The Art and Science of Cold-Emailing
By: Madison Gary
Tags: Spotify, Cold Emails, Gmail

This post is part of the personal sales and marketing crash course project I am undertaking in December. If you’re interested in reading about the goals I set or what I accomplished at the end of the month, feel free to click around!

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Cold-emailing is both a science and an art. Every good salesperson knows there is a strategic method to getting the highest open rates, but an email without personalization is like a bad pickup line.

More than two-thirds of incoming messages are promotional.

Gmail categorizes about 68 percent of incoming messages as “promotions.” Similarly, 22 percent of messages fall into the update category. That leaves about 10 percent of incoming messages that offer something of substance.

The read rate for promotional emails is 19.2%.

Even if your email lands in the Promotions tab, the game isn’t over. Many Gmail users still pick through the overflowing folder of hungry salespeople trying to get them to purchase something, but the ultimate goal is to land in the inbox of your prospect.

Doing this ensures a much higher chance of them opening and engaging in a conversation, further driving the sales pipeline.

How to get the prospect to open (and read) a cold-email

01 | Avoid Spam Trigger Words

Words like cash, bonus, sale, and make money can all trigger the spam police. An email sentenced to a lifetime in the spam folder is an email that will never get opened.

02 | Avoid formatting that could get flagged.

Having too many explication points, non-emoji symbols (@ and #), multi-colored fonts, or varying font size and type are red flags to Gmail’s spam police. Overuse of punctuation is also a major trigger for spam. Spam filters are getting tighter, especially in Gmail.

03 | Keep your subject lines engaging and straightforward.

Avoiding spam trigger words and characters that would catch a robot’s attention is only half the battle. Subject lines should include an intriguing hook and evoke curiosity that leads to a high open-rate.

The subject line is the pickup line of a dating life. No one wants a pickup line that immediately makes them cringe, and email users aren’t going to open an email that doesn’t catch their attention.

Subject lines should also be concise. Scripting the subject lines as click-bait isn’t the move. Untruthful subject lines can destroy trust between the buyer and seller, making it almost impossible to regain within the first stages of the sales cycle.

It’s best to be representative and transparent upfront so that when the prospect opens the email, they don’t feel betrayed by a misleading subject line. Subject lines should align with the brand personality.

47% of emails are opened or discarded based solely on their subject line.

Photo by Litmus

Having deceptive, misleading subject lines won’t do you any favors. High open rates and low click rates have never been the recipe for selling.

Your prospect opens the email. Now what?

The hardest part is behind you — getting the initial open. Now that the prospect has clicked on the email, how will you know if they stayed long enough to read it?

If a lead follows through with the included call to action, that’s a strong measurement that the email did what it was supposed to do.

If followed, these next points ensure a high volume of clicks and further engagement with the sale.

01 | Write friendly

Write human. People want to read something that they can relate to but also has an approachable tone. It’s easy to get caught up in sounding like a salesperson who’s only mission is to sell.

02 | Make your message relevant.

Nearly 60% of email users will mark a message as spam if they receive too many or irrelevant emails from the same sender. Why are you writing the email, and how can it add value to your customer’s life?

03 | Aim to engage first

What should an engaging first email include?

Communicate a promise of value

Once opened, the email should benefit the subscriber or customer

Build trust

What is the opposite of an engaging email? An unread one. Or worse, an unopened one.

You can’t escape the facts. Emails that don’t capture their prospects’ attention within the first few seconds didn’t do enough.

04 | Create some urgency

Creating urgency is an undeniable way to compel action. Psychologically, we as humans hate missing out. We want the best deals, and we want them now.

Urgency can be a marketer and a salesperson’s greatest weapon if used wisely. Having a short window of time encourages the customer to take action without overthinking the purchase.

We are inherent procrastinators and will always choose to put things off, like grabbing our credit card and making a purchase. Creating urgency makes procrastinating much harder because if you wait around too long, the deal won’t be there when you come back a week later.

Urgency should be authentic, possess creativity, and should add value to your customer’s life.

This tactic of creating urgency can quickly be overused, so be careful only to use it when the email genuinely calls for immediate action.

05 | Evoke curiosity

Subject lines that create gaps of missing information urge more clicks. Why? It’s human nature to fill the gaps of the unknown by reading what’s inside. Even with a catchy opener, making sure that there is still closure at the end of the email will keep customers from feeling betrayed after opening.

06 | Get personal

Pack an emotional punch with the email headlines. Personalization, including adding the subscriber’s name to the subject line, shows that the brand cared enough to get it right. According to Optin Monster, addressing customers by their first names in the subject line can boost open rates by 10–14%.

If you want 15 minutes of a customer’s time, you have to give them 5 of yours first by researching who they are.

07 | Use emotion

UNICEF’s powerful subject line reads: Will you put down your phone to save a child’s life?

This subject line is both powerful and relevant. Individuals who are always on the go tend to open emails using their mobile phones. A subject line like this would make anyone stop and consider the looming question.

08 | Tell them what’s inside.

Sometimes simplicity is the best move. Transparency in a subject line upfront can build trust.

My Turn

I decided to test my cold-email skills by scripting a personalized email sequence for the growing startup, Fast.

Fast is a 1-click, password-free checkout experience that cuts down minutes into seconds. It really is that fast.

I decided to target two companies I could easily see benefited by faster checkout technology — Brooklinen, a high-end luxury sheet company, and Love Wellness, a women-led personal care and supplement company.