Sending an email to someone you haven’t interacted with before is known as cold emailing. Think of it like a cold call, only less intrusive. This makes it a win-win for both the sender and receiver.

It’s important to differentiate cold email from shouldn’t be confused with spam emails, where emails are blasted out to numerous addresses without any consideration for relevance or validity. In contrast, cold emails are typically sent to carefully selected potential customers, indicating some prior research to determine their suitability and verify their email address. But the question remains: Do cold emails actually work? And are they worth the effort? The answer, in a nutshell, is yes. 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for lead generation, and with good reason. Cold emailing offers a fantastic avenue for all types of businesses due to its affordability, scalability, and effectiveness. Small businesses, in particular, stand to gain even more from these advantages. Let’s delve into how small businesses can harness the power of cold emailing to fuel their growth through five straightforward steps.

Step 1: Creating Your Email Lists

Get ready for an obvious yet crucial statement: To launch a cold outreach campaign, you need a list of people to contact. At this stage, prioritize target a focused customer persona. Start by outlining the key traits of your most valuable customers. Developing customer personas will make your cold emails more relevant, boosting your chances of receiving a response. There are numerous approaches to lead prospecting, and you can utilize one, several, or all of them. However, the most prevalent method (and the one most small businesses tend to begin with) is manual prospecting.

Manual Prospecting

Manual prospecting can be time-intensive. However, if we disregard the fact that time equals money, it’s free. Moreover, it usually results in high-quality lists with highly qualified prospects. This is because no tool can replicate human judgment when it comes to assessing suitability. Various tools can facilitate manual prospecting, ranging from a simple Google search to Twitter and LinkedIn for focused searches, as demonstrated in the example below.

Image Source Tim Watson, an email marketing consultant at Zettasphere, emphasizes the significance of thorough research based on his own cold emailing experience. Watson notes, “While permission-based emails require relevance, cold emails necessitate personalization. When I tailor my outreach with highly pertinent information gathered through prospect research, I frequently observe open rates exceeding 40%.” And a word of caution: Resist the allure of purchasing data to quickly build your prospect list. Such data is often incomplete, inaccurate, and ineffective. You might also encounter deliverability issues that can harm your domain’s reputation, making it harder to reach inboxes in the future. The bottom line: Allocate sufficient, quality time to this prospecting method and ensure its integration within your customer relationship management system. While a spreadsheet labeled “Cold Prospects 2018” might suffice initially, isolated data quickly loses its value.

Step 2: Mastering the Art of Cold Email Writing

Some articles portray writing cold emails as a breeze, suggesting you can simply tweak a five-year-old template and hit send. Sadly, it’s not that straightforward. Firstly, employing someone else’s template doesn’t equate to crafting your own email. Furthermore, by recycling templates, you risk sending emails your recipients have already encountered. Consequently, your lack of sincerity will be glaringly apparent, leading to your email being instantly deleted (or worse, marked as spam).

In reality, composing a compelling cold email is a skill. While some may find it easier than others, it’s a skill that can be acquired. To begin, familiarize yourself with the following email marketing best practices:

Creating Captivating Subject Lines

The ideal subject line hinges on your email’s content, your objectives, and your target audience. However, as a general guideline, strive to:

• Keep it concise.
• Pique their curiosity.
• Be truthful (avoid misleading recipients into opening your emails). You can learn more about crafting effective cold email subject lines here.

Crafting an Engaging and Persuasive Email Body

Similar to subject lines, the rules here depend on your email’s purpose and the recipient. The more qualified the lead, the easier it should be to grab and maintain their attention. This implies that when sending cold emails to such prospects, you have more flexibility to write longer, more detailed messages. While brevity is still key, the more relevant your product is to the lead, the greater the leeway you have in your writing. But let’s take a step back. Irrespective of the recipient, all your emails should fulfill certain criteria. Each email should:

• Clearly articulate its purpose.
• Answer the question “What’s in it for me?” by showcasing the value proposition for the recipient.
• Minimize the use of first-person pronouns like “I”, “we,” or “our” and instead opt for words like “you” and “yours.”

