Cold emailing is an art all in itself. It is distinctly different from email marketing. Email marketing is a message that is typically sent out to people who have actively signed up to receive emails from you. Cold emailing is when you send out requests to people and businesses that do not know you and are not expecting the email from you. There are many ways to do this successfully and each way depends on your desired reaction and the person you are sending the message to. Here are five tips to consider when you are crafting the perfect cold email.
Put a lot of thought in to your subject line.
The subject line is your first opportunity to make a great first impression. It can also be your first opportunity to make a mediocre first impression. Making a mediocre first impression is the quickest way to get someone to delete your email before reading it. If you do not have a relevant and catchy subject line, it is easy to wind up in the delete bin. Like many things in life, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If you use this subject line to make a good impression it sets the mood and the tone for the rest of your email.
Get to the point
Immediately state who you are and what organization you are representing. I find it helpful to look something up from the persons’ website or blog and mention it in the email. If they are active on Twitter, I mention how I like what they share. This shows them you are taking some time to investigate them individually and not just sending out the same email to 100 people. Remember the reader may not read the entire email. They will probably glance quickly through the email to see if it is worth their time to read it in its entirety. Get to the point, make that good first impression and they are much more likely to continue reading your entire pitch.
Tell them what you can do for them.
Focus your message on what you can do for them, not what you want them to do for you. Remember the point of this email is to get the person on the other end to read the entire email and take the desired action. If you want them to become interested in what you have to say, you need to quickly tell them what is in it for them. Otherwise they may never get to your call to action.
Grammar Matters
Proper punctuation and correct grammar still matter. Even in the age of texting and Twitter, grammar still matters. It does not matter so much because a potential client will not buy from you if you have a typo in an email. The biggest downside is that it gives them an opportunity to exclude you, especially early on in the email. Remember people will frequently scan an email quickly to determine if they want to read the email in detail. If they can spot a typo in the first few sentences or the subject line, it does not establish the type of credibility that is conducive to persuading the reader to take your desired action.
Call to action.
Having a call to action is essential to any message. The purpose of your email may not always be to get someone to buy something. It might be to get someone to follow you on social media, to sign up for a conference, to watch a webinar, to allow you to be a guest writer on their blog, etc. If you do all of the above things absolutely perfect your email will still fail if you do not let the reader know what it is you want them to do. The call to action is essentially why you are sending the email in the first place.
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