You’ve found your way to this cold email guide for a couple of key reasons.
Firstly, you’re aware that cold emailing isn’t a walk in the park.
Secondly, you understand that when executed correctly, cold emailing can yield remarkable results.
Why? Because cold email has proven its effectiveness time and again.
Sure, each email you send competes with dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the average professional’s inbox daily. And yes, you’re reaching out as a stranger amidst a sea of messages from familiar faces or subscribed lists.
However, by approaching cold email outreach with the right blend of intelligence, strategy, and professionalism, you can break through the noise. You can capture recipients’ attention, prompt them to open your emails, and even garner responses. (Did you know the average cold email reply rate hovers around 1% to 5%? Let’s help you surpass that.)
Most importantly, your well-crafted cold emails have the potential to translate into closed deals or achieve whatever other outcomes you’re aiming for.
This guide will teach you how to send effective cold emails. We’ll explain our 10-step method for cold email outreach, which is backed by over 20 years of expertise and research on the 4 billion+ cold emails sent through the GMass platform.
We’ll discuss how to start your first cold email campaign and ways to boost your conversion rates. Whether you’re new to sales or have already taken cold email courses, you’ll find valuable insights here.
Are you ready to make the most of your cold email efforts? Let’s get started!
What Is Cold Email?
A cold email is a message you send to someone you don’t know beforehand. These emails serve a genuine business purpose and offer relevant opportunities to targeted individuals, distinguishing them from spam.
The primary goal of a cold email is similar to that of a cold call: to initiate contact and achieve a business-related outcome. However, cold emailing is often more scalable and easier to execute than cold calling.
Whether you’re reaching out to a CEO for a product demo, networking with industry peers, or establishing connections with potential investors, cold emails can be used for various purposes. The key is to offer value that aligns with the recipient’s interests and needs.
The defining feature of a cold email is the absence of a pre-existing relationship between you and the recipient. Your email must grab their attention, prompt them to open it, and ultimately compel them to respond.
What is Cold Email Marketing?
Cold email marketing involves reaching out to potential leads via email instead of using methods like cold calling or social media messaging.
Although the goal is similar to cold calling—to initiate contact and prompt action—email marketing offers advantages in scalability and reduced intrusiveness. Recipients tend to be more open to receiving a series of cold emails compared to repeated cold calls.
Similar to advertising, the aim of cold email marketing is to introduce your company or product to a targeted audience and encourage them to respond or make a purchase. However, email outreach is often more cost-effective and precisely targeted than traditional advertising methods.
A successful cold email campaign hinges on personalized, relevant content with a clear call-to-action. Additionally, factors like list accuracy, timing, deliverability, testing, and sender reputation can impact reply rates.
While the immediate goal of cold email outreach is to elicit a response, it’s essential to recognize that each email has a broader reach. Every message contributes to brand perception, informs the audience, and lays the groundwork for potential relationships or referrals.
There are various types of cold email campaigns, ranging from B2B sales outreach to public relations, community engagement, brand awareness, networking, job hunting, recruitment, and SEO link building. As a result, each email campaign is unique and tailored to its specific objectives and audience.
Is Cold Email Spam?
When executed correctly, cold email is distinct from spam. While both are forms of unsolicited email, cold emails are targeted, personalized, and relevant, serving a legitimate business purpose and originating from a verifiable source.
However, it’s advisable to consult with a legal expert if you have concerns about compliance with regulations such as the U.S. CAN SPAM Act.
An effective cold email typically includes:
– Your full, genuine name
– Relevant contact details, such as your website, social media profiles, physical business address, and phone number
– Personalized content tailored to the recipient
– A clear and straightforward explanation of why you’re contacting them
– Avoidance of clickbait in the subject line
In contrast, spam emails often:
– Originate from email addresses with little service history, as spammers frequently change IDs and services to evade detection
– Use fake names or company names
– Incorporate clickbait in the subject line
– Lack personalization, often being copied and pasted
– Utilize deceptive language to encourage clicking on suspicious links
– Typically have a commercial intent, attempting to sell a product without prior relationship-building efforts.
The 10-Step Method for Cold Emailing That Works
Let’s delve into the 10-step method for successful cold emailing.
By mastering each of the following areas, your cold emails will transcend the clutter of marketing emails and yield the desired outcomes.
When you adhere to these steps:
1. Your emails will reach targeted recipients at optimal times.
2. The messages will land in recipients’ inboxes and compel them to open.
3. The personalized and relevant content will captivate prospects, while the call-to-action will prompt them to respond.
4. Even if recipients don’t reply immediately, strategic follow-ups will encourage them to do so.
Below are the 10 steps for effective cold emailing.
Self-guided email warmup: Get your email address and domain ready for cold emailing
It might be tempting to jump right into sending cold emails, but doing so without proper preparation can raise red flags with email providers.
If your email activity suddenly spikes from a few messages per day to a large volume of nearly identical emails, it can signal spam-like behavior to email providers. This is especially true if you’re using a brand-new email address or domain.
Before diving into cold email outreach, it’s best practice to warm up your email address. While there are tools available for automated email warming, such as the one previously offered by GMass, it’s important to note that some email providers, like Google, have cracked down on such automated processes.
Instead, you can conduct a self-guided warmup process. This involves gradually increasing the number of emails you send each day, starting with a small volume and gradually ramping up. As recipients engage positively with your emails—by opening, clicking, and replying—email providers like Google will recognize your emails as legitimate and deliver them to recipients’ inboxes rather than spam folders.
Once your email is properly warmed up, you can confidently send cold emails at scale, knowing they’re more likely to land in recipients’ inboxes. Skipping the warmup process increases the risk of your emails being flagged as spam and not reaching their intended recipients.
