Marketing
7 Must-Haves When Developing A Cold Email Marketing Campaign
December 5, 2021
3 minutes
Cold email remains one of the most effective marketing tools you can use to get your company in front of new potential customers. But cold emails are only as good as they are well-written, so you must find what works for your business and optimize your content if you want them to be successful. In this blog, we'll discuss cold emailing best practices to improve the response from your prospects and how you can send cold emails more effectively.
There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021)
More than 306 billion emails are sent and received each day. (Statista, 2021)
Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)
Cold emailing is marketing by sending messages via electronic mail (email). Messages typically include promotional content such as offers or information about products or services available from the sender's company. The term "cold" refers to the fact that recipients of these messages are people who haven't purchased or heard of your products or services before.
With cold emails, if done improperly, you're likely to deal with low response rates, high bounce rates, and high spam complaint rates. But, despite all this, cold email is still one of the most cost-effective ways to generate sales.
To get started, here are seven best practices to think about when optimizing cold email campaigns for your business.
The subject line is the first thing your recipient will see, and it's essential to make sure it stands out. According to a study from Adestra, including a little bit of personalization in an email subject line can improve your cold email open rate by 22.2%
You should then start your cold email with an interesting introduction: a comment related to a recent business update of theirs, or even try to establish rapport with the recipient through shared interests - something that shows you've done your homework and are interested in who they are or what they do.
Your goal is to create curiosity and intrigue, so they want to continue reading.
This is where cold emailing differs from cold calling. With cold calling, you're probably just getting someone on the phone, so they can hear your sales pitch. However, there's no immediate reason for them to be interested in buying or using your product or service with cold emails. So you have to be more creative when highlighting why your message and company are valuable to them.
When describing your product or service, focus on the value it provides rather than its features. For example, rather than saying "our product is the best," try to explain how it will benefit the customer and make their daily life better or improve the efficiency of their business.
Suppose you can show that your product is worth their time and money. In that case, they're more likely to be interested in learning more about it—mention similar companies using the product and the value (through data) that it's provided them.
Timing is everything, especially when it comes to cold emailing. You want to make sure you're sending your emails at the right time so that they have the best chance of being read and responded to.
Our research at Growtoro shows the best days for open rates are Tuesday and Friday, which averages around a 20.9% open rate, while the highest click-to-open rate is on Friday (14.4%).
A potentially helpful cold email hack is sending cold emails, not in chronological order but sorting them by time zone. That way, you may be able to reach recipients when they're on their morning commute—triggering that curiosity we talked about earlier.
When cold emailing, you want to make your cold email as personal as possible by tailoring the content in each cold email to each customer. Make sure that when describing your product or service, focus on how it can benefit them specifically.
If your cold email includes a question, make sure to ask it in a relevant way to the customer. For example, if you cold-email someone in marketing or sales at an eCommerce site, mention the types of products the business carries. As previously mentioned, this will also prioritize the subject line, which will help your email stand out in the sea of emails in their inbox.
You always want to include in cold emails a call-to-action, whether it be asking the recipient for feedback or requesting a meeting. Be specific and direct with your ask, so it's clear what you're asking for and why.
Keeping your email short, to the point, and including a CTA will help you accomplish your cold email goal. However, if you're unsure what call-to-action to include, it's best to ask yourself before sending cold emails: Why am I emailing this person? What do I want out of the cold email interaction?
Incentives with timelines are effective for getting a reply or having your CTA completed. An example of a time-based CTA would be, "If you book a 30-minute intro call within the next two days, I have the approval to waive our $100 onboarding fee if you move forward.”
A strong CTA can help you create an email engine that drives leads to your site, inbox, or calendar.
Finally, cold emailing takes patience and persistence. You need to stay persistent in following up with cold leads until they respond - or just reply with a simple "no thanks." It may take three, four, or even five emails to receive a response.
If you keep them updated on your product's value and benefits, chances are they'll eventually respond - even if it's just to say "no thanks." If they don't, then that cold email address wasn't that valuable, to begin with. You can then cut your losses and move on.
A cold audience takes time to warm up to—just follow cold email best practices, remember your value proposition, keep on cold emailing, and the results will come!
Cold emailing is a great way to stay in contact with cold leads and warm them up, but it is imperative to follow cold email best practices mentioned above to optimize your performance. In addition, it may take three or four cold emails before responses start rolling in - so be persistent!
Finally, always remember to A/B test your cold email content. Try different subject lines to see which gets the most opens and clicks. Test different content to see what resonates with your cold leads the best.
The more data you have, the better equipped you'll be to improve your cold emailing strategy. So, make sure to track your results and analyze what's working and what's not.
Taking the tips above, and implementing them into your cold emailing strategy, can help increase your chances of success when reaching out to cold leads. Just make sure you're staying focused on the recipient's needs and interests and that you're providing value with each email. Persistence is key, so keep at it!
Growtoro is a cold email platform that helps automate cold emailing and remove the most challenging elements. With cold email templates, automation tools, and lead tracking features, Growtoro helps marketers build valid emails lists of prospects and deliver successful campaigns, putting leads in your inbox on autopilot.
Visit our website at www.growtoro.com to learn more about how our highly targeting email lists and proprietary cold emailing solution can help your find and convert already interested leads!
