Email outreach is clearly more than just emailing the right person. Converting your prospects into marketing opportunities isn’t something everyone does from the start.
For once, because it works like a riddle – it’s never the thing that first comes to your mind. That first thing you’re thinking of including in your pitch has likely been used by hundreds of other people in hopes of standing out. People receive a lot of emails every day. Many of them get lost in the pile.
So, is there anything you can do to get your email read by your potential customers? Of course it is! Check out the following cold email tips, backed by amazing digital marketing experts and boost your email open rates like never before.
Since influencers don’t have a lot of free time, you shouldn’t expect indulgence or mercy every time you do something wrong. Most of the time, you can’t get more than one shot, and the better you perform, the more it performs like a snowball.
1. Disclosure gone wrong! Learn to deal with negative responses
There is no way to increase your chance of being promoted by influencers unless you decide to actively handle rejection like a pro. We often forget that networking is about building relationships, not just links to famous, high-authority pages. Piotr Zaniewicz explains, in one of his articles, the whole set of possibilities when all you have are negative responses and threats. If you are responsible, you should listen to what Piotr says to help you close more deals.
2. Video embedded in email – perfect outreach perspective
Sales prospecting is difficult. Madelaine Milani, talks about the sales process (and cold sales) more than networking and promotion outreach. The core idea is really innovative and useful. If you’re a charismatic writer with innovative ideas, you can record yourself and get the attention of the influencers you’re looking for.
3. Focus on what brings the influencer an advantage
Iris Shoor comes with great insights into the art of cold email outreach. Every email should come with a powerful story. And as long as you can outline the essentials without getting into boring details, a little context didn’t kill anyone.
4. Be as natural as possible when writing your outreach proposal
Take your approach seriously and imagine that you already have a connection with the influencer, even when you don’t. This will give you a better focus and sense of ownership. And maybe people will even respond to your cold email campaigns.
The research and content writing part is just as important and challenging as promoting your content efficiently. You need to have something to say, to be not only relevant, but interesting and provide a competitive edge.
While all of these things are strangely familiar, Lena Shaw documents examples of positive and negative values to make a very valid point.
5. Argue like a writer, not a link builder
Before you even think about writing the perfect email, maybe you should at least socialize on a basic level – maybe a Tweet, though a handshake is preferable.
However, as we can agree on the fact that Twitter works very well as a social binder, it’s a decent start. Monitor your targets’ social media activity and learn something – maybe you’ll find an idea of how to launch your blog.
6. Formulate a natural request without harassing the recipient!
Stephen Altrogge did a great job with his outreach technique – some of the most popular influencers responded to him, most in less than 20 minutes. Instead of wasting time looking for influencer emails, he shot the ‘stars’ documenting a personal approach, and the result was impressive.
7. When doing outreach, write less, but document your emails more
As Alicia Glenn talks about tripling the response rate for the company she works for, there are a few elements that an email never lacks: feature, benefit, human factor, and value. These are the secret ingredients she advises us to use, while giving some practical examples to guide us.
8. Smart Outreach – partner with high-quality professionals and create the Ben Franklin effect
The Ben Franklin Effect is a mindset that can help you get bigger results after positive responses for the little ones. Looks like there’s a psychological flaw there, right?
As Tim Soulo points out, the perfectionists in our niche are professionals we’d like to partner with. And once we’ve done that, research shows that people are more likely to accept a larger favor after saying ‘yes’ to a smaller one. After that, wait until you’re asked to formulate your orders – it’s not all about you.
9. Even after sending 1000 unsolicited emails, be humble!
You’d think eventually experience catches up – only eventually it’s a lot of “no’s” from now on. Fortunately, people like Shane Snow share their experiences.
10. Use the 3 Ps that make reach go round: personalized, correctly positioned and persuasive
Matt Gratt talks about outreach emails that aren’t personalized, properly positioned, and persuasive. The lack of any of these characteristics will make your disclosure challenge futile – and you will only serve as a bad example for a case study.
“Good outreach emails are personalized. And I don’t just mean ‘get the name and website right’ – these are table stakes to be taken seriously. When I say sales pitches should be personalized, I mean they should be read by the recipient and the words ‘standard letter’ should never cross your mind. ”
11. Don’t be conventional when writing your emails
We’re on this merry-go-round of achieving as much success as possible and really fast – it seems like no one has the time or patience to build a business properly. We are always in need of automating every process we use to save more time and automate even more processes. It makes no sense, and the lack of results shows its uselessness.
So Brian Zeng advises us to look at what people are doing wrong in this process.
12. Gain trust by finding common ground between you and the influencer
There’s nothing more impersonal than trying to start a relationship from scratch – even online. Networking is about the things we have in common, and the less common, the stronger our connection, as Elise Musumano points out.
13. Don’t advertise your product too early in the promotion process!
The most important in 7 ways to engage cold leads is this one – be careful what you’re pitching.
While nothing in business is a simple three-step recipe, some pillars of online communication must be observed with religiosity. Including humor.
14. Get higher response rates by presenting your ideas honestly
Craig Rosenberg gives us four examples of genuinely transparent outreach approaches. He makes it clear that regardless of the purpose, it is the human touch that turns the wheel of business networks.
15. Don’t be cheap! Be more effective using dedicated outreach tools
Dave Schneider suggests in his post that business isn’t exactly a lighthearted atmosphere with people who have enough free time to write outreach emails all day – that’s why he’s proposing an app to help you keep easily contact your potential customers. Sounds like fun, right?
16. Diversify the approach depending on the dissemination objectives
In another article, Dave Schneider presents a list of objectives that he felt were worth sharing.
