Cold emails are primarily a substitute for cold calls that are unsolicited and directed at uncontacted clients identified as a potential lead.
It is one of the oldest and perhaps most commonly-used digital sales tools around. Over 2.5 billion sales reps, the world over are using this powerful medium and it is only expected to double in the coming year.
Apart from being cost-effective, it offers the highest ROI of $38 for every dollar spent compared to other potential channels.
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However, despite the power of technology to segment, build, automate and distribute emails, they don’t work all the time, and the reasons why they can fail are plentiful. However, let’s take a look at the most common reasons why they fail :
Lacks Empathy:
Most of the cold emails are sent out in bulk with little or no interest in the prospect’s side of the story and are less personalized directing them straight to trash.
Not Concise:
An average person receives more than 120 emails every day. To get the attention of the prospects, you have to keep it to the point. Brevity is the key. Long emails do not go very well with the prospects.
Lacks Creativity:
Templates that seem automated and will not entice open rates. In the clutter and seemingly countless spam messages, cold email can make your sales reps stand out by offering more value, more relevance, and more engagement opportunities only with a dash of creativity.
Cold email Tips:
# Personalize :
Before you understand how to write cold emails, you should celebrate the biggest advantage that comes with it. They land straight in the inbox (yay! that’s a big deal) of the prospect along with emails from friends, relatives, etc. That ups the probability of them getting noticed and even opened when personalized.
“Research from Campaign Monitor, emails with subject lines that include the recipient’s name are 26% more likely to be opened.”
Personalization helps establish a connection and gain the intended trust. It humanizes the sales process, speaking more directly to them and turning the message from a general sales pitch to an individualized appeal.
Most importantly, it helps the lead or prospect to feel relatable to the product or service offered.
Personalization can be better-segmented lists to individualized subject lines and body copy. A one hundred percent personalized email leads to transaction rates that are 6x their counterparts without personalization.
Consider the following when Personalizing your cold email :
- Know your audience: The first step to personalization is knowing a good deal about your target. Remember the goal is to deliver specific information to a relevant audience – else #Spamalert. Research well about them to understand some key points that you can mention when sending out your email. Learn about them on social media, look for their publication, their specialization.
- Subject Line: A catchy, short (not more than five words), to the point, convincing along with the name of the prospect is going to turn heads (pointer) towards your email. You can help you decide the subject line by helpful online tools such as SubjectLine, Net Atlantic,CoSchedule and base your subject line depending on the score.
- Body: Pushing out blanket messages based on long text blocks, you can build trust almost immediately with prospects who are looking for more relevant alternatives. Make your email body more engaging and less exhausting – Get the prospect hooked with the first three lines; provide data or metrics to show authority; use design elements – infographic, video to keep the message short and more engaging.
- Call to Action: Make the objective of the email clear. While your end goal may be to get the user to book a demo, schedule a meeting/ call. Make it specific and even personalize it by customizing it for your target audience.
How about a quick call for 5 mins on 1st December PST?
Are you available for 15- min for a product demo on 29th September, at 6 PM?
# On point:
Most of the time, a cold email gets ignored because it fails to understand the need of the prospect. It is a good idea to work on drafting a mail that either provides a solution to a pain point or offers something that can add value to the current situation.
There are two ways on how cold emails can be outlined with the above intent directly resulting in either engagement or conversion :
Make sure the message that you would like to convey is unambiguous and lucid. Avoid beating around the bush and identify just one intense pain point e.g.
Source:Hubspot
Another excellent example of very crisp on-point email is something that tells the recipient how much of their precious time you are going to need to read your email and stick to that :
Source:Hubspot
It is also a good idea to enhance your email body by adding elements of the story and details of engagement such as metrics, graphs,, and even simple designs such as infographics, which can be of great help to digest content without being too pushy.
It is also good to legitimately offer the recipient something valuable. It could be a few pointer blogs or a design element that is relevant to the prospect’s industry that will help make their business efficient.
Make the email about the reader and not about you or your company (you always have follow-up emails for that).
Adding reviews to your emails about your product doubles the chances of gaining the trust of your prospects. Also, ensure you end your email with a question such as “How about a 5-minute quick call to discuss further on sales engagement?” or “If you find this interesting, how about a 15 minutes demo of our product – right in your inbox”?.
#Get Creative:
An exciting way to give a makeover your drab, cold email is to make it interactive, engaging, and captivating.
GIF :
At the outset, adding GIFs to your cold email may seem not worth the effort. But the fact is, they are underrated. GIFs in a cold email is sure to spruce up your boring text message and also will slap that smile on your prospect’s face when he/she opens it. They are especially useful when following up too.
Try and include clever wit to make your prospect click on the reply button by including industry-themed jokes, appreciate your prospect’s win, even show compelling stats or quick how to’s about any one aspect of your product. Take a look very cool example with a touch of humor:
Source: Crunchbase
Video :
Video has long been a powerful sales tool but can become especially relevant when linked directly to your cold emails. It can be the tool that warms up to your prospects for response and engagement. Did you know including the word video in your sales email subject lines increases open rates by 19%? (source: Forbes)
Videos have a high response rate because they are crisp, they save time by delivering the message in a more personalized way, and also they are easily shareable.
One great platform you could use for video personalization is – Hippo Video that can turn your emails memorable and creative, thereby attracting and converting your prospects. It includes features such as:
- Customization of both the videos you create and the thumbnails that live within your emails, designed to attract attention and interest.
- It can be integrated with a personalized sales page content or with your favorite sales tool.
- Tracking and analytics tools that allow you to check how your prospects engage with your content, offering more individualized sales follow-ups.
That last component is especially relevant for growing sales teams. Our analytics have shown that linking your video emails to personalized sales pages will increase your prospect engagement by 100%.
You could see two emails that have the exact same content and objective but in two different forms. One is wordy while the other is short, to the point, and contains the message in a short video.
Which one of the above emails would you prefer to read?
It is a plain fact that Video selling might come across as intimidating in the beginning, but with the right set of tools and partners, it is nothing less than a piece of cake. Get it right and you will definitely multiply your responses, book more meetings and demos successfully.
Because it’s complicated, it’s good to know that you have a partner by your side. Zeroing in on a video personalization platform, designed for sales emails like the ones you’re trying to optimize, can help to get there.
By employing the tips mentioned above, you can turn your cold email selling exercise into a more focused, engaging, and personalized approach that not only gets your quick responses but also helps you monetize by doubling sales revenue.
Good luck with your quest for cold email selling!