INTRODUCTION

THE BOTTOM LINE

At the end of the day, remember that you aren’t just sending to sales prospects. You’re messaging people. And no matter what bells and whistles you use in segmenting, personalizing or sending your cold emails, what you say has to matter to them.

Flash and glamour won’t make the difference. You don’t need expensive tools to make cold emailing work. Engaging with your sales prospects as real people, with real needs and pain points, is what’s going to get you results.

Ultimately, a stellar cold email is based on creating a connection, and that usually means that a hard sell approach isn't the way to go. People get bombarded by sales emails, so being too blatant isn't going to get their attention.

Instead, focus on what you can offer them, not what they can do for you. Ask them to contribute to a blog piece or a chance to be interviewed or focus on the opportunity to interview for a great job. Anything that shows them that they personally benefit from responding can do the trick, so keep that mindset when you write the email.

THE ANATOMY OF A GOOD COLD EMAIL

FUNDAMENTALS

Cold email copy differs from ad copy in a few ways, but the fundamentals are still the same:

• Focus on your “headline” (in this case, your subject line and opening line)
• Make your ask as compelling as possible
• Use clear language that’s easy to understand
• Match your tone and voice to your audience and your brand’s personality - Don’t be afraid to inject a little personality into your cold emails.
• Make your message scannable. Incorporate line breaks, bolded/italicized fonts, and lists until it’s easier to read.
• Build credibility - People want to do business with people they trust. That can be tough pull-off in a cold email that’s as short as three sentences.

BUILDING CREDIBILITY

In Your Email Signature

One opportunity you have is to include content you’ve published in your email signature. Having authoritative resources backing up any claims you make in your message instantly builds credibility.

Share Successful Past Experiences

For example, by emphasizing that you’ve approached similar prospects with the same offer in the past and had great results with it. It’s an effective use of social proof to minimize the friction of moving forward.

If you aren’t sure you’re communicating your point clearly, a second (or third, or fourth) set of eyes never hurts.

Avoiding Killing Credibility

Make an effort to avoid phrases that can kill your credibility, such as "hopefully" or "if that makes sense," so that you establish yourself as a confident authority on the matter. Here are some examples

• "Hopefully. . ." — Don't hope. It marks you as unsure.
• "I'll try." — You can either do something, or not do something. Don't "try." Be sure of your ability to succeed.
• "If that makes sense." — No. Don't leave this up in the air. Your job is to ensure that something makes sense.
• "Let me get back to you on that." — A statement like this may seem harmless, but it could make you look like you don't know as much as you should.
• "Honestly. . ." — If you qualify your statement with the word "honestly," it might make someone wonder if you're not being honest at other times.
• "We are literally going to knock your socks off." — Learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively."
• "On the bright side. . ." — If they think you're trying to minimize the bad news in order to save face, they'll remember it.
• "This is the best thing ever!" — But if you're going to make a grandiose statement, especially when you can't prove it, don't be surprised if you get tuned out in a hurry.
• "We maintain our product to the highest standards." — This is an unnecessarily vague statement. Again, you need to be able to back this up.
• "We will actualize a plan to synergistically create. . ." — Nobody wants to hear your buzzwords. Talk to us in plain English.
• "The product was involuntarily incapacitated." — Not buzzwords, per se, but formal or technical jargon will make our eyes glaze over. Don't talk over someone's head.

WRITING GOOD SUBJECT LINES

Go Short

One variable you can play with as you write your subject lines is length. According to Hubspot, subject lines with 30 or fewer characters have an above average open rate.

You won’t know for sure if this statistic applies to your unique audience until you test it. Include a few short subject lines in your future tests to see if it holds true.

Get Personal

Hubspot reports that personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened.

If your mailing service supports it, test different personalization options in your cold sales emails.

Use Urgency And Exclusivity

In the case of cold emails, subject lines that create a sense of urgency and exclusivity can result in a 22% higher open rate - that is, if you use them right.

WARNING:

• Don’t fake it. If your “exclusive” offer is clearly open to everyone, or your “urgent” offer can be claimed at any time, you’ll lose credibility as a sender.
• Don’t over-do it. Even if your urgency and exclusivity are legit, stressing them in every message you send diminishes their value.

