Cold emailing is one of the powerful tools in an Entrepreneur’s arsenal. If used well, it can
do wonders for a startup. You can use it for sales, getting deals, getting investments, getting
mentors and many more. But the fact is most often cold emails get ignored. If your approach is
incorrect, you may rarely get a reply from the recipient.
In this post, I would like to share some tips to make your cold emails more appealing. This
shall surely help you get more replies to your cold emails.
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1. Personalize and Customize
The most important element of any cold mail is personalization. People won’t even bother to
read any email from an unknown person let alone reply to it, unless it is relevant to them. You
can make your emails relevant to the recipient by personalizing your email.
Remember, sending cold emails is different from a mass email campaign. Since cold emails are
sent to a limited set of people, you should be able to do a bit of research about your prospect
before sending them a cold email.
You may look out for publicly available information on company websites, their social media
profiles in Linkedin or Facebook, any newspaper articles, etc. In your email, you may cite such
instances such as you liked reading their article on Linkedin or liked reading their thoughts on
media publications, etc. This will help you warm up your prospect.
2. Keep it short, quick and easy to read
When you are sending your first cold mail, ensure to keep it short and concise. Avoid sending
any detailed business proposals in the mail content when you are just trying to initiate the
conversation. A short and to the point content is faster to read and act. The easier it is for
the reader to understand and act, the faster you tend to get replies.
3. Talk about solving a business pain point
If you are selling to a B2B client, then everyone’s goal is to solve some or the other business
challenges in their organization. Instead of selling the features of your product you will be
required to talk about solving a business pain point being faced by your prospect. This will
generate more interest and will help you improve your reply rate.
4. Don’t sell anything in the mail
Many beginners tend to make mistakes by trying to sell their products within the first cold
email itself. This approach is bound to just worsen your brand image and you may never get a
response. The purpose of a cold email is to get a meeting or an appointment with the prospect.
The best approach is to ask for a short discovery call to begin with. The first discovery call
will give you enough information to decide whether it is a qualified lead worth pursuing further
or not.
5. Avoid describing product features
As I wrote earlier, avoid describing your product features in your first cold email. This is
because, in the beginning, even you will not be aware of your lead having any real requirement
for your products or services. Additionally, you should avoid pushing any unsolicited
information to the lead such as product features and specifications without gauging the level of
interest from the leads.
6. Avoid sounding like a template
Many beginners tend to make the mistake of using cold email templates available on the
internet. While it is not wrong to use templates, often they send the same email contents to the
prospects without modifying as per their context. While you may feel confident with that, the
fact is people can smell templates because those are so common. People want to hear from People
instead of Machines. So you must bring out your personal tone in your emails. This shall help
build a connection and a relationship to initiate a conversation.
7. Follow up till you get a reply.
Success in sales lies in timely tracking and follow-ups. Many research suggests that
salespersons tend to get replies after the 8th follow-up. You may not need to wait till the 8th
one if you do a timely follow-up. It is highly likely to get a reply in your 3rd or 4th email.
So always ensure to follow up with your prospects. Ideally, you should follow up within 2-3 days
otherwise the prospect may forget.
Hope you found these tips useful. If you are interested in trying out CRM software for Cold
Emails and Lead tracking, Do check out ToolsonCloud Sales CRM. It’s Free!