How to use Cold Emails to boost your marketing efforts? [2023 Edition]

The majority of cold emails fail. Do you know why? Because most marketers do it wrong and eventually end up ruining their cold email campaigns. In this post today, I will share proven tips and strategies on how to use Cold emails to boost your marketing efforts.

Basics first: What is a cold email? 

For those who are new to the concept of cold emailing, let me explain it in simple words:

A cold email is a kind of unsolicited (marketing) email that is usually sent to someone with whom you do not have any direct or indirect personal contact. 

For example: Suppose you just started an apparel e-commerce store. You are a new player in this field, with an unestablished brand image. Now you want to attract sellers and start emailing retail heads of brands like Nike, Adidas, and Calvin Klein. They do not know about you and your business. So, when you email them about your new e-commerce store and why they should consider selling on your store…that’s a cold email. 

7 tips to write cold emails that are actually read and favorably responded

Follow these 7 tips to write better cold emails and increase your chances of success: 

1) Verify your recipient’s email address: 

When you address someone in your cold email, make sure he or she is the right concerned person. This doubles your chances of receiving a favorable reply. For example: If you want to send an advertisement query to a magazine, it won’t make sense to email the editors. Would it be?

Here is how you can verify the correct email address of your target recipients:

• Research the website really well. Contact and About pages are the two most common places where you can find the correct email address of the person concerned.
• Alternatively, you can extend your research to screening of social media profiles of the persons concerned. LinkedIn is the best place to get started.

2) Use your own email address 

The next tip for writing a good cold email is to ensure that you use your own (preferably professional) email address to outreach a potential client. Don’t email using any generic business email name like info@company.com. This spoils the whole point of establishing a personal contact.

3) Personalize your email 

Personalizing your email message helps you instantly catch your recipient’s attention and make a great first impression. You will find many ready-to-use cold email templates on the internet. But you’ve to understand that you cannot use the same template repeatedly to email all your prospects. By doing this, you will dissolve the thin line of distinction between cold emails and email spam. So go ahead, do some homework about your prospects, and then write a truly personalized email. Here is what you should personalize in your cold email: 

• Subject line – Subject lines represent your best chance of convincing someone to even open your email, let alone reply to it. So, you should consider them very carefully. 
• Intro sentence – It often forms the first few lines of preview text we see in our emails below the subject line. So, personalize it well to improve the chances of your email being read and responded to. 

Sharing a point of commonality or a sincere compliment works best while personalizing your email. Points of commonality can be: You both share a common passion or interest, you both hail from the same school, university, or even the same city! 

Some people are so creative in their cold email outreach strategy that they literally do something out of this world. For example, my friend, Puneet Bhalla recently received a cold email message in the form of a truly personalized video message! Creativity has no bounds! Check out his Linkedin post where he shared this creativity work:

4) Be sincere in your appreciation, if you do! 

If you decide to appreciate your prospects, please make sure that it is a sincere one! 

For example, I receive many cold emails from guest writers who want to contribute on my blog. In their email pitch, most of them appreciate my blog. They say that they are a regular reader of my blog. But I don’t see even a single comment coming from these people. They are not even my email subscribers. So, isn’t that appreciation highly insincere? And, what do I do then? I outrightly ignore such cold emails. Simple! 

5) Don’t sound as if you are begging for something 

I see most of the cold email pitches hitting directly to the point, often so terribly direct that it seems as if they are literally begging for something. For example: I recently received a guest blogging pitch where the person was so direct in her message that she emphasized – ‘a do-follow backlink is all that she wants in return for providing the free article’. This line spoiled the whole deal! How can I even trust her work? 

Instead of this, if she had approached me by writing how she can provide value to my blog or even an offer to update an old article on the blog, I would have gladly accepted it. 

6) Be concise and brief in your message 

Another tip to write good cold emails is to be concise and brief in your message. Business prospects usually receive hundreds of emails in a day. So, respect their time by keeping your message short, personalized, and brief to the point. 

7) Use a professional email signature 

Finally, make sure that you use a professional email closing followed by a professional email signature to make your message bold and impactful. Adding a professional email signature will help you build trust and a personal connection with your email recipient. This tip will help you increase the chances of getting a favorable response to your cold email message. 

Your thoughts? 

What are your thoughts on cold emailing? How do you use it to market your business? Looking forward to your comments!