Guiding Your Recipient Towards the Next Step

Conclude all emails with a closing statement that serves as a call to action, guiding the recipient on the desired next step. The key here is to avoid being overly pushy or presumptuous. Remember, this is a cold email. This individual has never spoken to you and might not even know your company. Would they really be interested in a “quick call” next Tuesday at 2:15? Probably not. However, they might be receptive to receiving more information via email, especially if you can personalize it, such as with a custom demo video. Of course, this depends on the specific nature of the “cold” email. Someone who has visited your website, engaged with your content, and willingly subscribed to your email list might appreciate a phone call at this stage. Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes to determine an appropriate call to action. If you were in their position and received this email, how would you react? What would your desired next step be?

Step 3: Letting Your Email Signature Speak Volumes

Your email signature is a crucial yet frequently overlooked marketing tool that can elevate a good email to an exceptional one. Email signatures are particularly relevant for cold emails because they subtly direct the recipient to more of your content. How? Dynamic email signatures can seamlessly embed media, like YouTube videos, or link to your social media profiles, blog, website, and more. When your team sends out cold emails, ensure they use an email signature management tool to maintain a consistent message. Your signature can promote upcoming events, webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, or any content you choose. Draw inspiration from the signature examples below.

Step 4: Scaling Your Cold Email Strategy

Scaling cold email is essential for most businesses, especially for small businesses that can’t afford to waste resources on unnecessarily labor-intensive campaigns. If your current outreach involves manually sending emails from your inbox and tracking progress in a spreadsheet, you’re not maximizing efficiency or effectiveness. Invest in a tool like Mailshake or Mailchimp to create segmented campaigns, develop effective use of templates (with easy personalization), and schedule follow-up emails:

Example of segmented campaigns in Mailshake (courtesy of eClincher) Email marketing tools also allow you to track open rates, responses, and link clicks. You can even gain insights into which subject lines and templates are performing the best and worst.

Scoring Your Leads

It’s no secret that personalization significantly influences how recipients respond to emails. It’s also widely known that crafting entirely personalized emails for every contact is impractical, especially when scaling. However, some degree of personalization is crucial, so what’s the solution? Lead scoring. Lead scoring helps determine the level of personalization required for an email. Higher scores indicate a greater need for personalization. Common metrics for scoring leads include factors like:

• Industry, job title, and seniority.
• Whether they currently use a competitor’s product.
• Previous interactions with your company. You can then assign scores to leads within an outreach tool and use those scores to decide whether to:
• Utilize simple merge fields for personalization based on name and company.

• Invest time in thorough prospect research to create write a super-personalized email specifically tailored to them (while avoiding any creepy vibes).
• Strike a balance between the two. For instance, use merge tags to automate name and company fields, coupled with one or two personalized references that demonstrate your research.

Step 5: Following Up with Your Prospects

Don’t assume disinterest if someone doesn’t respond to your initial email. It’s too early to remove them from your contact list. Receiving radio silence after your first message is the rule, not the exception. In fact, one study revealed that while 18% of recipients responded to the first email they were sent, 27% replied to the sixth email. Naturally, there’s an art to sending effective follow-up emails.

Avoiding Spam

Allow for longer intervals between follow-up emails. Sending your first follow-up two or three days after the initial email is acceptable. However, you should wait a few weeks between emails five and six.

Steering Clear of Generic Templates

You know the ones:

Image Source Most recipients have seen these countless times and will likely ignore your plea for a response. Keep it simple, human, and personalized whenever possible.

Utilizing Sequences

Avoid manually sending follow-up emails (except perhaps for a select few, highly qualified leads). It’s inefficient when most outreach tools simplify the creation of follow-up sequences.

Cold Emails Can Fuel Your Business Growth – When Integrated with Your Sales Channels

Image Source Your initial email is merely the first step towards closing a sale with a cold contact. You still need to guide the lead through the sales funnel. While your first email shouldn’t always be followed by a phone call, that escalation is necessary at some point to advance the sale. Email excels at opening doors, but it can be impersonal and unsuitable for closing high-value deals. Unfortunately, a common error is isolating email from other stages of the sales process. Only in the smallest companies will the same person send the initial outreach email and finalize the deal in the boardroom. Unless you work for such a company, you can’t afford to have siloed sales channels. Use email as your initial touchpoint and then nurture leads through your sales pipeline using other channels, such as phone calls and in-person meetings. However, don’t rely on different team members to effectively communicate during handoffs. It’s a poor use of their time and highly unreliable. The chances of all relevant information being relayed are slim. So, what’s the solution? While I’d love to offer multiple options, there’s only one that truly works: a CRM. Now, it’s your turn – do you utilize cold emails in your sales process? If not, why not?