Be Specific And Useful

This one’s just common sense. Do you open messages that don’t seem like they’ll meet your needs? Do you care about an email if it’s clear you’ll gain little from opening it?

• Does my subject line convey a specific benefit?
• Is it clear why this message will be useful to the recipient?
• Would I open this message if it was sent to me?

Don’t Oversell

Don’t compromise your credibility for quick email gains. If you over-promise (or worse, make entirely false promises), you won’t just lose potential responses. You’ll lose the likelihood of ever doing business with the recipient in the future.

Nobody wants to be sold something right away in a cold email — a lot of spammers tend to do this and you don't want to be associated with them.

Try to introduce yourself and do a soft pitch, focusing more on the prospective than yourself.

—True Film Production's Stanley Meytin

Don’t Fool Recipients

For similar reasons, skip the the fake “RE:” or “FW:” subject lines. They might get you an open, but they won’t get you a click once people realize they’ve been fooled.

OPENING LINES

The two most important lines in your email are the subject line and the first line of the email. Like peanut butter and jelly, your subject line and first line belong together. And if you pair them well they can work wonders for your open rates.

— Colin Nederkoorn of Customer.io

A Bad Example

The following is an example of a bad cold email opening line, shared by Interseller’s Jonathan Grana:

Here’s what’s wrong with it:

• The Focus Is On The Sender — In this example, John has no reason to care who Amy is or what company she represents.
• The Opening Line Isn’t Clear — The best opening lines get to the point - and they get there quickly. In the example above, we’re already two sentences in, and it isn’t clear why Amy’s reaching out or what the value she’s offering is.

A Good Example

Much better. With the mistakes above fixed and its new focus on John’s pain point, Amy’s message hits home and creates immediate interest in her company’s services.

EMAIL BODY COPY

The final component of a cold email is your body copy; basically, the main text of the email.

Just because your subject line and opening line are two of the most important parts of a cold email doesn’t mean you get to slack off here. Great subject and opening lines will get you opens. Body text that delivers on the promises they’ve made gets you wins.

Write Like A Human

Don’t try to write like a perfect sales robot. Be genuine. Try to make a real connection by writing like a human being.

If you aren’t sure where or how to get started, use the templates above in Lesson #1. But don’t copy them word for word. Use the principles underlying each structure, but translate them into your own language to create a message that’s uniquely yours.

Personalize Your Body Copy

Personalization isn’t just for your subject or opening lines.

Sending mass emails because it’s easier for you is a recipe for low response rates. That’s because, according to data gathered by the Harvard Business Review, people are far more motivated to help others when they feel uniquely qualified to do so.

Skip language like, “Are you the decision maker?” Instead, use personalization to incorporate everything from unique CTAs, to pain points, to benefits descriptions and more.

Get To The Point

Don’t waste people’s time. Share only the information that’s necessary. Leave recipients anxious to email you to find out more.

Another great rule of thumb comes from Joanna Wiebe: only send emails when there is more value for the recipient than you.

If you can’t confidently clear that hurdle, wait to email until you can.

PERSONALIZATION

Subbing in a first-name fill field is personalization 101. The most successful cold emailers know that you can do so much more to customize your messages - even if you’re still using a mass email sender.

So beyond ‘FNAME’ replacements, what are some of your best options? Give any of the following a try:

Compliment A Piece Of Content Developed By Prospect

Look for recent guest posts, LinkedIn Pulse articles or other pieces of content developed by the people you’ll be reaching out to. Then, personalize your cold emails with a compliment on the specific content piece.

Here’s an example template of what we’re talking about:

Although this particular template is asking for a guest post, you can see how similar messages could be setup to encourage sales connections.

Personalize Cta Based On Prospect’s Buyer Persona

You can personalize more than individual form fields. If your email sender supports dynamic content, you can automatically adjust your entire body copy, CTA or other element based on data stored in your customer list.

Personalize Your Demo Or Landing Page

Think outside the email box. Personalize your messages by including custom demos or by redirecting prospects to landing pages that have been tailored to their specific needs.

Proposify’s Kyle Racki shares a cold email example from FullStory that included a 30-second demo interaction (which he - unsurprisingly - called the best cold email he’d ever received):

Personalize Who You Send From

If you’re a solo entrepreneur, you’ll send from yourself. But if you’re part of a larger company with multiple sales reps, one of the best things you can do to personalize your messages is to ensure they come from the right person.

