Cold Email Tips That Will Increase Response Rate
Are you sick and tired of acquiring lists full of
potential, high-quality prospects, devising a cold emailing plan, and having no
one respond? What if you reach out again, will it be awkward? Is there any hope
left to turn even just one of those prospects into a customer? Has all of the
hard work and research you put into acquiring those email addresses gone to
waste?
I spent the better part of a decade emailing hundreds of
thousands of cold prospects, trying different tactics and strategies to see
what resonated. Here’s what I found:
Increase Response Rates
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.
Remember that these people probably have no idea who you
are. If they don’t see any value in you contacting them, chances are they
aren’t going to reply. Introduce yourself politely and then start talking
about them. Let them know how your company will make their
life or business better, and show them that you are truly interested in their
betterment.
2. Don’t Come Off Too Sales
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.
It feels forced, in your face, and quite frankly, like an
invasion of privacy. If you start thinking of emailing the same way you think
of treating people face-to-face, you’ll soon realize that starting a
conversation with “let’s set up a meeting this week!” is a sure-fire way to
make people feel uncomfortable and put off. Start slow and open the
conversation like you would if you were meeting someone new in person.
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. Are there particular subject lines you’ve
used that had good open rates? Don’t try to reinvent the wheel if you already
have a process in place that works well. If you’re still unsure of what works,
do your own tests!
There are so many different industries, so many different
products, and so many different people that following the footsteps of someone
else’s success just won’t necessarily work. Use examples as a guide, but never
settle on what someone else’s opinion of a “great subject line” is until you’ve
tested it yourself. You won’t get a response if they don’t even open your
email, so make the subject interesting, personable, and uniquet from the 1,000+
others in their inbox.
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. This might be
my number one piece of advice: Do your research before reaching
out.
This person could turn into a really valuable customer and
one sure-fire way to make sure this never happens is by letting them know you
put no time or effort into your outreach, making you look desperate and making
them press delete before they even finish reading what you have to say. We live
in the days of the internet. The information we need is out there. We can and
should use it to our advantage.
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.
See where I’m going here? As with any relationship, rushing
into things and not allowing space for the other person to critically think
about the situation will most likely result in the person running away,
quickly. Give them time to breathe between each touch. Would you be annoyed if
the same solicitor you ignored the first time kept on ringing your doorbell
during dinner for a week straight? Let the conversations flow naturally and
give it time before you reach out 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. Their company just made the news for XYZ? Even better starter
conversation.
My point is, let the person know you actually care about
them, and even if you did happen to acquire their email address that’s a part
of a list of 1,000 other people, you’ll get a lot farther by taking the time to
learn about them, rather than blasting the same message off to 1,000 people and
hoping something sticks.
7. Add Value
One of my all-time favorite marketing
and sales professionals, Tim Riesterer 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.
If you can’t add immediate value or demonstrate what could
be, it will be very hard for your prospect to be excited about a possible
meeting or partnership. Human nature tends to be more complacent, and when
people are comfortable and happy with where they are, why change? It’s your job
to convince your prospects that the risk of staying the same is greater than
the risk of changing to your product, service, or solution.
Cold emailing has been around forever and it’s
not going away as long as email addresses exist. Whether you take these tips
into consideration or not, remember that you’re emailing real people. We are
inundated with email, yet somehow we pick out the ones that matter. Why?
Because we can tell it’s from a human that has
something important to say to us. Add the “human” into your emails, care about
the person you’re reaching out to, and create a killer subject line to set
yourself up for cold emailing success.
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