- Honest pitch
- Asking for opinions
- Follow-up
- Customized Approaches
17. Write memorable emails!
Sasha Galkin shares 10 practices that every evangelist should check the list before clicking ‘submit’. No influencer is going to bother responding to your networking attempt unless you make a good impression.
18. When doing email outreach, use short, relevant subject lines
The article written by John Corcoran is actually a real-life story that he decided to share publicly. It’s as simple as I suggested in the title – he created a personal bond with an influencer, started making valuable contributions, and received his reward.
19. Make your email details awesome!
When it comes to email outreach, there is no middle ground as we will find it underlined in Portent’s article. From being brief and personal to having a decent signature and bold but relevant subject line, every detail matters.
20. Don’t be superficial and aggressive in your outreach efforts!
It is unprofessional to write a thousand superficial, poorly documented and unconvincing emails. Try to do your homework – and don’t think that just because you’ve landed in someone’s inbox, you’ll automatically be read and answered.
There are influencers out there who don’t even read newsletters that captivate them because there’s no time to waste. You also have some serious competition here.
21. Respect the three elements for successful outreach: time, interest and personalization!
It’s not success in general, it would be useless. It’s not easy to come up with a recipe and we always underline that. However, when it comes to professional common sense – timing, interest and personalization – we couldn’t be more in agreement. Researching the outreach process before trying to contact influencers on your own is crucial if what you’re looking for is a good response rate.
Simply put, what you’ll think about writing if you don’t have any experience in the field is simply what will go through everyone’s mind.
22. Use creative incentives that don’t seem selfish to your prospect!
You wouldn’t want to be under the impression that you’re going to pay for someone’s effort to respond to your outreach attempt. However, it’s only fair that you offer them some bargain that seems so genuinely altruistic and professional that they won’t refuse.
23. Mistakes are not professional. Avoid them with every email!
Charlotte Varela said it right. It’s about time someone made a list of the things people should, by all means, avoid when doing evangelism.
It’s impossible to deal with customers like a digital marketer and not be annoyed at some point by their mistakes that seem to be the same over and over again. Not knowing how to do outreach is no fun for anyone: for the influencer it’s time-consuming and inefficient, for you it’s frustrating because you don’t get the results you expected, and as a digital marketer it’s like violating some sacred terms.
24. Learn how to find space in a busy influencer schedule
Thinking it’s worth answering is a mindset that can cause disclosure failures, according to this article by Gregory Ciotti.
Twitter is becoming less and less personal and it’s not always appropriate to call an influencer, especially if you don’t already have a personal relationship with them. So email is where you can leverage your best qualities in a sales pitch.
25. The 9 formulas to increase the success rate of evangelism!
Bernie Reeder made a list of 9 formulas for email outreach that have always brought good results in outreach efforts. The bottom line is that there are indisputable facts of persuasion and content marketing, and while the recipes aren’t 100% sure, the science is always worth taking into account.
26. Get personal and you could experience a 333% increase in cold email response rates
Getting into the flow of a potential customer is not an easy task, especially since you have to operate different mindsets, according to Eric Siu in this article. Among the number of issues that can contribute to the failure of an outreach campaign, poor models and not enough follow-up are the main ones. Learn from Eric how to write an effective cold email.
27. Cold Email Principles to Make Your Email Stand Out
Whenever you thought of a model as a universal formula that works regardless of the influencer you are reaching out to, you were wrong. A model is more about the personality of your prospect combined with the outreach intent, as we read in this article by Sujan Patel, a well-known name in the lead generation field.
28. Avoid requests when contacting an influencer for the first time!
And when I say anatomy, it’s almost religiously accurate. And according to Pawel Grabowski in this article, nothing shows you what you’re doing wrong better than a bad example.
29. Ask questions to empower your email and attract the recipient
As Scott McQuin, founder of Roojet, says, it takes effective research for an outreach email, especially if it’s for sales. And the email subject is significant in an email strategy. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone.
The potential customer first looks at the subject line before deciding whether to open the email or not.
Questions enter into an instant dialogue with users, making them more likely to be open-ended. Litmus says that people respond well when you ask them to do something. It is important to use this tip in your CTA as well. Sephora asks an emotionally engaging question (really? Do you care?) with just two words, creating a truly great subject line.
Make sure you don’t make your subject line look like spam, the recipient will definitely delete your email. Be specific and consistent, don’t use words like discounts, offers, specials, donation or free.
Conclusion
Sometimes it can feel like you’re just sending an email and that’s no big deal. On the contrary, in digital marketing every detail matters. The more you behave like a professional, the more you will be taken seriously. Writing the best cold email template is no easy task for anyone, and clearly documenting it is a crucial step – one that can change your mind about what works and what doesn’t in your niche.
As Justin McGill mentioned in one of his articles, cold email reach is not spam. If done wisely, we might add.
We know it’s not easy to create sales emails that will increase your chances of getting responses just by following a pro tip. But we believe the tips discussed above will help you create an effective cold email campaign. There is no such thing as a 100% response rate guide for cold email. And if there are such business books, you might want to read something else as well.
There are many guides complete with cold email marketing tips or even companies (like Criminally Prolific for example) that try to deliver the best cold email templates. Whatever key elements or automation tool you can use to increase our response rate, don’t forget the “human touch” in everything you do.
Yes, cold email subject lines are important, as is social proof or the requirement to introduce yourself or your company name. But whenever you conduct cold email outreach, don’t forget that there are real humans you’re sending your mailing to, not robots.
Prospects that can boost your image on the web (and, why not, on social media) are often attacked by hundreds. The bad news is that you can’t just not be boring, but you’ll have to stand out. Good luck!
Have you used any special practices that are worth sharing?
