The Essentials of a Powerful Cold Email Template

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Cold emailing has quickly become an integral part of the world of marketing and sales. It’s efficient and cost-effective and can help you lock in sales. Its most certainly not easy since you don’t know your audience yet, and nobody gives you elaborate feedback as to what you’re doing right or wrong.

Sending a cold sales email starts with finding prospective customers, creating a free email list, developing an outreach email, and then finally starting the sales campaign. Of course, developing a follow-up email template is as important, but cold emails are your first impression on the prospective client. You have to make a good one.

With the ever-increasing competition in the market, your cold email has to be different from the others to make an impact. If you were to open your inbox right now, there are high chances for you to have a plethora of run of the mill, bland emails that wouldn’t arouse your curiosity enough to even give them a second glance.

Sounds scary, right? But don’t worry, we’ve compiled a list of ways to make your cold emails power-packed and attention-grabbing.

Understand the value of your services and products

Ask yourself – “Why should someone buy your service?”

If you don’t know the answer to this question, then how are your clients are supposed to know it? Hence, you need to understand the benefits of the products or services that you’re selling.

This doesn’t mean that your cold email should contain every single feature. You have to figure out a valuable proposal that talks about your product or service without losing the interest of the recipient. Try to include statistics and numbers to pique the recipient’s interest.

How to build a cold email list

Firstly, you'll need to find potential clients. You'll need to make a list of prospective leads that you can think can become a part of your email campaign. Now that you have found the value of your products and services, you’ll know your target business niche.

Here are a few places where you can find prospective leads.

1. Directories

2. Job boards

3. LinkedIn

Directories

Directories are a place where you can find suitable companies to which you can sell your products and services. Some of the most popular directories include:

• AngelList. If you’re targeting startups, AngelList is the first one you should check out.

• Clutch. A data-driven B2B review website

• Capterra. Review website of SaaS companies

• Yellow Pages, Yelp. If you are targeting local businesses this will help you get hold of prospective clients. Even Google Maps may help you.

Job Boards

Traditional job websites such as Glassdoor, Indeed, Career Builder, We Work Remotely, and so on are filled with job postings. You need to target the companies that advertise available jobs on these portals.

Although this is a time-consuming process, the companies are warmer leads since they are already looking for help.

LinkedIn 

Nearly every corporate business, start-up or otherwise, is on this social network platform. You can find out about the company, its key people, job postings, etc. In fact, sending cold sales email templates is quite an integral part of finding prospects on LinkedIn. You can also use the Anyleads’ prospecting software to extract emails from LinkedIn users.

Convert your cold lead into a warm lead

Cold emails can be difficult since you need to create an audience with your recipient. The only way to go about it? Personalization.

Image Source: Neil Patel

It was reported that by formulating personalized email campaigns, 82% of marketers improve their email open rates and even logically, personalized emails are always better than non-personalized ones.

We’ve compiled a list of ways in which you can make your cold emails more personalized.

1. Use the prospect’s name

2. Find common ground

3. Refer to mutual connections

4. Provide value

Learn the prospective client’s name and use it

If you want to look at examples of the best cold email templates B2B or B2C, you’ll see the recipient’s name is always mentioned. Try to use the names of prospective clients multiple times in your cold email. Of course, don’t overdo it to make it seem like you are desperate.

You can take this a step further by including their job title and the name of the company in which they work.

Find common ground 

This can be a shared experience or any shared interest or hobby. Finding common ground increases the trustworthiness of the other person. So, if you've attended the same college or a conference that the prospective might know, mention it. You might have even been featured on the same podcast. Your main aim should be to build an implicit camaraderie with the prospect.

There might be chances where you find nothing as well. In this case, you have to focus on the highpoints of the clients' careers. For example, mention their blog posts, podcasts, or whitepapers. To not sound ignorant, don’t forget to mention a few insights you got from their posts. You can also check their social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to find common ground.

Mention mutual connections or referrals

Referrals are easy: use the name of the person who made the acquaintance between you and the prospective. Ask a mutual connection to introduce you to the client. This will give you a head start and save you from any extra effort as then the prospect will be more willing to listen to what you have to offer.

Include a useful suggestion in your cold email

The suggestion or observation can be anything of value to the prospect. For example, if you offer SEO services, tell them how they’re ranking in terms of keywords. Or, if you’re a content writer then submit a pitch as to how you can add value to their website.

Work on a good cold email subject line to catch their attention

Image Source: Little Bird Marketing

The very first thing that the prospective client will read is the subject line. If you don’t make it good enough, there are chances that your email will not be even opened, as nearly 35% of emails are opened based on this detail. 

Subject lines have to be catchy enough to arouse the curiosity of the recipient without giving much away. Also, spam filters have a list of keywords, text styles, and phrases that can trigger the ISPs taking your cold email straight to spam land.

