Cold emails are one of the hardest things to do in any industry. With so many possibilities, it’s hard to know which ones will work and how they will be received. The latest stats show that email marketing generates $42 dollars for every $1 dollar spent.
It’s all too easy to be ignored or, even worse, completely misinterpreted. Making cold emails to stand out and get the attention of a busy, disinterested reader is tough but there are some ways you can improve your chances of success.
But it doesn’t have to be that difficult!
Hey, I’m Michael Culp, a business Master’s student founder at ambitionyard.com. Today, I’m going to show you how to make your cold emails stand out.
Here are 5 tips that will skyrocket the ROI of your cold email campaigns.
1. Use Email Tracking
Email tracking is one of the most important things to remember when sending out your campaign. It’s crucial to track the success rate of your email, looking at important metrics such as the open rate, clickthrough rate, and conversion rate.
By looking at these metrics, you can see what parts of your process are effective and which parts you need to improve.
For example, if you get a good open and clickthrough rate but perform poorly at conversions, you can see that your subject line and the email content are not the problems. The bottleneck in this situation is in your sales pages. So, in your next campaign, you can use the same subject line and the same email, and make a few tweaks on the sales page.
You can go even further and make A/B tests. A/B test is a randomized experiment with two variants, A and B. The two versions will be shown to different segments of your contacts, to determine which version drives the better performance.
Email tracking helps you perfect your process so you can achieve better results in each new campaign.
2. Make a Fancy Subject Line
It is essential that your subject line stands out and appears that it has come from a well-known and reputable source.
Make it clear what it’s about and that it’s not a spam email so that people don’t delete it before they have even read it. A fancy subject line will always attract more attention than a simple one.
A great trick to improve your open rates is to create a curiosity hook. This is very powerful in the short term for cold emails.
Here are 3 examples of great headlines for creating curiosity:
- Quick Question
- Why?
- A snowball in hell has a better chance than me… (My favorite, haha)
3. Keep it Short and Sweet
When you’re writing an email to a prospect, the last thing you want is for them to think that it’s too long and tedious. Keep the emails short and sweet but informative enough that they are eager to read on.
Remember, your reader doesn’t want to spend their precious time reading your email. If you want them to respond to you, you need to respect their reality.
Don’t use complicated words or sentences. Keep it down to simple English.
People often read and scan the emails before they read the rest, so make sure that your first line tells them precisely what they need to know.
Start by pivoting from the subject line and providing context. It’s okay to be as brief as possible.
You don’t need to get clever or fancy here if you don’t want to.
For example, with the headline “A snowball in hell has a better chance than me…” you’re saying that a snowball in hell has a better chance of surviving than you have of converting this email.
A simple pivoting would be “Thanks for opening my email despite the suspicious subject line…”. Then, you just need to provide context about why you’re sending the email and make the offer.
4. Make a clear offer
Make sure that your email contains an offer that is clear and easy to understand. Don’t be vague about what you’re offering or asking for.
When you state what you are offering clearly, you help set the potential client to see if your services are what they are looking for.
Here is an example:
“I was wondering if you need a content writer to help with your blog? If so, I’d love to schedule a chat with you. My articles have made my clients rank on the first page for 50 different keywords this past year.”
This is solid because it has a clear response request.
5. Make it Personal
While it’s tempting to make cold emails as impersonal as possible to avoid misunderstandings, editing, and time constraints, it’s better to have a few personal touches.
Most people don’t care much about being targeted cold if you’re targeting them specifically. But nobody wants to be targeted by someone who has never heard of them and just bought their email from a big list.
First, make sure that the email is from yourself rather than a generic service address, and try to address the person by name. Then, mention why you’re reaching out, it can be because you saw some of their content, some positive reviews, or you get a referral…
Personalization helps the reader understand that you care about them and that you’re not just another spammer. Don’t make the email recipient feel that they are just another number.
Conclusion
There are many ways to make your cold emails stand out and get the reader’s attention. It’s important to remember that the whole process is about the recipient.
When writing an email, you want people to read it and understand it. Make it clear and concise yet informative.
The best way to get this to happen is to keep it short and show them that you care about them.
Making cold emails stand out and be read is not an easy task, but it’s possible when you take a little extra time to know what you’re doing.
