Six tips to help you write outreach emails that will get you more leads

Love to generate more business via email but not sure how to do it? Here are six tips to help you write outreach emails that will get you more leads.

Have you ever received an outreach email that was so poorly written, you thought to yourself, “They got it so wrong!?” 

Many marketers today will admit that sales outreach emails are vital for capturing the attention of prospects and boosting revenue. However, many also find out that there’s a difference between knowing and doing. Unless you see tangible and consistent results from your outreach emails, you haven’t nailed the writing process. 

Make no mistake, email marketing is going nowhere. So the sooner you get to using a reliable approach to your outreach emails, the better results you’ll see. And to help you, here are six writing tips that should improve the open rate of your outreach emails and get you more leads.  

1) Create an interesting subject line

Writing an effective email starts with a compelling subject line. Your leads will not even bother to open your email if the subject line isn’t catchy enough. However, creating clickable subject lines and avoiding the use of ‘spammy’ words is quite tricky.

Here are three ways to craft subject lines that earn you clicks:

  1. Keep your subject line short and concise: According to research conducted by Aweber, more than 1000 email subject lines show that the subject line written by 82 percent of senders included not more than 60 characters. In terms of effectiveness, the shorter your subject lines, the more mysterious they’ll seem. Also, longer subject lines will be truncated by most mobile email clients.  
  2. Trigger reader interest with curiosity: A bit of mystery is good if it arouses the reader’s curiosity and gets them wanting to find out more about a subject. For instance, “Gamers And HTML5” is less clickable than “What Do Gamers Think of HTML5?” 
  3. Personalize with names and data: Changing the wording of your subject line to be more personal could increase its clickability by about 50% if you consider the case of LeadGenius. You can use company names and other personal information to craft subject lines such as “I contact you through [contact name]. 

So, don’t just write the first phrase that comes to mind. Make sure you spend some time thinking about that subject line. After all, first impressions are everything. 

2) Keep your email brief and to-the-point

The next question is this. How exactly should you write your outreach email body? Well, always lean towards brevity. No one has the time to read a lengthy email nowadays. Therefore, you want to keep your email at 100 words or less. The ideal word count will be between 75 to 100 words.

Aim to hook your lead in less than seven sentences. How do you do this? Simple. No beating around the bush. Just introduce yourself, and get on with what you have to offer your reader. Finally, ask if your receiver is interested. 

Using this format will come as a breath of fresh air to your reader. It will separate your cold email from the thousands of other emails that go unnoticed daily.  Why? Because you save your would-be lead time. 

Believe it or not, they’ll be grateful for it. Check out how Bryan Harris hooked HubSpot’s editorial team with his email pitch. 

Source: HubSpot

Remember, getting the lead’s attention isn’t easy but keeping it is even more difficult. Therefore,  you want to make the best use of your words to deliver the highest amount of value. 

3) Communicate your value proposition clearly

The clarity of your message influences the success of your outreach email. Yes, you want to get your message across while making the most effective and efficient use of words. However, this shouldn’t be at the cost of clarity. 

According to a report from Boomerang, emails created with a 3rd-grade reading level generate 37% more responses than those written with a college reading level. Emails with a high school reading level received 17 percent less response. The best way you can implement this is with the use of shorter words in shorter sentences. 

That’s not to dismiss the fact that your email’s context determines your choice of words. Assuming you’re cold-emailing Ph.D. students about a subject related to their thesis, you may have to use the right words to sound serious and increase engagement

But don’t use words that exceed four letters anywhere. It’s not necessary. In all other instances where you don’t have to adjust your writing level, aim for a 3rd-grade writing level. You can get this by focusing on simpler words using a few words per sentence. 

You can use any Flesch Kincaid grade level calculator online to evaluate the clarity of your email. 

4) Proofread and check for errors

Another thing about short words and sentences, they help you avoid spelling and grammatical errors. But this is not to say you don’t have to proofread your email and check for errors. Believe it or not, even the basic English words can lead you to commit mistakes. 

Any type of grammatical error will make you look bad and make the wrong impression. Your recipients will take notice and make decisions based on what they see in your introduction email. Obvious mistakes such as confusing “there” and “their” are some of the things to look out for. 

Also, you want to take note of your expressions and phrasal verbs. The list goes on, but you get the point. Mistakes can come from different angles. Therefore, as you handle your email marketing, take the proofreading, fact-checking, and editing side seriously. 

If possible, get someone else to read your email. Have a colleague or an editor proofread your outreach emails first, then read them aloud to yourself before clicking the send button. 

Pro Tip: Get a grammar checker like Grammarly to help address issues with grammar, spelling, among others.

5) Instead of impressing people, try to express yourself

The tone you choose for your outreach email can make or break your pitch. Deciding to go with too formal a tone can make you sound rigid and boring. On the other hand, if you’re too informal, your leads might not take you seriously. 

So, what can be done? You have to take the middle ground and balance the two. Yes, that doesn’t sound too actionable, so here’s a template you can use that illustrates my point. 

Subject Line: Excellent Content Idea? 

Hello [Recipient Name]

Hope your day is going well 🙂 

I’m interested in submitting a guest post to your [Domain Name]. 

I have come up with a couple of awesome ideas I believe your readers would love. 

How would you like me to pitch you these ideas?

Best Regards,

[Your Name]

P.S. You can find my guest posts on prominent sites like [Top site  1] and [Top site 2] so I have no doubt that I’ll meet your editorial standards. 

From the subject line to the closing remarks, you can see how the template above also uses all the tips previously stated. Always ensure that you sign off with a real name as it helps make the message personal. Change email signature in gmail to always use the same name. 

6) Follow up with your leads

Following up is an essential part of every sales cycle. The same applies to your outreach email. The majority of your leads will not respond or take action the first time you reach out to them. Instead of doing what 44 percent of salespersons do and give, you have to follow up with another attempt.

A review conducted by Woodpeck of more than 20 million outbound sales emails found that email campaigns with 4 to 7 follow-ups received a 27% reply rate. When you compare this to emails having only 1 to 3 follow-ups, the former received 3x more replies. 

Prospects receive thousands of emails every day. Aside from that, they’re busy, and you can’t expect them to promptly reply to your emails even if they like your pitch. That’s why following up your lead will get you more leads and make your outreach emails more successful.  

Use these tips to boost your email lead generation

Email, although highly effective, can be quite challenging. From the subject line to the introduction and conclusion, an outreach email must express your message as clearly as possible. 

But most importantly, it must be actionable. Create an intriguing subject line, keep the email brief and straight-to-the-point, and communicate your value and message. Finally, proofread.  

Irrespective of the present performance of your email campaigns, implementing the six tips outlined above can boost lead generation and influence your bottom line. 

David Campbell is a digital marketing specialist at Ramp Ventures. He helps manage the content marketing team at Right Inbox. When he’s not working, he enjoys traveling and trying to learn Spanish.