Take one of Hubspot’s lead magnet follow-up emails as an example. Initially, the click-through rate for the email from the company was 0.73%.

But, when the email was altered so that it was sent from someone on HubSpot’s marketing team, the click-through rate jumped to 0.96%, generating 292 more clicks.

COPYWRITING FORMULAS

OVERVIEW

We’ve pulled together a bunch of copywriting formulas to help you write all your copy faster and with greater likelihood of success. You should be using copywriting formulas whenever you write anything. They eliminate the guesswork that makes a lot of bad copy bad copy.

I’ve covered seven possibilities below, though this list is by no means exclusive. Choose the structure that seems like the best fit for your target prospect:

• If prospects aren’t likely to have heard of you before, use a structure that leads with attention-getting (such as the AIDA structure)
• If you know your prospects are experiencing a significant pain point your product or service solves, the BAB or PAS structures may be better fits

FORMULAS TO USE

But You Are Free (BYAF)

You’re looking at one of the most effective persuasion techniques out there. Make a request and then tell your prospect “but you are free” to do whatever they’d like.

Why it works: If you give someone a way out, it will double the chance that they say yes. This practical persuasion tactic is supported by 42 psychological studies on over 22,000 people.

Star-Chain-Hook (SCH)

• Star — The big idea
• Chain — A series of facts, sources, reasons, and benefits
• Hook — The call to action

Introduce your idea with an attention-grabbing opening. Create a chain of supporting facts, sources, and benefits to build credibility and transform attention into interest. Then, hook them with a call to action that makes it easy to take the desired next step.

Why it works: The key element in this cold email formula is the chain. By introducing proof points that lend credibility to your argument, you have a better shot at convincing someone to follow through.

Star-Story-Solution

• Star — The main character in your email. It could be you, your prospect, a product, etc.
• Story — Talks about how the star faces the same problem your market does.
• Solution — An explanation of how the star wins in the end.

Why it works: When we read a story, our brain acts as if we’re living it.

That’s because the brain does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life. In each instance, the same neurological regions are stimulated.

Used in a cold email, stories help your reader quickly wrap their head around the idea you’re to sell them. You’ll engage their attention and create an emotional connection that makes it easier to reply.

The Reader’s Digest Model

In 1961, legendary copywriter John Caples analyzed Reader’s Digest to find its secrets for hooking readers in the opening paragraph.

He found that the most-successful articles:

• Are fact-packed
• Are concise
• Are specific
• Contain few adjectives
• Arouse curiosity

Why it works: A compelling introduction makes the difference whether your email gets a reply or passed over.

The 3-B Plan (BBB)

• Brevity — Keep it short
• Blunt — Get to the point
• Basic — Keep it simple

This cold email technique is similar to the Reader’s Digest model, giving the reader a clear sense of who you are and what you want from them. He adds this key element: Be blunt.

Being blunt doesn’t mean not being persuasive, it simply means getting to the point without trying to be clever. Stories and jokes are essential for other forms of writing, but NOT for emails. Get to the incentive on why the other person should respond right away.

— Gregory Ciotti of Help Scout

Why it works: Studies show that shorter emails result in quicker response time. If you make someone actually think about what you’re asking, it’s just another item on their to-do list.

Awareness-Comprehension-Conviction-Action (ACCA)

• Awareness — Present the situation or problem.
• Comprehension — Describe how it will impact them.
• Conviction — Create desire by explaining how your solution fixes the problem.
• Action — Ask for a response.

Why it works: This method may seem similar to AIDA, but the “Comprehension” and “Conviction” aspects drive home the importance of clarity and while suggesting certainty.

Attention-interest-desire-action (AIDA)

This copywriting classic involves four steps:

• Attention — Get your reader’s attention quickly
• Interest — Explain why you think your offering will interest your prospect
• Desire — Grow their desire for your offering
• Action — Show them how to take advantage of it

The 3-Sentence Format

Basically, the ideal cold sales email should have three sentences:

• The introduction
• A description of what you’re selling
• Your ask

You might not be able to get your message down to three sentences alone, especially if your product or service is complex. Do your best by weeding out anything extra you’ve added that doesn’t meet one of these three needs.

Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

The before-after-bridge aims to get prospects envisioning exactly how your solution will make their lives better.

This is done in three steps:

• Before — Describe what your reader’s life is like now
• After — Help them picture how your solution makes it better
• Bridge — Show them how you’ll take them from before to after

Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

Another structure to test, the problem-agitate-solve cold email template works by tapping into your prospect’s pain points:

• Problem — Describe the current problem your prospect is facing
• Agitate — Emphasize the pain of the problem
• Solve — Share how you’ll help them solve it

Praise-Picture-Push (PPP)

Who doesn’t love a compliment? Get on your prospects’ good side from the start with the PPP format:

• Praise — Compliment recipients on a recent achievement or milestone
• Picture — Paint a picture of how your solution will help the prospect achieve even more
• Push — Encourage them to take action on your ask

FOLLOW UP EMAILS

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I SEND FOLLOW UPS?

Ten follow up emails might feel excessive to you. It does to me - I tend to stop after five.

That said, there are as many opinions on the topic as there are senders of cold emails. To help you find the follow up schedule that’s right for you, I rounded up suggestions from three top salespeople:

If you reach out completely cold and never had any interaction with the other person, follow up a maximum of six times. You really don't have the type of relationship that gives you permission to do much more than that.

If you already had some kind of interaction and that interaction was not a clear, definite NO, then follow up as long as it takes to get a response. Never stop till you get a response."

— Steli Efti, close.io

"Persistently emailing your prospects with a valuable and interesting message ultimately overshadows the effect of timing, especially if you vary the timing of emails throughout the campaign."

— Heather Morgan, Salesfolk

In one example, Heather describes her company’s engagement with tech startup Ambition. To improve response rates to cold emails, her team devised a sequence of eight follow up messages for each of the team’s two buyer personas.

The best performing message? #6B. According to Heather:

While email #6's performance may partially be a result of how persuasive and effective this particular email copy was, this coincides with the classic sales lesson that persistence works for email."

— Heather Morgan, Salesfolk

Eric invested in follow up emails after realizing his cold email response rates were, in his words, “an abysmal 3%.” After adding a 5-step automated follow up sequence to his cold emails, he was able to achieve a 83% open rate and a 13% response rate.

Sometimes you just need a swift kick in the butt to get you back on track. After auditing our processes, adjusting our templates and automating our follow-ups, we got the results that we were looking for.

— Eric Siu, Growth Everywhere

Here’s a general rule of thumb to keep in mind: You’re representing your brand with every message you send. Be persistent, but not so aggressive that you diminish your brand’s value.

METHODS FOR WRITING GOOD FOLLOW UPS

Now that you know you need a follow up email (or, even better, a series of them), what should you put in them?

While there’s no universal solution for follow up success, there are a few principles to keep in mind that’ll steer you in the right direction:

Add More Value

If you didn’t get an initial response, try something like “Still interested in having this call? By the way, I thought of you with these two articles.”

Don’t assume that people aren’t interested in talking to you, just because they didn’t respond to your first message. Assume they’re busy, and that it’s up to you to figure out what value they need to see in order to engage.

Dial Down Your Ask

If you initially asked to setup a free consultation call, test whether or not you have better luck asking for a lead magnet opt-in, for example.

Test A Different Pitch Or Cta Entirely

Maybe your prospect isn’t looking for a new SaaS provider at the time. But they may still be interested in your bespoke consulting services.

Get them on the line for one product or service, and selling others becomes easier once they’re onboard.

Avoid Filler Expressions

“Hey, I just wanted to…” or “I just wanted to follow up…” won’t get you responses.

Follow the same suggestions above for keeping your email copy tight and focused on your prospect’s needs - not on your need to make a sale.

Be Funny, Not Gimmicky

Here’s an example of a funny follow up message, courtesy of Steli Efti:

And here’s an example of a gimmicky follow up message, thanks to NextGen Leads:

This isn’t grade school. Don’t ask your prospects to take multiple choice quizzes or to check “yes” or “no” on whether they like you.

The line between funny and gimmicky is a difficult one to walk. If you aren’t confident your follow ups will be received as clever, not creepy, stick to messages that are purely professional.

