7 Tricks to Write an Effective Cold Email with Examples

Intro

Email marketing has been helping businesses in their marketing campaigns for some time. It has also been a means for businesses to expand their network and improve their relationships with their target audience.

However, sending the first cold email campaigns to a business's target audience is risky since the receiver of those emails has no idea who sent them an email. This makes effective email campaigns difficult for businesses to create.

Cold emails should be short while also containing a powerful and direct message to increase the chances of getting a reply. To do this, you need to be able to write effective cold emails by using some tricks to ensure getting high response rates.

What is a cold email?

Cold emailing is a way for businesses to expand their network online. Cold emails can be equivalent to a salesperson trying to meet regular and new customers and starting a conversation with them. However, salespeople do not try to market their businesses and explain what they offer in the first conversation; rather, they only focus on making a lasting impression, which will guarantee the expansion of their network.

The same strategy that salespeople follow should be applied when writing cold emails. Since cold emails are the conversation starters of the online world, your aim should not be pitching your services from the first email, but building relationships little by little.

How does cold emailing work?

Some believe that email marketing is a waste of time and effort. However, writing effective cold emails can be one of the best ways for a business to expand and eventually enter the global market.

In a study done by Adobe on Email Usage in 2019, most people check their work emails more than their personal emails. This gives leverage to businesses implementing a cold emailing strategy in their marketing campaigns.

Businesses will have leverage because if they send out effective cold emails, knowing when the right time is for their target audience, they will ensure that their efforts are not wasted. In return, they will get a high response rate. Before you start sending cold emails, it's advisable to secure your email domain with DMARC to prevent phishing and spoofing attacks and increase email deliverability.

Is cold emailing measurable?

A benefit that cold emailing has is that the process is easily measurable. Analyzing the report of your cold emails is a good way to understand whether you're implementing the right strategies or need to find any obstacles (e.g. email delivery challenges) and fix them. Businesses prone to conversion rate optimization measure and analyze email metrics, such as click-through, open, and reply rates, to improve their overall cold email campaign performance and provide a better experience for each recipient.

Now you're aware that implementing a cold email strategy can work for your business, it is time to educate yourself on the tricks used in cold email campaigns that ensure high response rates.

Seven tricks to writing cold emails

1. Make the cold email as personalized as possible

Sending personalized cold emails can be tiring because you need to invest some additional time in researching. However, you can take advantage of the opportunity that almost everyone has a social media profile, and you can use this to your business's benefit.

Doing a couple of minutes of research before sending an email can significantly impact your results, as your email is personalized to the recipient.

Before sending the personalized cold email, you should pay attention to the subject line of the cold email. Subject lines above all need to be personalized because those are the first things that grab the reader's attention. Subject lines determine whether someone should continue reading a cold email.

You can also try finding out their position at the company, ask them how their day has been, include some humor, and you can even try finding out the right time to send the email.

2. Know the people you are emailing

Before sending out cold emails, you should know to whom you are sending an email. It could be that you have gotten the wrong email address, and you are sending cold emails to a person that does not have any business to do with you.

So, if you are in a situation where you have an email address but are not sure whether it is the right person, you can try asking them with the following email template.

Hello [name],

How are you?

My name is --, and I'm currently [job title] at [company name]. I have been meaning to reach out and get to know some people from your company who might have an interest in collaborating with me.

However, I'm not sure if I have the right person - could you please inform me if you're the right person to talk to about this?

3. Get to the point quickly

Many people do not have the time to read lengthy emails from people with whom they have only had a couple of email conversations. Therefore, it's best to keep your message short and to the point.

Hey [name],

I wanted to reach out again and see if we are able to collaborate on the services that we talked about in our previous email conversation. I think that this deal will be a win-win situation for both of us.

Let me know what you think!

4. Include a call to action (CTA) button

Call to action (CTA) buttons are great for maximizing response rates and are an effective way to increase traffic to your website.

Including a CTA button by adding a link to your website makes it easier to direct the recipient to your services. Also, make sure that the CTA buttons are visible and direct readers to the correct and relevant link.

A good way to direct the reader's attention to the CTA is to mention it in the email body.

If you are interested in finding out more about [company name], you can follow the link I have provided or send me a message, and I'll gladly give you more information about [company name].

5. Send follow up emails

You might be in a situation where you have to send a follow-up to a cold email. The reason for sending a follow-up is to ensure that your recipient has read the email.

There are different reasons why a cold email recipient might not have seen an email. It could be as simple as the fact that their inbox was flooded that day, and they missed your email.

However, you should not copy and paste the same exact email in the follow-up. It may be that the reader was unable to understand the main message and decided to ignore it. Rewrite your email, and also, don't forget to change the subject line to make it more attractive to the reader's eye.

Try following this template:

Hi again,

Just a quick follow up to my last email in case you missed it. I was wondering if you are interested in partnering with us. I think that this partnership will provide many perks to both of us as it aligns with both of our businesses.

If you want to learn more, let me know. I'll help you in any way possible!

6. Be confident with your tone

When you send cold emails, try to be as confident as you can in your services or product. Confidence will encourage readers to continue reading your cold email and increase your reply rate.

At the same time, you should be careful when you promise your readers something because if you are unable to keep your promise, you will receive negative backlash from your target audience.

7. Do not oversend follow-ups to cold emails

The last trick is mostly dedicated to saving you time and effort. Many businesses send numerous follow-ups to cold emails, thinking they will be able to increase their reply rates.

However, sending numerous follow-ups without seeing an increase in your business's sales conversion rate is simply failed cold calling.

Cold calling in this sense is sending out emails knowing that you will not be getting any replies from the recipient.

Save yourself time and effort by not investing more time in reaching out with cold emails that will not give you anything in return.

To Conclude

Cold email campaigns are tricky for digital marketers, especially for email marketers.

However, personalizing your cold emails, having a confident tone, sending a reasonable amount of cold email follow-ups, and including a call to action in the email's content, while simultaneously promising to deliver high-quality services or products by including a short description of them should lessen the obstacles and the trickiness that you are most likely to face when you start your email marketing campaigns.