business

How to write effective cold emails?

Written by Nigel Simpkins

Do you want to introduce your business to a person who has never heard of it and make him or her interested in your product? That’s what we call Cold Email Marketing. First, we must say that this method of attracting new customers may be one of the hardest ones.

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs are not too optimistic about this method. Thus, they often use it thoughtlessly and miss the opportunity to get the most of it.

You can make pretty effective use of cold emails and turn those prospects into your customers. Do you want to know what is necessary to make a cold letter productive? Let us share some useful tips with you!

What Are Your Main Tasks When Composing A Cold Email?

Getting through to a potential client with the help of a cold email is always a challenge. There is no need to explain why most people are annoyed by such messages. We bet that even you have deleted tons of such letters from your mailbox. Of course, things get much easier when the potential client has at least some idea of who you are. However, when you have to engage with someone who is not familiar with your business at all, you have to complete these two important tasks:

  1. Bypass personal spam filters of a prospect customer
  2. Make a good impression, so that the person would want to read your letter to the end

Bypassing the personal spam filters is possible if:

  • You are not too intrusive.
  • The subject of your letter is interesting to your potential customer.

A good topic is 50% of success. Below are a few ideas to help you grab the reader’s attention.

Valuable information

Showing the recipient that you have some interesting and valuable information to share works in most cases. This can be anything related to their professional field, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.

Useful Off-topic

Such emails don’t have anything related to your niche but provide useful information to your recipients. When choosing this method, you will need more time to convert prospects into customers, but it is a good way to engage a person in a conversation. And if it is appropriate, timely, and not too personal, it might work well.

Ask A Question

Another effective way to grab attention is by asking a question. When a person faces an issue, their brain develops a sincere desire to learn the answer. Thus, asking the right questions you can make your recipients curious and they will more likely open your message.

These are only a few examples that you can use. If none of these suits your needs, you can always find more subject line ideas online! Here are some extra tips for an effective subject:

  • Use numbers – a human’s brain pays more attention to numbers rather than words. Such subject lines make the recipient feel that he will receive specific information.
  • Personalize – another trick is to start your subject line with the recipient’s name and make the recipient feel like this email was written specifically for them. This indicates that your email is not spam and works well for all types of selling emails.
  • Segmentation – if you are selling a product that is purchased by a specific target audience, include it in the title words that will attract immediate attention.
  • Make the title interesting and intriguing.
  • Offer the customer to solve his problem – the most attention is drawn to headlines that provide useful information to the reader. Tell your audience how your products or service can solve a specific problem.

Now, let’s look at other tips related to writing an effective cold email.

How To Write a Perfect Cold Email?

Set Specific Goals

Before you start writing a message, think about what exactly you want to reach with its help. Do you want recipients to follow the link to your site, order your product, or do something else?

There is one rule applicable here: 1 email = 1 goal. If you try to achieve several goals with one message, most likely you will only confuse your recipient and get very low conversion rates. Decide on one particular purpose, and this will set the tone for the whole letter.

Use an Email Signature

It is much more pleasant to interact with a real person and not with a mail robot. So, do not forget about the email signature. It does several important tasks at the same time:

  • Attracts attention and leaves a lasting impression;
  • Shows your professionalism;
  • Makes a presentation of your business;
  • Shows your corporate style and increases recognition;
  • Makes recipients trust you more;
  • Email signature provides your contact details;
  • Creates an additional call to action.

Keep It Short

Most often people delete newsletters simply because they are too long. You should remember that you only have a few seconds to grab the recipient’s attention. Thus, you should be as straight to the point and concise as possible!

Think Like Your Potential Customer

Do you remember how many advertising letters and spam falls into your mailbox? We bet the number is quite large. And how many of them do you delete without looking? Probably almost all of them, with very few exceptions. Remember that your recipients do the same.

Therefore, when planning a cold mailing company, try to put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer and think about how the letter should look to make you want to open it.

Test Different Options

The easiest way to understand which of your cold emails are the most effective is to test different options and compare the conversion rate.

Do it this way:

  • Determine the goal. For example, you want to study how the subject lines affect the number of recipients who open your message;
  • Define a target group for testing;
  • Create a newsletter and then send it with one subject for one half of your group, and with another one for the rest of the recipients;
  • Analyze statistics and evaluate the result.

At the end of the test, you will have a better idea of what works best for your audience.