Test, Test And Test Some More

Test as many variables in your follow up emails as you do your initial cold messages. In particular:

• Test different templates
• Test different message formats
• Email at a different time of day
• Test the number of follow up messages you send
• Continually iterate your follow up sequence to increase your ultimate odds of success.

DEEP PROSPECT RESEARCH

The more advanced types of personalization described above are only possible if you have comprehensive data on your prospects.

Your success, therefore, comes down to your research and your data. Here are some important data points:

Name (first and last) Location Birthday Favorite Color (or animal, or any favorite) Interests (products, areas you email about, etc) What they’ve purchased What they’ve searched for

Title Company Time at current position Decision-maker status Social profiles Content publishing history

For even more ideas, check out the VentureBeat graphic below describing the data points most commonly used by marketers for email personalization:

Segmentation

Cold emails are often sent on an individual, case-by-case basis. However, you can scale up your sales outreach by mass emailing prospects - if you get your segmentation right.

The key to proper cold email segmentation is to choose groups of prospects that are large enough to justify the time associated with setting up mass email campaigns, but small enough that prospects aren’t alienated by a generic message.

That’s especially important, given that Janrain found 74% of people get frustrated when they receive content that has nothing to do with their interests.

Marketers and salespeople have only themselves to blame. Research gathered by VentureBeat found that over 60% of marketers target fewer than 15 segments. Half target fewer than 10.

The following are just a few segmentation options to get you started. Add others based on information gleaned from past campaigns and from ongoing research into your prospects’ backgrounds.

• Segment by Content — What topics and media have they engaged with (if any)? What media formats do they prefer? How have they chosen to receive content?
• Segment by Product — Which of your products have they demonstrated interest in? Have they purchased past products? Have they visited your website’s pricing page?
• Segment by Persona — What do you know about their attitudes, goals, needs, and persuasion preferences?
• Segment by Life Cycle Stage — Have they heard of your company before? Are they a startup, young company, mid-stage enterprise or established company? Are they a small firm or enterprise institution?

WARMING UP YOUR PROSPECTS

Ultimately, you’ll find your life a lot easier if the people you’re cold emailing aren’t really cold at all.

Imagine that, before sending a sales outreach message, you took any of the following actions:

• Following them on social media
• Sharing or liking their social content
• Joining the LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook Groups they’re a part of
• Commenting on their blog posts
• Sharing their blog posts
• Mentioning them in one of your blog posts
• Emailing their content to your list (and alerting them to that fact)
• Sending them an email with a compliment (and no sales pitch)
• Leveraging a connection for an introduction
• Congratulating them on a recent promotion or speaking gig
• Paying for their time on clarity.fm
• Following them on Angel List or Product Hunt
• Connecting at an in person event

Now, not only do you have more of the data you need to make your sales emails as personalized as possible, they aren’t really “cold” anymore. Your prospects will be more likely to open your messages, simply because they already know and have a relationship with you.

Obviously, engaging extensively with all of your prospects before sending a sales message won’t make sense in every case. Don’t pay for a conference ticket or blow hundreds on clarity.fm calls for every long-shot prospect you can think of. Instead, save your energy for the big-ticket opportunities that are most likely to result in sales or long-term partnerships.

TOOLS TO USE

Writing Tools

• A/B testing — Again, more to come on email testing later. For now, check and see if your email provider offers an internal A/B testing tool. Don’t worry if it doesn’t. There are manual processes you can use instead.
• Headline Analyzer by Coschedule — Before you send a cold email, run your subject line through CoSchedule’s free tool for guidance on making it even more effective.
• AppSumo’s Kickass Headline Generator
• AppSumo’s list of 51 Headline Formulas to Skyrocket Conversions (And Where to Use Them)
• Upworthy’s 25 headline process template — Upworthy’s Slideshare presentation that describes its headline creation process has great ideas for getting started.
• Headline Hacks — SmartBlogger’s free Headline Hacks report is intended for blog post creation, but offers great tips on writing compelling headlines that can be applied to email as well.

Segmentation

• Use Hunter.io’s Tech Lookup tool to find companies using your competitors’ software
• Use FullContact’s Company API to return key contacts based on company name or URL and Segment this data using FullContact’s company size or founded date data
• Validate the email addresses of your segmented prospects using VoilaNorbert