One of the hardest jobs in business-to-business lead generation is writing effective cold emails. A cold email is a message that you send to a prospective client who has no business relationship with your company and who neither requested your email nor is expecting it.
Cold emails are hard to write because they are the electronic equivalent of the cold call. Most prospects don’t like receiving cold calls. And most sales people don’t like making them.
Cold emails are also unpopular because they rarely work. The majority of cold emails go straight to the trash can. But this isn’t a problem with the medium. It’s a problem with the message. Here are the top-four blunders that B2B marketers and B2B sales people make when writing cold emails.
Blunder #1: A subject line that’s about you
Your prospects see two things when your cold email arrives in their inboxes. The name of the sender and the subject line of the email. If the subject line is all about you and your firm and how amazing you are, expect to end up in the trash can.
Here’s what I mean. Look at this subject line from a firm that offers managed cloud services to businesses:
“We are the best managed cloud services provider.”
This may be true. And it may even be relevant, since many businesses like to trust their cloud computing to leading firms and not to amateurs. But this is the wrong place to boast.
Your email subject line is not where you talk about yourself. It’s where you talk about your prospect. So, eliminate the words we, us, our and I from your subject lines. Talk about your reader instead. Use a subject line like this:
“Quick question about managed cloud services.”
An email with that subject line is more likely to get opened and read.
Blunder #2: No personalized greeting
If you receive an email from someone who addresses you as “Dear Sir/Madam,” what do you do? That’s right, you hit the delete button. That’s because the email is clearly from someone who literally doesn’t know the first thing about you, namely whether you are a man or a woman. The same goes for emails addressed to “To whom it may concern.” Another candidate for the trash folder.
Your immediate goal with the start of your email message is demonstrating relevance. You must give your prospect a reason for reading your message. And you can’t do that if you sound like you don’t know the first thing about your reader.
Overcome this blunder by addressing your email to your prospect by name. Write, “Dear Bob.” Or, if your approach is formal, “Dear Ms. Carruthers.”
If you prefer an informal approach, write, “Hi, Bob.” Or, “Good morning, Samantha.”
Blunder #3: Starting with you and your company
The biggest mistake I see in B2B cold emails is opening sentences and paragraphs that are all about the sender, the sender’s company and the sender’s product or service. You’ve received emails like this, so I don’t have to show you an example. But I will anyway.
You know the approach. You open the email, you start reading the first sentence, and it sounds like this: “I work for Acme Networking Solutions and we are the top supplier of Catalyst 9000 Series to Fortune 500 firms. We offer a full suite of networking solutions. Our experience is unparalleled. That’s why firms choose us.”
I. We. Our. Us. The opening is all about the sender, not the recipient. This is the proven way to get deleted. But if you want your prospect to read your cold email opening, open by talking about them, like this:
“Congratulations on your firm being awarded that major contract in Seoul. Since you’ll be in the market for LAN core and distribution switches, you may want to consider sourcing through a firm that has extensive experience helping US-based firms like yours get up and running in South Korea. My firm . . .”
Blunder #4: Slow in getting to the point
You have around three seconds to grab the attention of your cold email prospect. If your first few sentences fail to grab attention, you lose your chance to turn your recipients into leads.
This means you must grab attention immediately. Your first few sentences aren’t the place for a lengthy introduction to your topic, or for a circuitous elocution about something abstract. Your opening is where you “fire your largest cannon,” to quote David Ogilvy.
Here’s an example of how you don’t open:
“We’ve reviewed a lot of project management apps for a lot of landscapers and contractors in the last 19 years. And we’ve seen the same problems over and over. Most small business owners instinctively know they need a project management app for their workers these days, but most are woefully unaware of what options exist and which option is right for them. Some choose to work with a software developer and spend far more than they need to on an app. Some choose to hire a friend of the family who happens to be “good with computers” and end up with an app that does nothing for their business. Some brave souls choose to build their own app using a free tool and end up frustrated by the process.”
That’s 129 words and you still don’t know who is writing to you or why.
Here’s how you do open.
“Are you losing business because your workers don’t have a good project management app? You can find out right now by taking our free Shrug Test. Here’s what you do . . .”
That’s 33 words that name a pain point, allude to a solution, offer value and ask for action. All communicated in one-quarter of the time the other writer took to communicate nothing.
Next steps
Writing cold B2B emails doesn’t have to be as painful or as frustrating as cold calling. Just as effective cold callers work from scripts that are proven to generate results with prospects, so too can you work from a cold email template that works. Avoid these top-four blunders, and you’ll write cold emails that prospects open, read and respond to.
About the author
Alan Sharpe is a B2B copywriter who helps technology firms and their Hubspot Partner Agencies acquire customers using cold email outreach and other tactics. Learn more at www.sharpecopy.com.
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