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20 Actionable Cold Email Outreach Techniques That Work GREAT in 2018

By September 1, 2018 One Comment

Achieving success in a cold email campaign is a dream of many entrepreneurs. If you also share the same dream, then how can you gauge the success of your cold email campaign?

The real measurement of a cold email campaign success depends on the number of email recipients, who have actually taken the action whatever you had specified in your email.

In most of the cases, cold email senders want the recipients to tap the reply button and fix a meeting. In many cases, the requirement is to start a candid conversion with the prospects to convert them into customers.

Whenever a prospect reaches to the Call to Action of your email, it will be a make or break moment for him/her because the prospect can either take the action specified in the email or delete the respective cold email within minutes.

In case you are thinking about adding multiple frictions to your cold emails, the stop now because you would most probably lose the game completely. It is also not recommended to add excessive salesly lines. Just make the cold emails as much flexible as possible and expect the desired result. Give your prospects as much freedom as you can so that they can do whatever they want with the cold emails.

The best cold email outreach techniques for 2018 are discussed below so that you can get ideas of adding the proper Call to Action. It will encourage your prospects to make a quick decision and thus your valuable time will also not get wasted.

Specific Date and Time to schedule an appointment

Suppose, you have launched a cold email campaign to schedule a call or meeting to discuss more about your offerings, then what would be the ideal Call to Action by which you can encourage your prospect to go ahead?

You have to design an impressive value-added email so that your prospect can easily relate the proposed solution with his/her present situation. At the bottom part, you just need to include a specific date and time and inquire whether it would be possible for him/her to make a conversation on that date and time. In this way, you can set a platform for the future conversation about your products or services.

Samples

Would you be available for a 10 minutes chat on Nov 5 at 2pm PST?

Can I steal 20 min from your busy schedule for a phone call tomorrow at 4 pm EDT?

Provide a Calendar Link

This particular Call to Action incredibly works as an alternative to the former strategy of including a particular date and time.

If you want to make a conversation with your prospect in a specific date and time (as per the convenience), then you can utilize some advanced tools, such as Doodle, Assistant.to, Calendly etc. Such tools are very effective to set a date for a business call on a mutual basis and you can easily take help from them. From now onwards, you don’t have to worry about the time, time zones, and other options regarding the future communication.

Whenever you would provide a calendar link attached to the cold email, it would be easy for your prospect to respond to your cold email. All the prospect needs to do is to open the calendar and then he/she has to select a date as well as date that is most suitable to him/her. It also helps you to get the response of your prospect in much lesser time. The prospects also don’t have to manually give a response.

Some examples of Cold to Action attached to a calendar link:

Can you book a 20 minutes slot as per your convenience? Check out a link to my calendar.

Kindly select a date and time according to your convenience by using this link.

Use calendly.com to get a calendar link or you can use Google Calendar too

Follow up with the prospects

Suppose, you have sent 4-5 followup emails to your prospects and have not received a response so far. Now, the Call to Option of MCQ can make your prospects enthusiastic about your cold email and you can also receive their replies.

The best part of this particular Call to Action is that it can considerably alleviate effort or friction for the prospects. You have to remember that some response is better than no response, as it can help to save your valuable time otherwise, you would spend time unnecessarily behind that prospect.

Leave the decision to your prospect

As you know cold emails are not invited or expected emails, so you can’t expect anything from your prospects. The decision whether they would contact with you or not would be solely dependent on them. It will be great if you leave an option for them, such as:

Are you available for a call the day after tomorrow 2 pm?

Ask for a Connection

Suppose, you are offering recruitment automation software and you want to introduce it in different companies. The particular Call to Action states that you should email to CEO or Head of HR department and it would be very likely that he/she would transfer it to their juniors. If the respective department is facing a situation in which they have a requirement of your product, then most probably they will show great interest in your offering.

You will get another advantage in this regard to get introduced directly with someone senior in an organization.

Ask Simple Yes/No Questions for Confirmation

As you cannot expect a big thing from your prospect, so it would be better to ask any question in yes/no mode. You have to present a solution to your prospect through your offerings so that they can overcome their problems in an effortless way.

However, in a cold email campaign, you need to confirm that the prospect on which you are investing time really needs your solution or not. So, you can ask a question on yes/no basis to get confirmation. The future follow-ups will be dependent on this reply.

Once you get a confirmation, you can ask whether you want to fix their solution permanently and then you can start depicting the value of your products or services. If you can get confirmation on right time, then it will more likely increase the success of your cold email campaign. Yes/No questions will also encourage your prospects to reply, as it will not cost much time.

Ask Smart Questions

If you are about to launch a cold email campaign and ensure its success, then you should be a smart marketer and smart marketers ask smart questions. Along with asking important confirmation questions, you have to also ask open-ended questions to start a smart conversation.

Smart questions are different from simple yes/no questions (covered in the previous section) because it has a requirement of a less-specific response. By attaching open-ended questions with your email, you would encourage your customers to share more about their problems (specific with your product or service). Thus, you can more effectively help them with your solutions.

Utilization of Humor

Humor is capable of opening of many doors that can be found in a tough way otherwise. You have to create a friendly environment, as the prospects don’t know you in-person. A cheeky or quirky point can be attached with your cold email to make it more interesting rather than making it completely boring by adding only texts.

