How to Craft the Perfect Cold Email, and Get a Response

In the digital age, reaching out to new professional contacts via email has become second nature. However, for many professionals, crafting this initial email can be a challenge. Extending a job offer or interview invitation is one thing; connecting with a new contact via email is another.

Cold emailing – reaching out to someone you don’t know personally and haven’t worked with before – is even trickier. For some people, sending cold emails feels like sending a message into the void: few ever receive them and almost no one reads them if they do.

But that doesn’t need to be the case! In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to cold emails, share tips on how to craft your own personal message and point you in the right direction for some helpful resources on effective cold emails.

What is a Cold Email?

A cold email is a message that’s sent to someone you don’t know personally. Most of the time, you’ll be reaching out to fellow professionals — maybe someone with the same job title, or someone who works in the same industry. Cold emails are different from cold calling in that cold calls are typically made over the phone.

In fact, the average American worker sends and receives 126 emails per day!

Source: Radicati

Why Craft a Cold Email?

Cold emails aren’t just about getting a response. They’re about making connections with the people you’ll need to work with. Cold emails allow you to build relationships with people you don’t know so that you can create a lasting impact. More importantly, cold emails can also help you identify new leads, spark more conversations, establish new partnerships and close more sales. What’s more, cold emails don’t have to be awkward. They are a great way to introduce yourself and let others know what you have to offer.

With that said, when done incorrectly, cold emailing can be both annoying and borderline spammy. However, it shouldn’t be frowned upon as it’s a successful marketing and sales tactic that put simply, works. Email marketing has the single best ROI of all digital marketing tactics. Its ROI is better than paid ads, social media spending, and PR.

This is from WriteCream:

More: Growth List cold email statistics

Crafting Your Message: The Basics

Before you can craft a perfect cold email, you’ll need to do a little research on the recipient. Finding the right contact can make or break your cold email, so be sure to find the right person to send your message to.

First things first: know the correct title. You don’t want to send your message to the CEO if you really need to find someone in Human Resources. It’s best to use the company directory to find the right contact. Be sure to make note of the person’s name, position, and the name of their company. This way, you can address your email properly, even if you don’t know the name of the person who will receive your message!

Once you have the basic details of the right person, you can start to craft your cold email message. Keep your message as short and sweet as possible, but include the following:

• A warm introduction: Let the person know who you are and why you sent the email. While you don’t necessarily want to give away the fact that you’re job searching, you do want to make sure your contact knows you aren’t a spammer.
• A request: Ask the recipient for a virtual coffee or a meeting. You can also ask for advice or a referral.
• A call to action: Tell the recipient what you want from them, and ask for their response.
• Finally, you want to make sure your email is professional, grammatically correct, and error-free. You don’t want to send a shoddy email when you’re trying to make a good impression on someone!

Now, there are many different cold email strategies to follow when crafting your message. This is where testing, testing, and more testing will come into play as you hone in your message based on the product being offered and the person being reached out to.

How to Find the Right Contact

There are a few ways to find the right person to send your cold email to. The first is to use a search engine like Google or Bing to find the company’s website. From there, you can often find a list of employees and department heads.

Alternatively, you can also use social media to find that information. You can also use a specialized search engine, like Hoovers or ZoomInfo. Using a combination of these search engines will help you to find a variety of people to contact. You can also use an online directory, like LinkedIn, to find the right contact.

Now, while finding contacts isn’t exactly a complicated science it is time-consuming and the tools required to do this at scale can cost $1000’s per month.

This is where Growth List excels. Each week we save you 16+ hours of research and send you 400+ quality leads, straight to your inbox. Our leads come from recently funded startups so you know they are flush with cash and ready to spend on growth. This done-for-you lead service can save you both time and money – and in recent lead gen trends, the data shows that better lead generation is one of the most important elements of a successful outreach campaign.

How to avoid landing in SPAM inboxes

If you’ve sent a few cold emails, you’ve probably noticed some of them never get a response. While some people may simply be too busy to reply to everyone, others may have deleted your email without reading it. That’s because many email services, like Gmail, automatically move emails they consider spam to the spam folder.

To avoid this, make sure your emails are as professional as possible. That includes:

• Using a legitimate email address. Don’t send your cold email from a fake email address like [email protected].
• Using correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This may sound obvious, but mistakes are common in cold emails.
• Take the time to check your email for errors before sending it.
• Including a relevant subject line. Make sure your subject line is specific without being spammy. It should clearly tell readers what the email is about

These are basic tips. Quickmail has 12 awesome anti-SPAM strategies that they go through in more detail that will help you avoid landing in SPAM folders.

Final Words

Cold emails can be an effective way to reach out to new contacts and build relationships and deliver amazing ROI’s. Email is a staple of business life.

We might not always like the emails that land in our inboxes but they continue to do so because email marketing works. Cold email is flexible and can be sent at any time during the day or week, which makes it easy to reach out to new people.

With a little research and preparation, you can craft a cold email that will catch the attention of your new contacts and make a good first impression.