs, and track them by adding UTM codes to
your URLs.
Now go back and review your auto email outreach and make sure everything discussed here is being considered. What could
you do differently to improve your email traction?