Have you ever faced the challenge of sending cold emails and not receiving any responses? It can be quite frustrating.
Despite your best efforts, getting replies from cold emails can be tough. People receive overwhelming emails, and not everyone has the time to go through them all. Some may perceive your emails as spam, while others find them valuable and crucial.
Let's explore cold emailing strategies and know how to get responses from cold emails to ensure your emails fall into the latter category, increasing the likelihood of generating responses from your cold outreach.
What to do to get responses from Cold Email?
The clear reason why your cold emails aren’t getting any response regardless of your approach is because your emails are screaming the word marketing.
Remember, a cold email is different from your marketing emails. It should be concise, clear, to the point and absolutely relevant to your recipient. No matter how well-crafted your email copy is, no one will reply if it isn’t relevant to them.
Remember when you are writing cold emails that get responses:
Tips to generate responses from your Cold Emails
It's crucial to understand what a cold email is. Cold emails are unsolicited messages sent to individuals who may not have any prior interaction with the sender.
In a world inundated with emails, recipients are often overwhelmed and skeptical of unsolicited messages. To overcome this skepticism, your approach should be thoughtful, personalized, and value-driven.
1. Identify your desired goal
Yes, you read it correctly. Define your target results – pinpoint what you aim to achieve with your cold emails. Identifying your target results is crucial, whether driving recipients to your website, scheduling a meeting, or getting a simple email reply.
Tailor your copy accordingly to align with these goals. This approach not only allows you to make informed adjustments but also aids in effectively measuring your email campaign's success and gaining a prospect's attention.
2. Research your recipients
The foundation of a successful outreach email lies in thorough research. Invest time in understanding your recipients before hitting the “send” button.
Find out about your recipient’s company, what they do, and their industry. Look into any recent achievements they've had and understand what challenges they might be facing.
Once you've got this info, shape your email to fit what you've learned. It shows you're genuinely interested and makes it more likely they'll pay attention to your words.
Quick tip: You can research your recipients on their social media accounts like LinkedIn and Twitter.
3. Craft a compelling subject line
The cold email subject line is the first thing your recipient sees before opening the email, and it greatly influences whether they open your email or send your email straight to the trash. In email writing, a compelling subject line should be concise, intriguing, and relevant to the recipient.
Don't make your subject line more than 8 words. Keep it short, like under 4-6 words, and make them curious. Avoid generic or spammy language; instead, focus on creating curiosity or providing a clear benefit.
Remember to test different subject lines to help you understand which one yields the best responses. Try to use numbers in your subject lines. Numercials always increase your open rates. If you have certain information about a company or prospect, add that in your subject line.
To learn more about how you can craft compelling subject lines while crafting cold emails, check out this blog: The power of curiosity: Creating intriguing Cold Email Subject Lines
4. Personalization is key
Many generic cold emails are often ignored. If you are to stand out, personalize your emails by addressing the recipient by name and referencing specific details relevant to them or their company.
Start with adding a specific personal point for each recipient. Research them on LinkedIn. Use information like their recent product or service launch, specific achievements, and common industry problems they face.
This information can help you build credibility and boost your chances of getting responses from your personalized cold emails.
To know more read our blog: Personalization in Cold Email Outreach: Connecting on a Human Level
5. Start with a strong opening
The opening lines of the body of your email are crucial. Capture your recipient's attention by addressing a pain point, sharing a relevant statistic, or posing a thought-provoking question. While introductions are important, they shouldn't consume more than one line.
After the introduction, get straight to the point – why should they continue reading?
Offer them pertinent information, such as the purpose of your email and what value you bring. Avoid regular marketing jargon, as nobody has the time to waste on generic messages.
Be concise and highlight the unique aspects of your message that make it worth their time. This approach increases the likelihood of your email being read and, more importantly, getting a positive response.
6. Provide them with a solution
Once you've got their attention, tell them straight why your email matters for them. What's the deal? Whether it's solving their issue, a cool opportunity, or useful insights, be clear about why they should spend time on your message.
Remember, you're cold emailing to make sales. But here's the thing: you're not just pushing a product. You're solving their problem. Many miss this and only chase sales.
You gotta be the solution, talk about it well, and explain why your solution is their best choice. Making this clear makes your email more valuable, boosting the chances of a positive response.
7. Build credibility
Building trust is key in cold emails. Show off your skills, talk about success stories that matter, or bring up common connections or clients. This builds credibility, easing any doubt and making your email more likely to be taken seriously.
