7 Cold Email Tips That Will Increase Response Rate

1. Stop Talking About Yourself

The last thing you want to do is ruin your chances right off the bat by writing paragraphs about yourself and how great your company is. There’s a difference between logically introducing yourself and giving someone who has no idea who you are the entire spiel you give all your SQLs.  

2. Don’t Come Off Too Sales-y

It’s natural to want to drop the ball right away and ask to set a meeting after all, that’s the whole goal of cold emailing. But remember what they say: “Slow and steady wins the race.” That is also true for successful cold emailing. Think about the solicitors who ring your doorbell, fake a two-minute conversation, and then immediately slam you with a sales pitch about a product you’ve never heard of. Whether or not it could benefit you, you’re put off by the experience.

3. The Subject Line Is Just as Important as the Message Itself

Your email is only as good as your subject line, and there are literally thousands of articles and “science-backed” evidence of subject lines that work. But the best data is what you can pull from your own past email sends. Look at the past sales emails you’ve sent and see what really works with your specific audience.

4. Do Your Research

It is actually crazy how many cold emails I’ve received with my name spelled wrong, calling me “Mr.”, not knowing my job title when it’s public information, and so on and so forth. If you were face-to-face with someone, you wouldn’t call them the wrong name or mistake them for the opposite gender without feeling like a total fool. Don’t let the security of being behind a screen allow you to have a lesser quality conversation.

5. Be Respectful

Let’s say a person replies to one of your emails and you get really enthusiastic and are ready to book that meeting and close that deal, so you rush to reply, but then they all of a sudden go cold again. They replied to your email, though, so they must really be interested, right? You decide to reply again in a few hours maybe they didn’t get your first email. They don’t reply to that, so you wait until the next day (it’s been 12 hours!) and email again.

6. Make It Personal

Even if you have built the perfect cold email template, you’ll want to personalize it for each prospect, and I’m not just talking about “[[INSERT FIRST NAME]] here” personalization. Do your research and use it to your advantage. One of their interests is college basketball? Perfect starter conversation.

7. Add Value

One of my all-time favorite marketing and sales professionals, Tim Roisterer of Corporate visions, really helped me to transform the way I crafted our sales pitch for my sales team. Too often, I see companies so excited about their product or solution that they forget that no matter how good your product/service is, unless you can get people to buy in and realize their need, your amazing product won’t make it far.