Emails remain an effective strategy to generate leads amidst various online marketing platforms available today. This online communication method is widely used by billions of people worldwide, making it a dominant channel for marketing.
Cold emailing is one of the email marketing strategies that businesses continue to adopt. It is simple, scalable, and effective in generating business leads without shelling out intensive labor and huge investment money.
What is cold email and how does it work? This article is a cold email guide you can use to impact your business positively.
What is Cold Email Marketing?
Cold email marketing is a direct approach to sending information to a new contact or recipient to introduce your business.
It is typically the same as cold calling, but it is less invasive for the receiver, making it an excellent method for companies to gain attention.
Are Cold Emails Effective?
Yes, cold emails are effective in marketing your business online. In a study, Americans check their emails for work-related messages at least 3 hours a day.
Meanwhile, they spend two hours a day checking personal emails.
This data confirms that being seen from the inbox of your potential customers is a significant factor. An email that appears in their inbox has an increased rate of being seen rather than other platforms such as social media.
However, sending emails to potential clients is not done randomly. It should be done the right way for your business to benefit.
Types of Cold Emails in Marketing
In marketing your brand through cold emails, you must carefully study your target receiver, craft useful and actionable email content, and make consistent follow-ups. Thus, cold emails need to be executed with the right approach.
Here are the different cold emails you can use for your marketing plan.
Media pitch email
A media pitch email is a strategy to reach out to media outlets, bloggers, and influencers who may be interested in your business and what you can offer.
Pitching to media about your business is an excellent way to get more brand exposure and mileage.
Publishers and writers receive press releases from their inboxes daily, which can be used for their stories.
But due to the massive pitches they receive regularly, it can be challenging to stand out from the rest. For you to be picked, your content needs to be valuable.
Brand pitch email
A brand cold email pitch establishes a partnership between your business and another brand. It intends to raise brand awareness among your target market and build opportunities for both parties.
When you reach out to a potential company for a collaboration, you need to lay out the benefits it can bring to them. Enumerate the reasons why a partnership with your business can impact their business.
Link-building email
Link building is an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy used for elevating a website’s ranking on search engines.
With a link-building email, you aim to earn inbound links for your website through several ways, such as broken link building, guest blogging, brand mentions, and brand partnerships.
When doing a link-building email, ensure that your prospects are highly-relatable to your business.
Content promotion email
Promoting your content through cold emails helps generate more traffic, links, and mentions to your website or social media platform.
Before you jump into cold emailing, ensure that you have quality and original content worth mentioning by others.
Your cold email should also encourage the recipient to add your content as a source of information for them.
Networking email
A networking email is any cold email with actionable content.
Whether it is a pitch for a backlink, a brand partnership, or you are selling a product or service, cold emails intend to network with others for business opportunities.
Sales email
Cold emails have the power to direct potential customers to purchase your product—however, you need to do this in a way that will not turn them off.
Random sales emails can be irritating for customers, but when you tie up a cold email with other marketing approaches, it can yield positive results.
For example, you can establish a connection with a potential client by following them on social media and liking or commenting on their content before you appear in their inboxes.
This way, you slowly catch their attention in a way that is less intrusive and pushy.
Why is cold emailing important?
Cold emailing is essential for your business for its potential to establish a connection with potential customers and build your brand.
Here are the reasons why cold emailing is integral to your marketing strategy.
Networking
Connecting with your potential customers does not end in physical meetings.
Networking through online channels such as cold emails can benefit you as long as your intent is genuine and recipients can see the added value of connecting with your business.
Lead generation
Cold emails target people who may be interested in your product. It makes your marketing effort easier to narrow potential clients, thus increasing the chances of landing a deal.
Brand awareness
Cold emails generally reach out to new contacts to introduce your brand. From there, you will be able to improve brand awareness.
Scalability
One of the benefits of cold emails is their scalability. You can measure every cold email you send, evaluate its results, and adjust your strategies depending on what the insights show.
Crafting the Perfect Cold Email for Prospects
Not all business owners are brave enough to try cold email marketing.
One of the reasons for not using cold emails is the fear that their message may end up in the spam folder.
But there are specific tactics to make an effective email instead of spammy content.
Determine the intent of your message
Before you cold email prospective clients, ensure you know your campaign’s intent.
What is your goal in cold emailing? Will you provide a solution to your customers? How will your email give value to your recipient?
The answers to these questions determine your intent which shall serve as your guide when you start reaching out to your prospects.
Create a specified email list
Create an email list that falls under your buyer persona. Your buyer persona is the personality of your ideal customer.
Once you identify your perfect client, you will know what type of information they need, which you can supply through your cold emails.
Building an email list can be done from manual cold email prospecting. While this may be time-consuming, it tends to be more accurate than purchasing an email list.