Read on to learn about the do's and don'ts of email subject lines to make your email campaign successful and your life a lot easier.

Email Subject Do’s

1. Make sure to use an email that has a familiar name

2. Aim for two things – crisp and simple

3. Make the recipients feel recognized and special

4. Use statistics or numbers in the email subject line

5. Employ humor and jokes

6. Make the email subject line sound urgent

Use an email ID that sounds familiar

Having an email ID that has a recognizable name always has a higher chance of getting opened as opposed to bland, generic email IDs.

Here, again personalization comes into play. Just think about it, which email are you most likely to open – Angelina@xyz.com or sales@abc.com? Exactly. Emails with a familiar name have much higher click-through rates as well. 

Aim for two things – crisp and simple

Shorter subject lines are perfect for cold emails. They are also better for viewing the subject lines on mobile phones. Since nearly 70% of consumers delete emails that don’t appear well on mobile devices, it's important to keep this point in mind. A useful tip is to eliminate words that don’t add value to your text. Keep the subject line limited to 50 characters to make it optimized for both tablets and mobile devices.

Make the prospect feel special

Everyone loves being the center of attention and, when they feel someone is taking the initiative to connect with them or make them feel special, they’ll be more willing to give that person their time and attention.

Use statistics and numbers

Statistics and numbers are commonly associated with preciseness. It instinctively makes a person more interested. Keep away from vague subject lines that sound boring. Furthermore, if you club statistics with localization (the name of their neighborhood, etc.), the combination will become even more effective.

Incorporate humor 

Nearly everyone loves a good laugh. If you are successful to incorporate just that in your subject line, your open rates, as well as click-through rates, will go notches higher.

However, you need to keep in mind the prospective’s viewpoint. Some people prefer to keep things strictly professional and don’t appreciate the humor. Whereas, younger people tend to connect with jokes or puns and hence, and more willing to hear you out. If your target clients are between the ages of 25 to 40 years, you can take the risk of using a funny subject line. If they are towards their 50s, it’ll be better to stick to a more professional tone and using statistics instead.

Make the subject line sound urgent

Human beings are naturally made up to take action on things that arouse their sense of urgency. No wonder urgency or creating subject lines have a 20% higher open rate. You can give the prospective a deadline to do an important task. In short, make your subject lines sound important and urgent.

Email Subject Don'ts

1. Make false promises

2. Forget the concept of capitalization

3. Use too many exclamation points

4. Make the subject line sound dull

Make false promises

In the world of marketing and sales, you have to deliver on the promises you make. Failing to do so will reduce your goodwill in the market. While resisting to use a catchy subject line which is a lie can be quite difficult but resist you must.

Forget the concept of capitalization

On realizing the bluff, the email recipient may get frustrated enough to even unsubscribe from your email list. A false subject line is never worth losing a customer.

Writing a subject line that is in all caps looks too shouty and is also spammy.

In fact, people prefer an all lower case subject line to an all caps one. Yes, and 85% at that! So, avoid this to elevate your open rate and not end up in the junk folder.

Use too many exclamation points

Using seven or eight exclamation points isn’t a way to create a sense of urgency that was mentioned above. It will actually put them off since people get the impression of being yelled at.

Also, don’t use it a question mark (?) and an exclamation point (!) in the same subject line as the email will end up getting flagged as spam.

Make the subject line boring

A thought-provoking and curiosity-arousing subject line is what you should aim for at all times. It interests the recipient enough to first, open your email and second, read your entire message. The trick remains to not divulge everything in the subject line.

Note: You can use these tips when you're formulating a follow-up email subject line as well.

Building an email list for sending cold email templates for sales

Mass emails involve sending the same email to a large group of people without any customization. But, it can be generic and boring for the recipient due to which it won't that doesn’t really do much to increase sales for the company.

An effective mass email needs to be personalized, yes, but it also needs to be tailor-made and have value for the prospective clients.

An Example of a Good Personalized Cold Email

Image Source: Fresh Sales

Nearly 61% of people prefer to be contacted via email with 40% using mobile phones to read them. Keeping this in mind, you can surely understand why creating an email marketing strategy is important. Also, with our tight schedules and so much to do with so little time, mass emails can help us widen our reach and save time. Sending automated and personalized emails using Anyleads prospecting software can make the entire process really easy and convenient.

Now, you need to make your email marketing strategy efficient and effective. This usually depends on the body of the cold email that you plan to send.

Here’s what you can do to develop the best cold email sample for sales.

• Stick to using only text for the body of the cold email. Using too many graphics such as HD photos, GIFs, and charts can make the email recipient block the sender. If you do want to include some graphics, you can link to them inside.

