With the creation of sophisticated email marketing platforms, there has been a huge rise in cold email outreach resulting in large amounts of spam and lingo not relevant to prospects. This has enabled BDR’s, SDR’s, and Demand Gen professionals to shove there company’s products down prospects throats by talking about their company and asking for a meeting without earning the right or showing much value. They then decide to schedule the same email follow up cadence everybody else uses followed up by a final break-up email.
Relevant/Personalized
Without making the email relevant to the prospect, why would they respond? Why would they take a meeting with you? Where is the value? The first thing is, it will take a series of touches to reach a prospect and yet alone get a response and not just a “thanks for the email” but a “this content might help us in what we are doing, let’s chat”.
Relying on emails alone will have your pipeline dry. In order to be effective with email prospecting, you must mix in other elements such as calling them on the phone, adding them on social, posting content on social and sending some direct mail. This will show the prospect, you are not a spammer but you are a real professional that wants to have a conversation with something of value they can engage with.
Subject Line
The subject line will be the touchpoint that catches your prospects attention. People can smell a spammer from a mile away, so it is important to make a subject line that is relevant to what they do.
Ex. Company Name/Pain Point or Company Name – Something related to their job or industry
Since you saying something related to their industry, this will increase the chances of piquing their interest and opening your email.
Body of the Email
The key thing with the body of your email is to keep the email as short as possible. Long drawn out emails will get the delete button quick.
DO NOT use images. Sending someone an email with an image is the most impersonal thing you can do in writing cold emails. Make sure to send your company’s content (Not a brochure) that they can read over and show value to pique there interest even more.
Ex. Hi Mike,
I see you are doing name postion at xyz company. I wanted to send over name piece of content that you might find helpful. Would love to get your feedback on this.
Please review the content and let us know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
The key thing in that sample email is, not to ask for the appointment right off the bat and know that you are not going to get a response or appointment off the first email. You are letting then marinate on the email and content you have attached. Knowing that this will be a process, will help you get the appointment.
Heavy Follow Up
The next step is to develop a heavy follow up cadence. In your first follow up you want to ask for the appointment. They have had a chance to check over your email, look at your content, and will be more willing to take the appointment based on the content and value you sent them. Use a mix of phone, email, and social. Keep with the cadence until you get a response.
Example of a email follow up –
Hi Mike,
I hope all is well on your end.
I wanted to circle back and get your thoughts and opinions on the content I sent over.
Was the data useful and helpful for your analysis?
Example of 2nd email follow up
Hi Mike,
I had not heard back from you and thought I would drop you a quick note.
Are we still on your radar for our name pain point?
During the cadence, if they accept your Linkedin invitation, post 3-4 times a day of targeted relevant content, so you can build that credibility factor that will entice them more to meet or speak with you.
In Conclusion
The key factor is that starting to engage with prospects using a cold email is an effective strategy, but will be useless unless you use other tools such as the phone and social to really get great conversations going. Relying and hiding behind email prospecting will not give you pipeline you need to hit your numbers. Prospects are busy and are being sold to by bad sales people every day. If you can stand out from the pack with messaging that gets your prospects attention, you are on the right path to creating lots of new relationships and future business.
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