Cold email. Love it or hate it, it’s still the most effective method of outbound sales. Unfortunately, over time it has acquired a bad name, and a lot of companies ditch this strategy without even trying. It’s a great loss, because cold emails in outbound sales can help you:
- Build predictable revenue
- Create a scalable sales process
- Change your SDRs into brand advocates
In outbound sales, cold emailing is essential, because it automates the entire sales process so sales reps can focus on closing more deals.
There are five steps to kicking off your outbound sales with effective outreach:
- Subjects that get your emails opened every time
Yes, it’s still the most important factor directly influencing your open rates. No matter how optimized for conversion the body of your email is, it won’t bring results if the email never gets opened. A boring subject line will give you a 10% OR when you can easily have 50%. To create a subject that begs the reader to open requires a pinch of creativity and the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. In our e-book below, we provide a list of smart practices such as how to use the preview for your benefit, why capital letters are cheesy and won’t help your OR, as well as how awful lying is, etc.
- Structure emails in the most high-converting way possible
In every vertical of your target, you will see patterns. But the primary question remains: Do we know who the decision-maker is? Knowledge about the decision-maker and the ability to create a context that draws her in is what determines whether an email is relevant. Did he raise investment for scaling his business lately? Did he join a LinkedIn Group? Is he going to be at the conference next month? Details like these give you irresistible leverage and the ability to create a relevant context. It determines whether you should choose a direct pitch, or a referral email in a long or short form. There is strong evidence backed by real data that the intro + benefit + social proof + call-to-action structure is the most effective approach.
- The timing will never be perfect
The truth is that there is no universal rule for the timing of your cold email campaign. But what you can do is always be testing. It sounds cliché, but it really is an essential component that will most definitely impact your OR. But your tests need a measurable goal and clear conclusions. One thing is for certain, sending your campaign at the wrong time can result in as much as 30% fewer responses.
- Outbound sales is a numbers game
You’re a sales guy (or gal); you know the numbers. What’s great about cold emailing campaigns is the fact that they’re 100% trackable, and analytics have become super simple with the emergence of user-friendly and highly accurate software. But we have to stop focusing on vanity metrics. Conversion from email to demo is the only metric that matters. In many situations, it might be far more efficient to send 10 well-targeted emails than to send 100 emails to randomly chosen potential decision-makers from your target.
- Enlist your inner creative genius
There’s any number of standard best practices to follow for cold emails, but at the end of the day, cold emails should be fun. We’ve done a great deal of testing on what works and what doesn’t. In fact, we’ve sent more than a million cold emails and yet we still love doing it. Why? Because we love getting feedback like: “Great email. Very well written. Let’s schedule a demo!”, or “I usually skip 99% of cold emails, but yours is splendid and I want a demo” from potential customers. We love helping them to scale their businesses, and it feels pretty good knowing we can help so many great businesses connect with the very people who need them most. But waiting for them to hopefully one day stumble upon our product just doesn’t seem right, and that’s why we love to reach out and engage them first.
The right strategy, every time
Cold emails might come easy to us, and hopefully reading this post has made it a little easier for you too, but there are so many more mechanisms behind every campaign that you can implement immediately and with ease. What’s described here is just a start. In Growbots’ ebook you will find different types of emails dissected from start to finish, the secrets of personalization and automation, and a whole lot more. As if that weren’t enough of a reason to take a look, all of this comes complete with plenty of real-life examples to back up our recommendations.
Download the ebook and reshape your outbound sales:
The Complete Handbook of Cold Mailing
