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Email is a cheap, simple, flexible, and fast tool for business communication. Many marketers consider cold email a powerful outreach strategy to enhance sales prospecting and an ideal approach for lead generation.
Curious to know more about cold emailing and how it works? You came to the right article. ✔️
In this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at all about cold emails, such as definition, structure, best practices, and more.
So, stay tuned. 👀
Why Do Businesses Use Email?
Though social networks and messengers have become famous nowadays, email is still a well-known method of connecting professionals and companies.
Many businesses prefer to send messages only through email and are unsatisfied with connecting people with WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or other messengers and apps.
We should not forget that email is the most official way of business communication. Some of the reasons behind the fame of email in the business and marketing world are: 👇
- It’s so cost-effective. It is better to say that email is free if we ignore the insignificant cost we pay for an internet connection.
- It’s simple to use. Just sign up and create an email for yourself or your company. Then you can easily send and receive files and messages.
- It’s very quick. As soon as you click on send, the receiver gets your message. It is an instant method of communication with no pause and no latency.
- It’s savable. Any email message you send and receive can be stored and saved easily for reference. If you want to check an old email related to many years ago, you can effortlessly search in your email box and find it.
- It’s accessible. You can access your email just by having a PC or smart cellphone and an internet connection. It does not matter where you are located or what time it is!
- It’s so beneficial. Email is a useful digital tool for online communication. It’s as advantageous for the planet as it is paperless!
- It’s highly scalable. Email offers high scalability. You can send her/his message to as many recipients as she/he likes all at once.
If you’re a business person or a marketer, you may have heard the name COLD EMAIL. In the following, we’ll talk more about this email marketing method.
So, let’s read on. 📖
What Is a Cold Email?
A cold email is an unsolicited email sent to a receipt without prior relationship or contact. ❄️
It could also be defined as the email equivalent of cold calling. Cold emailing is a subset of email marketing and differs from transactional and warm emailing.
In other words, the initial email sent to a receiver who has no prior connection with the sender to promote a brand, products, or services or for other purposes, such as polls and surveys, is known as cold email.
It’s a valuable channel for businesses to reach out to prospects and future customers, generate new leads, and make people aware of their products and services.
However, obeying some email marketing rules for writing a cold email is so important, and if you don’t know how to write one, it may even be troublesome for your business!
📌 Want to learn about the latest email marketing rules? Please follow our article.
Strong and Proven Cold Emailing Structure [How to Create a Cold Email]
Cold email is the backbone of an email marketing campaign. A new study reveals that approximately 182 million cold emails are sent worldwide in a single year by businesses and individuals.
It’s important to know that the success of your cold email depends largely on the strong and proven structure you use to create it. If you follow this formula, it will help you get more replies & engagement and reach your target audience.
Here’s the tried & tested cold email structure as follows: 👇
- Personalized and strong subject line: This is like the headline of an article. For example, “How [Your competitor] achieved a 40% click-through rate increase.”
- Salutation or greeting: Informal greetings, like “Hey or Hi +[First Name],” and formal greetings, like “Hello +[First Name].”
- Compelling intro or opening line: The more genuine the opening line, the better your first impression.
- Middle section or story: This is a mix of a deep understanding of the prospect (specific pain point), value proposition, and proof/results for your brand credibility.
- Clear Call-to-Action (CTA) or closing line: The purpose of the email ending, or CTA, is to explain what the next step is.
- Neat-looking signature: The last component of cold emails is the signature. Depending on your campaign, this may include your first name, job title, link to your company’s name, and social media URL.
6 Magic Tips for Cold Email Success
Wondering how to write a winning cold email that actually gets responses? Let’s get into cold email best practices. These are based on the results of millions of successful cold email campaigns, so you can discover exactly what works.
Tip #1. Write a Strong Subject Line That Generates Curiosity!
Highlight cold email subject lines with numbers.
One of the best solutions to generate curiosity is to include numbers in cold email subject lines.
It’s interesting to know that numbers have the power to convince the audience. As a matter of fact, they convey something that words may not be able to do. In addition, numbers create credibility.
According to a study of 1.2 million cold email subject lines, subject lines that include numbers have up to 45% higher open rates than others.
Tip #2. Shorter Cold Emails Are More Efficient than Longer Ones!
It’s worth mentioning that you should keep cold emails as short and to the point as possible. People usually don’t like to read long messages when they don’t know the sender.
According to recent research, it’s highly recommended that you write email messages in 100 words or less. Cold emails with 70 to 100 words receive more responses.
A brief cold email that states your main goals with a catchy opening line or introduction can make a significant impact on readers.
