How to Write & Design Cold Emails to Generate Hot Leads

It’s not easy getting someone to respond to a cold email. Perhaps you’ve heard someone say that cold emails are dead and that something new will surely replace them in the near future. Right now that is simply not the case. While it may be true that it would be better to be introduced by someone who’s familiar with your prospect already, with the ability to master cold emails you can build your business, snag sales and succeed with the right tactics.

If you’ve never heard of cold emails before, or if you just a need a refresher, a cold email is any email sent to someone that doesn’t have any connection to you. An easy way to look at it is, if you’re sending an email to someone you don’t know, it’s a cold email.

Cold emails can be a great way to build your network. In today’s business environment it can be crucial to reach out and expand your B2B connections.

Crafting the Perfect Cold Email

You may be wondering what a cold email should include, asking yourself “How can I craft my cold email to be the most effective?”

First things first you’re going to want to add your real name. It’s best to use your real name in your cold email to make your email more authentic.

It’s also a good idea to include your contact information in your signature. This means the title of your job, your website, social media profiles, your phone number and anything else that can help your prospect contact and follow you.

Another thing you can do is add customized content for the prospect. Make your email body unique and relevant. The recipient of your email wants to read something that’s interesting to them.

Make a precise request. Have a reason for contacting your prospect and try to spark a friendly conversation and not just a sales pitch. You don’t want your email to come off as spam, that’s a bad thing.

Cold emails are normally B2B, or from an individual to a public figure and don’t always have a commercial intention. A cold email is ideally a personal conversation, as if reaching out to a friend. It’s similar to a cold call but less abrasive. Which a good thing because you can scare prospects away if you come on too strong.

The Benefits of Cold Emails

There are many benefits to sending cold emails to your prospects. Cold emails can help you get a guest posting guideline from an editor, feedback from an individual, or start a conversation with a prospect and get more leads. They can also help you get published, get a job, score a backlink and get sales!

Cold Emails: Spam or Not Spam?

A cold email is not spam. While a spam email uses a fake name, doesn’t have personal contact information, isn’t personalized, isn’t meant to start a conversation and isn’t commercially motivated, a cold email addresses the recipient directly, has a specific request and it mentions a common contact.

Remember that spam is illegal and if you send enough spam you could come face-to-face with CAN-SPAM law.

If an email has an appropriate header information, personalization and offers value than it isn’t considered an Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).

19 Tips for Writing a Cold Email

If you’re looking for the best tips for writing a cold email than there are some rules you should follow. For example, don’t send spam. When sending your cold email, the more that you follow the best techniques, the more that your email will not be seen as spam.

1★ An “email header” lets the recipient know who is sending them the email. That’s not a good thing. You should always use own name and your own email address.

2★ Use the prospect’s first name. This will show your prospect that you aren’t just sending your email to anyone. Saying something like “Hello, [insert name here]” can go a long way to show your legitimacy.

3★ Have it be relevant to the person you’re sending it to an irrelevant email can easily be seen as spam. This is because spam emails don’t usually address a specific problem.

4★ Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to flatter the recipient. People generally like to be complimented. This could give you a good first impression and could help your odds in starting a conversation with your prospect.

5★ Let them know how your product or service can benefit them. Tell them how your product or service can make their life easier. Your recipient will most likely reply if there is something in it for them. Be sure to tell them what that is.

6★ Tell them why you are legitimate and successful. Your prospect may be wondering what makes you different, special and why they should reply to you. Tell them about your accomplishments and what sets you apart from others in your field.

7★ Don’t focus on yourself. Your recipient may want to know more about you, but you should keep the conversation focused off of yourself and on how you or your product can benefit them.

8★ Keep it short. If your intro is too long it can make your email more difficult to read and it makes it look like spam.

9★ If you have a pitch, make it personal. Explain to your prospect how your product, service or company can figure out what may be troubling them and solve that problem.

10★ Mention something recent relating to your prospect to let them know that you are paying attention to them. This can also help make your pitch more personal. Try checking their blog or Twitter. Put it in your first line. This will make it more impactful because it will be one of the first things they read in your email.

11★ Have a specific time or time frame for a meeting. This is something that you can bring up to your prospect that will make it more likely that you will spark the conversation with them.

12★ Make sure that the subject line and the email body match. If you’ve seen spam emails in your inbox that say things like “Click here now!” or “Hello friend,” you know that these subject lines rarely work and are easily discounted as spam. You shouldn’t use these kinds of subject lines. You shouldn’t have any problem writing a good subject line but just remember to have to subject line tell your prospect what will be in the email.

13★ When writing your cold email avoid copy and pasting your text so that the recipient of the email won’t see any formatting issues.

14★ Add your contact info to the signature. Be sure to add your name, profiles for social media, what your job is at your company. That is the least amount of information you should have in your signature. If you’re able to, add a picture to your signature as well.

15★ If many of your emails go unopened than this can mean that your copy or value profession isn’t good at all. To remedy this, track the performance of your sent emails and then you can fix the problems to improve your success rate.

16★ Consider making your cold email in a list format. When writing a cold email it’s important to be upfront with your prospect. The main reason to do this is that the person that you’re sending the email to may be very busy. Also, people really like to read lists whether on a website or in an email. This can be confirmed by looking at the popular of websites like BuzzFeed.

17★ Choose your prospects wisely. You can really make an impact if you send an email to the right person. Learn as much as you can on figuring out how to get the best prospects. When you do find a prospect to contact, make sure that you research them thoroughly. You want to know who they are and what they’re all about.

18★ Grab your customers early. Try making your first paragraph relevant, targeted, focused and personal. Make your email natural and let them know you care about them. Fill them in on things that you and they have in common. Your goal is to start a relationship, not just make a sale.

19★ Use a hook to get them interested in what you have to say or sell. When writing a cold email you want to make sure that you identify yourself clearly upfront, verify that you’re talking to the right person and make sure to tell them how much of their time you need and when you need it. People who are successful like talking to those who are also successful. Show your prospect that you are serious and ready to get down to business.

How to Design a Cold Email

When designing a cold email there are few things that you can do to make sure that you are successful. First things first, have a thorough introduction and make it relevant to the company or individual but keep your introduction short. The longer your introduction is the more that it makes it difficult to read and look like spam.

Craft your email for just one person and don’t tell them anything they wouldn’t be interested in learning. To put it simply, don’t be boring.

Try to make sure that the prospect you choose has a problem that you, your company or your product can solve.

And finally, consider adding a video to your email to make it stand out more from other emails your prospect may be receiving. You can also try adding a gif. Both options should work pretty well for standing out.

In Conclusion

In short, remember to be interesting and engaging in order to attract attention, don’t spam, craft your email for an individual and use your real contact information. Grabbing the attention of your prospect in a positive way and getting a reply to start a conversation should be your goal.

Mastering cold emails can help you in tremendous ways to boost your business or gain invaluable business contacts, land a sale, find a guest blogger or find a website for you to publish a guest blog on, gain backlinks and more to get your foot in the door. If you use the information you’ve learned here to send out cold emails, you should be getting replies in no time.