• Use statistics or numbers in the body of your email. Make sure that they're factually correct.

• Incorporate the use of personalized items such as email signature, company logo, etc to add integrity to your cold mail.

For the textual matter of the cold mail, you’ll need to focus on the values and preferences of the prospective client. Always include a call to action to give the mail recipient a sense of direction so he or she knows how to proceed next.

Take a look at this template, for example:

Image Source: Hubspot

This is a very good example of a cold sales email template. It includes personalization with the prospect’s name and the mention of a significant event in his life. There is common ground between the receiver and the sender as well. And lastly, there is a call to action with a specific time frame to discuss the proposal.

We’ve also mentioned that you need to build an email list that contains properly segmented email addresses. Building email lists can help ensure you have more engagement with your clientele, and before you assume that social media platforms will give you the same engagement, let us stop you right there. Email marketing is actually 40 times better at securing sales and has an average ROI of 122%.

Image Source: Omnicore Agency

Building a mailing list will also help you to understand the needs and choices of your customers. This will make the experience more personalized for your customers.

The fact that a client has chosen to subscribe to your email list indicates his or her interest in your offered products or services. As a result, when you send different emails such as promotional, product announcements, they’ll actually bite! Keep in mind to even formulate a good follow-up email template as well.

Developing a professional signature for your cold email templates

Not a lot of people are aware of the importance of a professional-looking email signature. And if they do, they tend to overdo it incorporating various links to their social media, website, company logo, and a personal photograph.

Don’t get us wrong, every element mentioned above can contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of email signatures – just not all together.

Email signatures can help the prospective get in touch with you so it’s necessary to ensure it makes an impact. Whether you are the CEO, COO, or a manager - email signatures can add value and authenticity to a cold calling email.

Here’s what a good email signature template should include.

• Your name, title, and your company name.

• Correct and recent contact information.

• Links to social media such as LinkedIn, company website, etc. Take care to not include the links of irrelevant social media handles.

• A mobile-optimized signature design. We’ve mentioned the importance of mobile optimization before in the article and we’ll mention it again because that’s just how relevant it’s become in today’s time.

• Attach an appointment link or content promotion link. The former can act as a call to action if they are interested to learn more about your offer product or service. The latter can give the prospective more insight into what you can offer.

Take a look below at two examples of a good email signature.

Image Source: Template

Example 1: Merrie has used her photograph, her contact information, and her social media links. What makes her email signature different is that she has also included a link to a specific product from her shop. This way, if her recipient is interested in the bag, she'll be able to drive traffic to her site.

Image Source: HubSpot

Example 2: Gregory has used his photo along with his company's name. Even though there's a lot of information, the overall presentation is very minimalistic and effective.

Remember to keep these factors in mind when you design your email signature next. Also, you don’t need to add your email address and GIFs to your signature. The aim should be to make it look catchy yet sophisticated at the same time.

The job‘s not over yet - finalize your best cold email template!

A lot of people assume that after sending a single cold email their job is over. It actually starts from that very point!

More often than not you have to send a follow-up email after no response. This is because the prospect may not have had the time to reply to you or may have overlooked it. There’s also a chance that they are not interested at that very moment but, sending a follow up later might intrigue them.

Your follow-up email should be polite, understanding, and help you gain credibility. It should be convincing enough to make the prospective become interested in what you can offer. Follow-up emails can work even after multiple attempts as you never know when the prospect might need your services. Sending up follow-up emails is also necessary when you take into consideration bounce rates, prospective clients’ schedules, email volume and sending times.

Take a look at these two cold email templates, for example:

Template 1:

Image Source: BananaTag

Here, the sender has included an introduction, a short pitch, and a call to action. What makes it unique is the way the sender hints at having ideas to help improve certain areas of the company. This way, the chances of the prospect reverting are higher as this cold email can be of value for him. In a similar manner, you should include points that can be valuable to the prospect.

Template 2:

Image Source: Cole F.

In this template, the subject line is both catchy and relevant. Jenny has done her research on Dave and mentioned a solid point that can arouse his interest. She has ended with a call to action along with a calendar link making it very flexible for Dave to get in touch with her if he wants.

Concluding thoughts

Sending cold emails can really make a difference in this dynamic business world. You can offer your products and services to a lot of people from the comfort of your office. What you need to ensure is to not make it tone-deaf and boring.

Remember to focus the cold mail along with the needs of your prospective clients while validating your company and your service. You can also offer a solution to a problem that you think your client would be facing. Of course, you need to do your research to get an answer to this.

Don’t prolong your cold email template, keeping it simple and crisp. Also, include an actionable phrase giving them direction without sounding dominant or disrespectful. This may sound intimidating at first, but with time, you’ll realize cold emailing is just getting the perfect blend of words and phrases to help you land sales and customers.