Try to make some differences so that you can beat the competition with your uniqueness. Humor will encourage your prospects to reply even if they are not interested in your offerings or they are overwhelmed with works.

Take Permission to Share Something Valuable

It is one of the smartest approaches to start a conversation in an interesting way. We all know that a cold email campaign is a one-way conversation but whenever your prospects start responding in a positive way, it would be a two-way conversation.

Every person wants to get some value whenever he/she invests his/her hard-earned money and it equally goes well with a cold email campaign.

In case you want to achieve success in your cold email campaign, then you have to also create resources with the best possible value. But stop! Don’t share it straightforwardly.

Ask for permission first by email and if your prospect gives positive response, then share those value-added resources with them. In most of the times, prospects are enthusiastic to get such resources that won’t have any obligation.

Add a bit of Urgency

Do you know our brains take quick decision in urgent situations? In case you add a sense of urgency to your cold email, it is more likely that your prospects would make decisions more quickly thus your valuable time will also be saved. Now, you have to choose the approaches through which you can create a sense of urgency among a number of available approaches. A worth-noting point is that prospects respond earlier to those with a sense of losing something than to those with a promise and you can make use of fact effectively in your cold email campaign.

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Know Your Prospects

Without doing proper researching, you can’t expect to get success in your cold email campaign. The first and foremost thing is to getting information about the pain point of your prospect unless you can’t design its solution with your products or services.

You have to research their personal as well as professional interests. Thus, you are more likely advancing towards the success of your cold email campaign.

The researched information will be helpful for you in the creation of a highly customized email for a particular prospect. You have to do it otherwise the success rate of your cold email campaign will be lowered. Thus, you can grab their interest and convert them into customers.

Experienced people easily differentiate generic emails and genuine emails with their writing styles and in case you have researched well about their problems, then it would show in your writing style.

 

Include Social Proof

Most of the people seek references or clues from others before making a final decision regarding the purchasing of a new product or service. Hence, the prospects will more likely choose your offerings if they get positive feedbacks for them.

These references will work as social proof. You should also include those big names (if any) who have already purchased your offerings. It will increase the credentials of your offerings.

Give a Prominent Reason to Reply You Back

If you can’t give a value to your prospects, then you can’t expect success in your cold email campaign. We are always seeking solutions of our problems and attracted towards those products that can help us to get proper solutions. Today, when most of the people are very busy with their tight schedules, you can’t expect them to read your email without having a proper value.

Give them a Reason to Say Yes

According to recent study, people will be more likely agree to your proposal or provide a positive response in case you give them a valid reason to do so. You have to add a prominent value with your proposal. In case you become unable to provide a value, then you will more likely get positive reply.

You have to carefully work on the benefits of your offerings and increase their value as much as possible. Stating only features other than values can’t do anything helpful. The prospects will be more concerned about the value they are getting to solve their business problem or a pain point.

You can only expect to get higher response rates if you give the best possible value to your prospects.

Work With Numbers

You can carefully search for relevant data and statistics and include them in your cold emails thus it will become more reliable and credible and it is particularly important while you are handing indecisive people. The pieces of data will encourage them to start a conversation to know more about your offerings.

You should use numbers in both the subject line as well as in the email text in order to increase the cold email opening rates. Include numbers in forms of numerals instead of words. It would be greatly helpful to draw the attention of the viewers and thus you can also stand out as a unique service provider or product seller.

You will be wondered to know that ‘three’ is a magical number when it comes to cold email marketing. For an instance, our mind likes to get three options other than four or more.

You can apply this rule in times of segmenting the cold emails into paragraphs, asking for a schedule for future communication, or selecting adjectives that would describe your service or product in the best possible way.

Use the First Name of the Prospect

When we see our names in an unknown email, a certain part of our brain starts getting activated and this particular part is connected to our identity as well as self-perception and that’s why it’s very important to use first name in the addressing part of your cold email.

Your prospects will start trusting your offerings when they see their names in your messages. Using generic salutation is a sign of spam messages and we don’t want such messages in our inbox and it goes well with your prospects.

Personalization is Very Important

Don’t send the same message to each and every prospect. As you have done sufficient research works, it’s really important to frame personalized messages for different prospects. Right from the salutation to message body everything should be perfectly customized so that the respective prospect can easily realize your hard work.

Experienced people can easily differentiate between a generic email and a properly customized email. Everyone wants to get special treatment so proper personalize messages will increase your success rate to a great extent.

Be Specific about your email

Every person is very busy with his/her tight working schedules and if you want to stand out from the crowd of a large pool of cold messages, then you have to provide the best possible value to their valuable time. That’s why you have to be very specific with your offerings.

As per research findings, prospects will be more likely engaged with your emails if they find it easy-to-read and easy-to-answer. They will also be enthusiastic to give back reply if you have added clear directions on what they should do next. Don’t close your cold emails with some confusing thoughts or open-ended questions because they can adversely affect your entire cold email campaign.

Send Short and Simple Messages

It might be a simple point for you but it’s one of the worth-noting points because people don’t have time to read and understand your email. Rather it’s your responsibility to frame short and simple messages.

Don’t talk much about Yourself

People are hardly interested to read about you rather they are more interested in solving their problems with a solution. Hence, keep your introduction short and discuss more about the value.

These aforesaid 20 techniques will increase the success of your cold email campaign to a great extent.

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