A cold email refers to a sales email sent by a business to prospective buyers that the sender has had no prior connection with. This can be a highly effective strategy to generate leads if done correctly. However, unsolicited sales emails might be annoying and are outright deleted. Therefore, if you want your email campaign to generate leads and improve conversation, you must implement a strategy to get the prospective customers to click and open your email to begin with.
Industry experts believe that cold email campaigns are effective in landing new clients. Hence, if you’re sending cold emails with no success, you may want to reconsider your entire cold emailing process. Below are cold email marketing 12 tips to generate leads and improve conversation.
Send Out Personalised Emails to Prospects
Cold emailing can be made easier by using templates, and we all love it easy. However, the issue with templates is that they appear a bit generic. The recipient will tell whether you’re insincere or lack a genuine interest to help them by just looking at your email content’s structure. This can influence whether and how they’ll respond.
That is why personalization always wins, although it takes some effort and time to get it right. However, this doesn’t mean that you must compose some unique content per prospective customer. Instead, you segment the prospects, create specific email templates for every segment, and personalise all the details before sending the mail.
End The Mail With a Call-to-Action
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Do your emails include a call to action? If not, it might be time to start, and that’s even more necessary when cold emailing. The purpose of a CTA is to encourage your potential customer to take action. Hence, ensure that you use incentivizing, decisive language. To be more successful in your cold emailing, use the following CTA techniques;
Ask Relevant Questions
Ending your emails with a relevant yes/ no or an open-ended question is excellent to start conversations.
Do you have resources to show how businesses can benefit from your services like e-books or videos? Don’t just share them. Ask the prospects whether you can share the material at the end of your email. This is a great movie to begin a conversation.
Proposing a Scheduled Call
If you aim at meeting your prospect, provide a time and date for the scheduled call request at the end of the email. Be creative beyond “ will you be available for a call.” Say something like, “will you be available for a quick call on March 27th at 5:00 p.m.?
Tell the Prospects What They’ll Get Out of It
Whenever promoting any service or product to your prospects, always state what’s in it for them. You can explain your achievements, service technicalities, and credentials later. The most critical thing that you must express at the cold email marketing is what benefits
your services could bring to a business or your customer’s personal lives. Remember, it is about the clients, not about you whenever composing the email.
Follow Up
Cold emails end with many rejections, including being ignored outrightly, sent directly to the trash, spam filtered, or blocked. If the first cold email doesn’t get a response, you shouldn’t take it personally. In most cases, the email message is unintentionally sent into the spam or brushed aside. If this happens, wait for some days and send a follow-up email. You have a high chance of starting a conversation on your third or second try. Ensure the follow-up email is different from the first email.
Ensure Your Emails Are Short
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Most people don’t like reading long emails. So, when writing a cold email, ensure that it is short, unambiguous, and concise. Then, you can provide more information later in case the lead is interested. In the beginning, try to ensure your email can be read quickly and easily understood to ensure the prospects can get through the entire thing. To begin with, long texts can be intimidating to most people, especially those who did not ask for the cold email.
Ensure Your Cold Email Marketing Includes An Email Signature
Remember that you are a stranger to your email recipient. So, what should you do to put their minds at ease? First, let the recipient know who sent the email by including an email signature. This doesn’t mean just including your name. You want your prospects to feel that you offer legitimate service. Ensuring your signature is included at the bottom of the content makes the email appear more professional. Keep the email signature simple. Add only the basics, company name, your name, position, and contact information.
Also Read: Cold Call Emails: The Perfect Way to Reach New Customers
Write An Impressive Subject Line
About 35% of your recipients open your email because of its subject line. So your subject line’s content matters a great deal, and this isn’t limited to the use of click bait and catchy phrases. To begin with, some people receive over 100 emails daily, meaning some emails aren’t opened at all.
Since your recipient doesn’t know you, having a good enough subject line is the only sure way to grab their attention and ensure they open your mail. Follow the tips below to write a good subject line:
- Keep the subject line short, preferably below 50 characters.
- Do not use multiple punctuation marks to ensure the cold email isn’t flagged as spam.
- Keep the finger off the caps lock key on your keyboard when typing the subject line. It comes out as aggressive and might trigger spam controls.
- Avoid using spammy words.
Experiment Repeatedly
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You can do cold emailing in many ways. Hence, if one method isn’t working, try another. Never be afraid to experiment. However, keep in mind that there is no one magic formula. Everyone could be using cold email marketing, but that isn’t the case.
Whenever testing different variables, ensure you record your metrics. Note the differences you’ve made on each template and the quality and quantity of the obtained responses. You can build a highly reliable strategy for cold emailing to reach out to prospects and obtain reliable responses by collecting factual data. You can use the following tips in your testing process.
First, ensure you’re always open to new possibilities. Constantly be on the lookout for any improvements that you can make to your present system. The longer-term effects of your current strategy are not guaranteed in the rapidly-progressing society.
So, a business begins to test out the new ways of doing things only after seeing a sharp decline in their stellar results. A lot of trial and error at times features in the testing process. It might take weeks or even months! You’ll be putting your business in a challenging position, especially if you do this in the last minutes.
Do not start researching for improvements after your present method loses its mojo. Instead, consistently challenge your methods and make this part of your business strategy. Stay competitive and updated. As you do this, ensure you track your metrics to determine whether your efforts are working. Take note of the metric below once you start testing.
- The number of responses you get (Response rate).
- The number of times your recipients open the email (Open rate)
- The amount of time it takes before the recipient sends a response.
- The number of times you were able to schedule meetings with the recipient successfully.
Based on your results, you can determine the technique that works best.
Check for Grammar or Spelling Mistakes
This is a basic one, although you could be astonished by the number of people who don’t check the spelling and grammar mistakes in their cold sales emails before sending them. These are simple errors that will tarnish your image in the eyes of your prospects and won’t help drive your conversion rates or generate leads.
Therefore, before clicking the send button, double-check your cold email content from the subject line to the signature.
Use A Friendly Tone/Be Friendly
Another example of why templates are great but cannot be used everywhere is in terms of tone. Besides being generic, templates can sometimes be written almost robotic. Using a plain language style that appeals to almost anyone might work only if you didn’t segment the audience, which you did. Regardless of the audience you are reaching, your efforts will yield results faster if you are friendly. Be personable besides just acting nice. Would you be happy to receive the email you are writing? Does the email make you smile or think? If so, then that is an excellent cold email with a high probability of impacting the reader.
Whenever Possible, Express Gratitude
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After a recipient responds to your email, express appreciation in your reply. The benefits of practising gratitude are highlighted in this report. Your response rate might increase by two folds when you show gratitude. Therefore, be thankful whenever things go right, and some prospects have responded or even made purchases. Your leads will actually appreciate this.
Identifying the Right Time
With cold emailing, timing is of the essence, and your prospect’s persona can help you with this. Do your prospects have part-time jobs? Are they just studying or full-time working professionals? This can help determine what hours the leads could be available to receive and hopefully read your email. Sending the cold email based on your recipient’s time zone is always the best.
Bottom Line
Remember, your cold emailing efforts are geared towards starting a conversation with a prospect at the stage of lead generation. It isn’t to talk about your service or product’s wonderful features. Serious selling will come later down the line. Follow the above cold email marketing 12 tips to generate leads and improve conversation. Write an email that speaks directly to your prospect’s pain points, needs, and objectives.
