Owler’s Step-by-Step Guide to Cold Email Outreach
Cold email outreach is the most intimidating part of sales; it is that first email contact that you hope hooks your prospect's attention.
This blog will dive into best practices for cold email outreach and give you our top tips for successful cold emails that won't get sent straight to spam.
What is Cold Email Outreach in Sales?
Cold email outreach is the initial one-to-one email contact initiated by a sales rep to a qualified prospect. This initial contact is designed to introduce your product or service and relay information that will make that prospect want to engage with your company and ultimately buy your product or service. It is also the first step on the path to building a solid client relationship and the first step in a series of follow-up emails and outreach that, if done correctly, will bring that prospect on board as a client.
The goal of a cold email is not an immediate conversion and sale but rather the start of ongoing and sometimes very lengthy email outreach and phone and face-to-face conversation that will ultimately lead to a sale. Cold email outreach is a proposition that suggests a mutually beneficial relationship between the prospect and the seller.
Often it is the hardest part of the sales job because the sales rep or the marketing team that creates the email templates or writes notes for the cold calls must craft something engaging, personalized, and interesting enough to either get a reply or stay on the phone. Crafting this sales pitch can take a long time, something that most sales reps do not have a lot of!
Cold email outreach, although slightly less intimidating than a cold call, is just as hard to craft correctly and even harder to get right. It is hard to get right because you are reaching out to a decision-maker that you do not know about something they may not be interested in. In a cold email, without real-time feedback, as you get in a cold call, it is impossible to adjust your pitch, tone, or tempo to what your prospect may need.
In the past, sales teams would send out mass, generic sales emails to their prospects and hope that it would interest someone enough to reach back out to them so they could initiate the sales process. Modern cold emails are a little more involved and take a little more time, but if done correctly, they yield much higher results.
According to MailChimp, you can expect around 20-25% open rates with a well-crafted cold email. This rapidly drops to 1-5% if your email is a generic send.
With our tips and tricks below, sales reps can slash the time it takes to craft a strong cold email and get back on the path to selling.
Top 5 Tips to Boost Your Cold Email Open and Reply Rate:
1. Nail That Subject Line
The first thing a company's prospect sees is your subject line. Think hard about what emails you open yourself and why. Do you open an email with a generic subject line about a product or offer, or do you open an email with an attention-grabbing subject line that pertains to you and your needs?
The most successful cold email subject lines ask questions, address pain points, convey a sense of urgency, have a call-to-action, or add something personal. Crafting a solid subject line is an art well worth spending time on because the right subject line will see those open rates soar and those business relationships start to thrive.
Cold email experts Brafton created this awesome subject line template for your next cold email:
2. Position Your Business and Yourself
Now is the time to validate and position yourself and your business. This first cold email must outline who you are and what your company does. It is a great idea to drop social proof from one of your better-known clients if you can so that your prospect can relate to a similar company using your offerings. This can be a quote, a case study link, or a simple name drop.
3. Personalize Your Cold Email
By personalization, we don't mean just having your cold email addressed to the prospect's first name and including their company name; we mean true deep-level personalization. This personalization addresses the company's pain points, discusses how to fix them, and may even throw in something cheeky about your prospect's favorite sports team.
This type of personalization takes time, but it does not have to take forever, as there are several shortcuts and platforms that can help you succeed. If you do not already have a cold email template, ask your content marketing team if they can craft one for you. A cold email template can include a brief introduction of yourself, address the pain points of a specific industry, and provide the solutions your product offers.
The template will have blank spaces where you can fill in more personalized information such as the prospect's name and perhaps their favorite sport, sports team, or charity that they support.
This type of personal information should be found on LinkedIn. As our sales leaders have noted, there is a fine line between personalization and creepy, and LinkedIn is the safest bet for publicly available, non-creepy information!
To find accurate company data, use a business intelligence platform. Owler offers over 15 million detailed company profiles featuring data including leadership information, company vertical, financial information, and much more!
4. Send Your Cold Email to the Right Person
This one sounds like a no-brainer, but the number of emails we have all received that are irrelevant to our job, company, or vertical is astounding. Before you hit send, ensure you are directing your email to the right decision-maker at that company, and make sure they have the job title you need to connect with. A great way to do this research is to use the company website. This is an often overlooked resource!
5. Make Your Email Easy to Read!
Hands up, how many of you read past the first paragraph if an email doesn't immediately grab you? My guess is less than 10% of you. When writing that cold email, remember that you have less than 5 seconds to grab your reader's attention and give them something that will make them want to read more (no pressure!). You also must check your spelling and grammar. There is nothing more off-putting than having a professional email sent out with someone's name, company name, or anything else misspelled. This may be a sales email, but professionalism is essential.
Our Top Cold Email Outreach Tips
Heavily research your subject line to make it stand out
Keep your email short and to the point.
Address the correct person directly with something personalized
Address a pain point for their company
Drop in some social proof
CHECK YOUR SPELLING! Hello Grammarly
Don't forget to send a follow-up email to boost your reply rate
By following these tips and tricks for your cold outreach, you will also avoid getting sent straight to spam and maintain your sender reputation.
To make your personalization research process more manageable, use Owler as a single source of truth. Owler's three products give you access to over 15 million company profiles, from small businesses to the Fortune 500. Our data includes exclusive insight from our 15 million-strong member community, and our free plan allows you access to 5 company profiles.
Our Owler Max product includes access to all of our data, as well as integrations with Slack, Salesforce, Hubspot, and more in the pipeline!