Keep in mind, you don't have to stretch your emails for this. Save the details for your follow-up emails. This lets you add more value over time, potentially upping your response rates.
8. Follow Up strategically
Getting a response from the first email is rare, and persistence is the key. Create a thoughtful follow-up series that adds value and reminds the recipient of your first message.
Avoid sounding pushy or desperate—instead, position your follow-ups as a natural continuation of the conversation. Experiment with different versions of your follow-up. Summarize the info from your initial email and add more value while stressing the action you want the recipient to take.
The beauty is that once you find the right follow-up that works, you can tweak it slightly for different recipient demographics and use it across all your campaigns. No need to create a new one for every campaign.
9. Optimize email format and design
The structure and presentation of your email significantly impact its effectiveness. Optimize your messages by using a clean, professional email template.
Break down your content into easily digestible sections, utilizing formatting elements like bullet points and headings to enhance clarity.
Considering the volume of smartphone usage, ensuring your email is mobile-friendly for recipients who often check emails on their handheld devices is essential. This approach enhances the visual appeal and improves the overall user experience, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
10. Write like you talk
Your cold email shouldn't sound like a storybook or a poem; it’s good if you have amazing writing skills, but cold emails need a different style.
Don't make it sound like a story or poem when you write cold emails. Write them like you're talking to a friend or coworker. Keep it short so more people will read it. Make it simple and friendly, use the person's name, and feel free to use casual language and expressions.
You can also add some humour to your emails to make them entertaining. But do maintain a professional tone.Â
How to know what to change in your email
The above tips can help you increase your chances of getting responses. However, optimizing your emails and making necessary changes to receive your responses is the best way. But how do you determine what needs to be changed to make your email a successful cold email?
Let’s discuss from head to toe how to optimize your cold emails using email analytics for higher response rates.
1. Optimizing subject lineÂ
The first step is to write and test your subject lines, which your prospects read before reading your email. A subject line is the first thing your recipient sees and is crucial for your cold email open rates. If you have low open rates, you won’t get any responses from your cold emails.
Try to craft curiosity-driven subject lines so your email stands out from the rest of the emails in your recipient's inbox. To check if your subject line is working, do not test out different variations of subject lines.
In the example above, a 48% email open rate and a 20% click rate indicate a decent subject line for opening emails.
However, the lack of replies suggests that the email content may not be engaging or interesting enough to prompt responses.
You should expect high open rates with the right subject line. If you are getting high open rates and aren’t receiving any responses, then the next thing you need to focus on is the content of your email.
2. Optimizing your email copy
To optimize your email body, check where the problem is in your email. There are 3 places you can test and optimize with only one metric: CTR (Click through rates).
Optimizing opening sequence with CTR
If your emails have high open rates but very low click-through rates, this could mean that your opening sequence was not catchy and relevant enough for the recipient to make them read further and get better results. Which means you need to make changes there.
In the above example the opening wasn't good enough to engage the recipient, as you can see that the open rate was 35% with only 4% clicks.
Try to add relevant information and make your message more personalized.
Optimizing value proposition with CTR
If your emails are achieving high open rates but fall short of the desired click rates, it's time to tweak your value proposition and include relevant links.
For instance, if you have a 50% open rate but only a 4% click rate, the email may not be compelling enough for most recipients.
Craft your value propositions with a genuine intent to solve their problems rather than just focusing on making a sale.
Optimizing your CTA with CTR
So everything is all set. You are getting high open rates and many clicks on your email, but you are still not getting any responses from your cold emails. Then, rewrite your Call to Action (CTA) in your email.
The above image shows that the email has 46% open and 25% link clicks, which means they did visit the website. But it has 0% replies, which means the CTA wasn’t very well written.
Your CTA should be clear and concise; you want to guide your potential customers on what you want them to do next. Make it clear to them if you want them to reply to your email, visit your website or schedule an appointment.
If all of them are optimized, your email results might look like the image below.
This isn’t the perfect example. But I hope you understand the point here.
Ready to improve your Cold Email Response Rate?
Getting responses from cold emails isn't easy, but there are smart ways to do it. Understand what your recipients like, do some research, and use good strategies.
Following these cold email tips will make it more likely for people to open and respond to your emails. It takes time to build real connections, so be patient, keep trying, and be ready to change your approach based on what works.
To succeed in B2C or B2B cold email marketing, you must optimize your emails for a successful cold outreach. If you want to learn more about cold emails, contact us and we are happy to help. Happy emailing!
Also, let us know in the comments how efficient did you find these strategies.
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Unlocking Success: Determining the Best Time to Send Cold Emails