Developing your email list is another email marketing strategy. If you need help building your email list from scratch, LeadOrigin can provide email marketing services to get you started.
We verify the accuracy of all emails in your list, ensuring that your target market will only receive your email copy. Call us today and talk to our email marketing manager.
Email content writing
Email writing is a skill you should learn for your business. You need to write effective emails that are not derived from generic templates.
Template emails are usually transferred to spam folders, decreasing the chances of a response from your receiver.
When you write an email, your content should be straightforward, engaging, and genuine. Your receiver will know if you are writing to sell a product rather than giving value to them.
Writing cold emails is about nurturing and leading prospects to your sales funnel without being annoying and demanding. Remember, write your content in a friendly and approachable tone.
Scale your email campaign
Cold email marketing will not give you the results overnight. You must test the waters in every strategy you execute and find out what results better.
Your open-rate insights will tell you what works and what does not. From these details, you will know what you need to adjust or improve to get a better rate in the next period.
The click-through rate of your content also allows a better understanding of what your recipient likes.
How to Write a Good Cold Email
The question now is, how do you write a good cold email? An excellent cold email is all about personalization, intention, and value. Knowing these points enables you to craft an effective email with a reasonable response rate.
Work on your subject line
The best way to start a cold email is an effective subject line. A well-written and compelling cold email introduction draws your receiver to open your email.
Otherwise, a poorly written subject line can result in your email being thrown into the junk folder without being opened.
The ideal length of a subject line ranges from five to seven words. They must be direct, brief, and personalized. Including their names in the subject line gives a sense of direct connection, which increases the open rate.
Relay your intention upfront
Cold emails must be intentional, specific, and not generic.
You have to tell your receivers your goal in reaching out to them, why you want to establish a connection, and how you can help them find a solution to their pain points. In a nutshell, cold email should establish a mutually beneficial relationship.
Add social proof from opinion leaders
Interesting cold emails consist of facts that can add value to the recipient. You can include social proof from legitimate and authoritative sources to back your claims and add more depth to your copy.
Another way to add social proof is testimonials from previous customers or reviews from influencers and key opinion leaders in your field.
Keep your copy brief and personalized
Personalization is key to having an engaged cold email campaign. An email that mentions your prospect’s name instead of a generic address is much more engaging. Keep your email conversational rather than sending a highly-technical and robot-like copy.
Additionally, the content should not be too long, with many gray areas that tend to be boring to read. Keep your email short, concise, and straightforward.
Write effectively
Your cold email needs to be written so your prospects can easily digest and understand it. The content should include your intention and what you can do for them.
End your email with a compelling call-to-action that won’t leave your reader confused and uninterested.
Address pain points
Understand your target market’s problems and explain how your product or service can be a solution. It needs a deeper understanding of your prospect’s situation to be able to touch on the issues they may be having.
Touch on these issues and create a message where you can solve them.
How long should a cold email be?
There is no limitation regarding the length of a cold email as long as you consider factors such as social proof, trust, value, and pain points.
LeadOrigin can craft an effective cold emailing campaign for your business. Talk to us to learn more about our email marketing services.
How to follow up on a cold email?
When you send a cold email, do not expect that you will receive an instant reply. There are chances that your recipient may not receive your email or they are not interested in your pitch. But these are common scenarios where you should have a follow-up approach.
The ideal follow-up email should be two or three, where you include valuable and exciting information. By doing this, you will have greater chances of having a response.
Sending out cold emails to a big chunk of the email list does not have to be a painstaking task.
You can use a marketing automation platform for more straightforward cold email campaigns. This is a practical way on how to send cold emails.
What is the success rate of cold emails?
The open rates for business emails range between 14 percent to 23 percent.
When formulating an effective cold email campaign, you do not just make efforts for brand awareness. You also need to include a targeted approach to leading your customers toward actionable leads.
Is it okay to send cold emails to businesses?
Yes, it is acceptable to cold email businesses as long as you follow legalities, including providing an unsubscribe option for recipients. It would be best if you also refrain from using misleading subject lines.
What’s the average conversion rate for a cold emailing campaign?
In 2021, the average conversion rate for a cold email campaign was 15 percent. A huge factor in this conversion rate is valuable email content with persistent follow-ups.
Send specific employee emails rather than generic business emails for better response rates.
Get the best service for cold email marketing
Cold email is beneficial for your digital marketing campaign. While it has been an old practice, it is an effective tool to make connections, land deals, and generate brand exposure to your potential market.
But cold email comes with the right strategy. All you need is to execute them correctly, and you’ll reap the benefits before you even realize it.
Do you want to know how to start cold email marketing for your brand LeadOrigin is a full-service digital marketing company that knows how to execute the right cold email marketing strategy. Contact us today to get started.
