5 Elements of a High-Converting Cold Email

Cold emailing and reaching out to your network is critical when it comes to growing your business. Talking to people and getting a better idea of their needs is a smart way of going ahead with development.

There’s an art and science when it comes to writing cold emails that convert – and it starts with research. You need to hyper focus your cold emails so that you have a good chance of converting leads into positive clients.

Getting the top-of-the-funnel right is the first step to achieving success in your business.

If you want to land a high-value client, then you need to have the right templates ready to send out, otherwise you may be unaware of the needs of the consumer.

You also need to know who the real decision maker is and try to get to them without going through too many barriers.

When you locate a gatekeeper – whether that’s a secretary or a sales rep, you need to find the right way to reach to the manager. When you reach the real decision maker via email marketing, you’ve done what few others can – get 10-15 seconds of their time.

Here are 5 key elements of a high-converting cold email –

1. Choose the right niche

If you have difficulty finding who your perfect niche consists of, then its better to research your competition. If you know that a certain brand has a particular set of audience, then you can decide whether you want to emulate them or not.

If the majority of your work is for one particular industry, then you can select that as your go-to niche. You become that industry’s go-to person and you can brand yourself as that expert in the long run.

You need to also know whether you’re a right fit for their brand, as you go from email to email. Because there might be some problems with language or timing of emails, you need to send out multiple emails in a month so that you can catch these decision makers at the right time.

Ask yourself – are you the best person for the job? Can you deliver on time? Have you got the requisite insights to help the client out?

You need to brand yourself accordingly and pitch to potential clients. If you’re an accounting consultant, then branding yourself as an accounting consultant for tech industry is a better idea! Find your niche and then grow it.

2. Research your leads

Probably the most important step of all, researching and prospecting your leads is a great way to make inroads that convert. When researching, you can’t afford to waste time and go through challenges and barriers.

You want to know the best way to get to know your lead. And so, you turn to social media, and see what they’re all about.

You can gain a good idea about what your lead does, how they operate and even what kind of language they use on their posts and activities.

You can make an empowered decision and train your mind to catch these things as they process ahead. You want to target managers and decision makers in power so that you can reach out to the right people for your company.

You can go to any of the popular social media sites, but always start with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a great social media network to get a better idea of what the prospect is like in real life. This really helps get the virtual into the physical realm and you can form an email talking directly to them.

Additionally, you can find out relevant common people that can help you get connected to that person as well.

3. Acquire their email

You may not be able to get their exact email address, but can get very close to figuring it out.

You can get some information from public record holders and websites, as well as doing a social media search to gain access to their email address.

The free extension Rapportive is a great tool that helps people obtain an email address of someone that works in a certain company. Because most companies follow the same email structure, you can reach out to them by receiving what their email format looks like.

You should start with first name last name @ company website dot com, and try various iterations until you don’t get a mail-bounce message.

Once you get their email, it’s time to go to step 4...

#4 Formulate strategic draft & send –

You need to get strategic about your emails.

You can’t be sending something that’s too long and doesn’t convert, or something that’s too short or spammy. You need to balance both sides of contention and go with what works for your particular company.

For some industries, longer emails are better – especially fashion and high-tech, for others like manufacturing and placements – shorter ones can convert better.

You need to test it out with a sample size of 100 emails and see the response rate or the hits on your social media/website. You can track how long they spent on your website, or what their profile is on social media.

Draft and resend another version to fine-tune your email strategy. Follow the rule of Keep It Simple. If you over complicate it, or make the email too generic – you won’t have a good open rate.

#5 Create a friendly follow-up sequence

Finally, creating a good follow-up email chain is a great idea to include in your cold email conversion. Being nonchalant but enthusiastic works better than being pushy or aggressive.

The ABC rule doesn’t work on email, and you need to have a positive outlook towards business emails. You should follow up within a few days or at the most a week.

After that, they may have forgotten you and won’t throw out a feeler for a meeting.

Conclusion

Although you can follow these 5 steps to cold email success, you need to create your own path to email marketing.

Depending on what works for your personality, your industry and how you fit in it – you should craft your emails accordingly. Remember to be positive, polite and persistent in your email marketing strategy.