Other Email Deliverability tools
Take advantage of this collection of complimentary deliverability tools to ensure your emails reach the intended recipients’ inboxes seamlessly.
– Utilize custom tracking domains to avoid sharing a tracking domain with other senders. Moreover, GMass is one of the few platforms that offer free SSL for your tracking domain, enhancing email deliverability by securing your links.
– Employ Spam Solver to assess your campaigns and predict whether they will land in the inbox, spam, or promotions folder. This tool helps refine your email content to improve inbox rates. Additionally, the Inbox, Spam, or Promotions? tool is available for campaigns from any email provider.
– Leverage Email Analyzer to examine the technical aspects of your emails, including SPF, DKIM, blacklists, and the SMTP conversation underlying your messages.
– Explore the Email Deliverability Wizard, which provides insights based on thousands of cold campaigns, allowing you to evaluate your campaign’s performance effectively.
Prospecting and list building: Finding the right leads — and right info about those leads
In the end, the effectiveness of your campaign hinges on your understanding of your target customer. (And then your ability to tailor your pitch to them. However, even the most compelling pitch ever devised would fall flat if your audience targeting is off.)
The primary goal of most outreach messages is to persuade, and the most effective way to do so is by comprehending what matters most to your audience.
Ultimately, individuals are more inclined to engage with content that addresses their needs. (Regrettably, many email marketers and cold emailers overlook this fundamental aspect.)
Determining the recipients of your marketing emails is just as crucial as crafting their content. Once you’ve established your target audience persona (a profile outlining the characteristics of your ideal prospects), you must engage in thorough prospecting to identify individuals whose email addresses match those criteria.
Choosing the right cold email platform
Selecting the ideal cold email platform
Your objective when selecting email marketing software is to locate a platform that:
1. Enhances your efficiency (and certainly doesn’t impede it)
2. Assists in achieving optimal email deliverability rates
3. Offers the necessary cold email features (such as scheduling, follow-ups, etc.)
4. Transparently outlines limits and caps to avoid unexpected campaign restrictions
The “optimal” cold email software varies depending on your specific requirements.
Email Jinny Free Cold Emailing Platform
Introducing Email Jinny, a revolutionary tool designed to streamline your cold email outreach efforts. With Email Jinny, users can send bulk cold emails for free, making it an invaluable resource for businesses, entrepreneurs, and professionals seeking to expand their reach and connect with potential clients or customers. Unlike traditional email marketing platforms that often come with hefty price tags or limitations on the number of emails sent, Email Jinny offers unlimited sending capabilities without any cost, allowing users to scale their outreach efforts without breaking the bank.
Email Jinny boasts a user-friendly interface and intuitive features, making it accessible to users of all skill levels. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, Email Jinny simplifies the process of creating, sending, and tracking cold email campaigns. From personalized email templates to advanced analytics tools, Email Jinny provides everything you need to craft compelling messages, reach your target audience, and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. With Email Jinny, sending bulk cold emails has never been easier or more affordable, empowering users to achieve their outreach goals with ease.
Using a first name
Imagine you’re writing an email to a friend. Would you address them as “Mr. X,” or would you opt for a more friendly “John?” The obvious choice is John.
While you may not have a personal relationship with recipients of cold emails, addressing them by their first name in a sales email can set a warm and personalized tone. Without this personal touch, recipients may feel like just another faceless contact and may disregard your message altogether. People appreciate hearing their own names, and it can have a disarming effect that captures their attention.
GMass goes a step further with its unique first name detection feature. By identifying recipients’ first names from their email addresses, GMass adds a personalized touch to your emails. However, simply including first names isn’t sufficient for effective personalization. You need to go beyond this for maximum impact.
Using other simple mail merge fields
With most (though not all) of the cold emailing platforms you can turn pretty much anything into a mail merge field. That includes data like:
- Last names
- Company name
- Website
- A specific URL (like a blog post or podcast)
- Industry
- Location
- And anything else you might want to reference
Pepper these into your email to help tailor your message to each specific prospect.
A personalized opening line or icebreaker to create a connection to each recipient
When you send emails to people you don’t know, you want to find a way to connect with them. Imagine a friend introducing you to someone they think you’d like to meet – that’s the kind of feeling you want to create.
Most of the time, you won’t have a friend in common. But don’t worry! There are other ways to find shared interests or experiences. This makes your email relevant to them and increases the chances they’ll reply.
Here are some ideas:
- You both worked at the same company, even if at different times.
- You come from the same city.
- You’re in the same industry.
- You heard them speak at a conference.
- You share a hobby or interest.
- You follow their blog.
These things might seem small, but they help your email feel less like a stranger selling something and more like a friendly introduction. There are even special tools that can help you find these connections!
Remember, building a connection is important for starting a conversation with someone new. And who knows, it might lead to something great!
Cold email subject lines: What compels a cold lead to open your email?
Here’s a simpler way to say that:
Start with an eye-catching subject line, but polish it later.
Your subject line is like a movie trailer – it convinces people to open the email. Aim to make it relevant to your email content and grab their attention.
Bonus tip: You can write your email first and then go back to craft the perfect subject line based on what you wrote.
Remember: People won’t open your email if the subject line doesn’t interest them, so give it some thought!
What’s in a good cold email subject line?
A good email subject line is like a mini ad for your email:
- Clear and To the Point: Don’t use tricks to get them to open it – tell them what it’s about!
- Say Their Name (Maybe): Using their name can catch their eye, but mention something else relevant if you don’t know it.
- Highlight the Value: Show them what’s in it for them, especially if you don’t have a mutual friend or famous brand.
- Keep it Short & Sweet: Aim for 6-10 words, so they can read it easily.
Remember, a good subject line makes them curious enough to open your email and see what you have to say!