Tip #3. Try to Put Yourself in Their Place!
When you see an email in your inbox, what do you think of it? What drives you to open and respond to an email?
Well, if you put yourself in the shoes of the email recipient, answers will be simple.
Most people tend to open emails that are not advertising and are completely relevant to them. Also, we all prefer to read emails that are easy to understand and directly tell us what they have to offer.
So, give the recipients what they want and need. Avoid difficult, vague, and complicated words. Always keep in mind the question: Why should people read my cold email?!
They will read it only when your email meets their needs. Try to clearly show them what you can do for them.
Tip #4. Use Only One CTA Button Per Email
If you really want to increase your conversion rate, you need to have a clear and visible CTA.
According to Campaign Monitor, emails with one CTA receive 371% more clicks than cold emails with multiple CTAs.
When you design a cold email with multiple CTA buttons and links to click & take action, the likelihood of recipients ignoring it is extremely high, based on the above study.
Hence, don’t confuse the audience by including too many CTA buttons and focus on sticking to a clear & precise CTA.
💡 Bonus tip: To improve cold email conversion rates, try personalizing your CTA based on the recipient’s pain points. An analysis and comparison of 330,000 CTAs in a 6-month period by HubSpot shows that the conversion rate of personalized CTAs is 202% better than non-targeted CTAs.
Tip #5. Validate Yourself or Your Company
When you’re connecting with a new person who has no information about your business, it’s highly recommended to show her/him that your company is credible and valid. Your prospects should know that they can trust you.
Tip #6. Create a Database of Healthy & Relevant Email List
Have you ever heard people say, “The big money is in your email list?” We believe this may be roughly true. That said, the success of email marketing lies in creating long-term and stable relationships with potential customers.
Professional marketers have found a 760% increase in their email marketing revenue from building email lists and using email campaigns.
That said, for cold email campaigns to be successful, you need to acquire a comprehensive database of qualified lead email lists.
The best solution for accessing targeted and verified email lists is to use reputable email extraction and verification tools such as CUFinder.
CUFinder is a B2B lead generation and data enrichment platform with the largest B2B database, as well as the best free email verifier and finder across the globe.
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- Company and person email extraction
- Free LinkedIn extension for emails
- Unlimited free email verification
- Highly data accuracy rate (98%)
- Local and international data coverage
- Compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and anti-spam laws
- Free trial and affordable & flexible prices
- Various tools for email extracting
- Seamless CRM integration and API
- Updated email lists and complete email database
Don’t know how to use CUFinder? Sign up for a free trial now!
📌 Have you enjoyed this post so far? If so, you may want to learn more about cold emails and find out where to start writing one. Check out our post on “Cold Email Guide.”
Cold Calling vs. Cold Emailing- What Sets Them Apart
Basically, cold emails and cold calls are efficient techniques to start a conversation with a new prospect that you’ve had no contact with before.
A basic and main difference between them is in the type of communication medium used, cold calling is through phone conversations and cold email is through sending unsolicited Electronic Messages (EM).
Cold emailing makes it easy to scale and personalize, while cold calling allows you to connect directly with your potential customers from the get-go. Accordingly, both cold emails and cold calls have their own advantages.
Since the communication is done in real-time, cold calls get faster responses than cold emails. Besides, cold calling is more disruptive to the audience compared to cold emailing.
Cold Email vs. Spam
Spams use fake names and even do not write contacts as CTA. They are sent to several people without personalization. Spam emails do not lead the readers to the conversation. While cold emails contain contacts and the real name of the writers.
Cold emails are not annoying, while spam emails are!
Keep in mind that there is a time gap between your emails, and do not send many of them continuously with no pause. If you do so, your emails will become spam!
In a Nutshell
Cold emails can be an effective and valuable source for businesses to establish strong relationships with prospective clients and generate fresh leads.
Remember by focusing on using a powerful and proven cold email structure, as well as following the best practices mentioned in this article, you can guarantee the success of your cold email campaigns.
If you found this article helpful, please comment below with your thoughts or experiences regarding cold email, and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more updates and insights.
FAQs
1. What is cold vs warm email?
In a cold email, you’ve never connected with them before, and they don’t know about you. While in a warm email, you’ve succeeded in connecting with prospects, and they know you. A winning cold email can lead to a warm email in the sales funnel.
2. What are the downsides of sending cold emails?
This strategy has its own drawbacks, such as low reply rates, spam filters, not getting immediate attention, and a lack of compliance with anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act.
3. What are the various use cases of cold email?
You can use cold email for job hunting, sales prospecting, lea
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