Five tips to help you generate leads through cold emails
Do you struggle to acquire new clients and sales? Discover five tips to help you generate leads through cold emails.
Cold email outreach is getting harder every day. Consumers have grown too choosy about the emails they open. Email service providers have also implemented robust algorithm changes that won’t hesitate to throw your email into the trash folder or even block your address.
So, how exactly are you supposed to enjoy the vast benefits of cold email outreach campaigns with all these barriers?This article will give you tips to help you generate more leads through cold email outreach. But let’s start at the top:
What is cold email outreach?
Cold email outreach involves sending personalized emails to initiate conversations with potential customers with whom you have no previous connections.
For these campaigns to be effective, you need effective strategies that will make your prospects open and engage with your emails right away. Of course, you also need to avoid all the email mistakes that other marketers make. This helps you build an effective email campaign that’ll bring you closer to achieving your marketing goals.
Before discussing tips to improve your cold email lead generation campaign, let’s answer this question: what is the best time to send a cold email?
According to Cience, 20% of all replied emails were sent at 8 a.m, making it the best time to send cold emails. The other good time slots were 5am and 9am. In a nutshell, early morning hours are the best times to send your outreach emails.
What about the best days to send emails? Check this out:
If you are looking for the best day to send cold emails, you should try Mondays, according to Siegemedia. As you can see in the graph above, Monday had a 20% open rate.
With that out of the way, here are five proven tips to generate leads through cold emails.
1) Use an eye-catching subject line
Subject lines are the first thing recipients see when your email arrives. If you don’t take your time to think about your subject line properly, chances are your email will be ignored or deleted before it’s even opened.
Here is what I mean. If you write your subject lines poorly, customers won’t bother opening the email itself. Check this out:
The subject line uses impressive stats to capture the recipient’s attention. Anyone interested in boosting their site’s traffic will want to read more.
Do not forget to personalize your subject line. Find something that your customers can relate to and include it in the subject line.
Now, every time the subject of email personalization comes up, most marketers immediately think about mentioning the recipient’s name. But that’s the low-hanging fruit. Try and think beyond it. Maybe you could find something the customer is interested in and mention it in the subject line. Or a pain point they’re experiencing.
Doing so helps your subject lines stand out, plus it can help increase your email open rates.
Finally, conduct A/B testing to know what email subject line formats work for your prospects. So, get several subject line formats and try them on your audience.
2) Add a strong CTA
Brief and ultra-specific CTAs keep your prospects from guessing. Instead, they help prospective customers know what they should do next.
So, include a prominent call-to-action button in all your cold emails. Here’s a tip for you, place only one CTA in the email body. This improves the click-through rate and possibly conversions of your cold email lead generation campaign.
You should also follow other best practices for creating CTA buttons. For example, make sure the button’s color stands out. It should also be of decent size to help readers click through with ease. You should also split test different CTA buttons to find the perfect option for your audience.
3) Personalize your content
Personalization is a trick on every smart marketer’s sleeves. This technique helps you connect with prospects at a more personal level. That, in turn, helps the prospects feel more valued, increasing the chances that they’ll convert.
Take your time and know more about your potential customer. Then, use the information you’ll gather to craft highly personalized cold emails.
Here are a few things you can check on:
- Their position in the company
- An event they participated in recently
- An achievement
- Something they said, etc.
Take a look at this template:
In the example above, a prospect is likely to engage with your email because it speaks directly to them. It talks about things the prospect is familiar with or has done in the past. This tells the prospect that you have taken your time and tailored the content specifically for them.
4) Optimize for mobile devices
Did you know that 81% of people prefer to open emails on their smartphones? That means you have to optimize your emails for mobile devices. Here are a few tips on how to do just that:
- Compress your images for faster loading
- Use large fonts
- Break up the text
- Make buttons easier to click
Most email marketing platforms will help you create mobile-ready emails right off the bat. Still, you can send yourself for a friend a sample email to see whether it’s actually optimized for mobile devices.
5) Follow-up
80% of sales are made between the fifth and twelfth contact. Therefore, you must add follow-up emails to your strategy.
But, you should be smart about it. Don’t nag your prospects with a new email every day. Instead, wait for around five or so days, then write a follow-up email. You can also use email reminders to stay on top of your follow-ups. Here’s a follow-up email template to inspire you:
Remember that all your follow-up messages should not be too repetitive or promotional. Moreover, never assume that your customers read your previous email. So, point out the product or service that will help recipients know what your follow-up email is about. Also, make sure that you always avoid this cold email phrase!
Successful cold email campaigns need proper planning
It’s no secret that without proper planning and strategy, your cold email lead generation campaigns will fail. Luckily, this article points out the strategies that will help you create a successful campaign.
Once again, here is what you need to do; write killer subject lines, use a strong CTA, personalize your emails, optimize your emails for mobile devices, and finally, write a follow-up email.
With these tips, you should build an excellent cold email lead generation campaign that will take your business to the next level.
Sam is part of the marketing team at Mailshake. Sam’s goal is to inspire people to not just “hang in there” but to thrive. When Sam’s not publishing or promoting new content, you can find him playing sports and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
Photo by BRUNO EMMANUELLE
