How to write effective cold emails.
To be frank, I have never written a cold email for myself. I have written many for my clients – I’m still writing a couple for a client in Italy.
They are highly recommended. Even for my own business I have been advised multiple times to use cold emails.
Even LinkedIn has a feature that allows you to send “cold” messages to your contacts.
Here I am going to discuss some effective ways you can write cold emails.
- Write a clear, convincing subject line.
- Use the name of the recipient in the greeting (definitely).
- Introduce yourself in the smallest possible sentence.
- Immediately come to the point.
- Use small, direct sentences.
- Avoid being pretentious.
- Politely ask to get back.
What is a cold email?
Updating on August 22, 2020: In more refined form, sending out cold emails is also called an “outreach strategy”. Many companies are running their own outreach programs in the wake of Covid-19 to generate more leads and get more business opportunities. Here is a nice blog post on Outreach Tips by Rand Fishkin.
Cold email does not mean you refrigerate your laptop for some time and then write an email on it.
A cold email is an unsolicited email message that you send to someone without having contacted that person before. It is like approaching someone in the crowd and the person is not expecting you. Or knocking at someone’s door to sell something.
It is like the cold calls that annoy you all the time. The big difference is, unlike cold calls, you are not forced to pick up your phone to check who is calling. The email message remains in the inbox and you see it when you check your email, unless, you have set up a noisy notification for new emails.
Is cold email spamming?
Cold emailing is a prominent part of email marketing. Though, there is a very thin line that divides cold emailing and spamming. They are different.
In spamming you send out email messages relentlessly, using a cheap email broadcasting server.
Somehow, you get hold of a large number of email ids. You have no idea to whom these email ids belong. You think that if you send your promotional message to 20,000 people, at least 50 may respond and since sending spam is quite cheap, you may get a good ROI.
I’m not saying it works, but most of the people think that it works.
In most of the countries, spamming is illegal. The Russian spam mafia is notorious.
The moment it is detected that the spam has originated from your server, the IP address of your server is blacklisted by the email clients like Gmail. They have very advanced technologies these days to detect spam messages even by analysing the subject lines. There are already millions of blacklisted IP addresses.
In cold email, you send one email message to one person. You send a personal message. You know who that person is.
For example, I visit your website and notice there are many mistakes in the text. Being a content writer, I can help you write better content for your website and blog. I find your email ID and I write to you. I give you some examples of how I have previously written for similar websites.
Similarly, I come across your profile on LinkedIn. I read about you and find out that you are a real estate agent or a realtor. You have a website that can use a better content writer. The past year I have written for many real estate agents and realtors. Hence, I write an email to you introducing myself and offering my service.
This is, non-spam, cold emailing. I know who you are. After reading my email, you will know that I am a content writer. You know why I am writing to you. There is clear communication. Then, it is up to you whether you want to take that communication forward or not.
Does writing cold emails work?
I have mentioned above that even LinkedIn encourages you to send cold messages. They call it their “InMail” feature. I get lots of messages from my LinkedIn contacts.
As traffic on my website is gradually picking up, many people send me pitches for guest posting. Since I already have a link on my website and blog that encourages people to contact me, although these are cold email messages, one way or another, I am already expecting them.
So in this case, I can say that the cold emails that people send me often work. I know in most of the cases, well, in all the cases, they are looking for backlinks, but they also help me save time by giving me quality content for my blog.
Coming back to the topic, cold emails do work. Since most of the people who use them don’t know how to draw a line between writing effective cold emails and spamming, cold emailing gets lots of bad rap and people are wary of using them and receiving them at both ends of the spectrum.
In this Inc.com article, the writer, Larry Kim claims that his response rate is approximately 1 in 5 with cold emailing, which is higher than the traditional email marketing response rate.
Personally, I believe there should be no reason why cold emails shouldn’t work, provided you send them with a sense of purpose. The key is, what approach you follow.
Before I talk about how to write effective cold emails, I’m assuming you are going to write the emails to people who can actually benefit from your proposition.
Writing effective cold emails
Recently I was reading a copywriting book by Robert Bly and many of the suggestions can be applied to sending cold emails. He says that the most important task is making people pick up your pamphlet, read the headline and then proceed towards the body text.
You need to follow the same approach when sending cold emails.
The importance of the subject line when sending effective cold emails
You must come up with the subject line that prompts people to open your email message. If they don’t open it, they don’t read it. If they don’t read it, they don’t respond to it. If they don’t respond to it, there is no use contacting them.
Hence, without getting too dramatic, the subject line of your cold email is a matter of life and death in the context of your email. So, spend a lot of time figuring out what subject line you’re going to use.
There is no definitive subject line that you can use, but be as specific as possible.
It will take some time for you to finally settle on the right subject line. For example, what subject line would I use if I send out cold emails?
Some of the ideas that come to my mind are:
- “Need a content writer for your website?”
- “Introducing my content writing services”
- “Hello, I can write content for your website”
- “I can improve your SEO with my content writing”
- “Some suggestions for the writing mistakes on your website” – use such subject lines carefully.
There is no need to be dramatic because dramatization may confuse the recipient. Clearly specify what you’re offering.
Writing the main copy of your cold email
If you cannot personalise your cold email, don’t send it. Just don’t.
Hence, always greet the recipient with his or her real name. Even if you have to make an extra effort to find the name of the person, find it, and then use it.
Remember that your cold email is not a marketing message. It is a one-on-one interaction. You are bringing up something. Of course, you’re promoting your product or service, but since this is a personal message you need to be tactful.
Introduce yourself as clearly as possible. Don’t use a very long sentence. Preferably, in a single sentence, tell the person who you are and what you do.
Then, in the second sentence, tell the recipient why you are writing. It needs to be a genuine reason.
For example, if I am sending out a cold email, first I am quickly going to tell that person that I am a content writer. Then I will tell the recipient that there are certain things that I noticed on his or her website and thought of contacting.
Every content writer has a different style. When I write emails, I don’t want to impose my opinion on anyone. I want the other person to make his or her own decision and I apply the same approach when I’m writing cold emails for my clients.
Keep your writing style conversational. Use some references to convince the other person that you have actually gone through his or her website and are writing a personal message and not merely using a template.
60% of the email writing must be about what the other person is going to gain by associating with you. Don’t focus too much on problems. Focus on solutions. Focus on benefits.
In conclusion, in a couple of sentences, you can talk about your experience, the number of clients or customers you have served and how you have been able to benefit the others.
In the end, ask the person to contact you.
Concluding remarks
Writing effective cold emails is all about making a personal connection. You shouldn’t mass email cold emails because then they become spam.
Just because you have got someone’s email ID doesn’t mean you should be sending emails to that person. Maybe he or she doesn’t even remotely require your services.
If you are a content writing service, should I be offering content writing services to you? Of course, if I need to partner with you or collaborate with you, there is nothing wrong in that, but I shouldn’t be offering you my services for YOUR website.