5 cold email templates that will generate warm leads for your sales team
By: Alexandre Gaillard
Tags: Growth Hacking, Email Marketing, CRM

5 cold email templates that will generate warm leads for your sales team Alexandre Gaillard Jun 17·9 min read

Salespeople and company founders are eager to find the perfect cold email template. COVID19 did not change the benefits of email marketing. To those saying that it does not work… I say that the most important part is to be able to adapt quickly templates based on the feedback and the responses. In this article, we will share with you the 5 cold email templates we’ve been using. To scale your business you will need to develop a solid sales process with powerful sales emails.

What do you want to achieve with cold emails?

The goal of your cold email should be either to set up a meeting or a call with a prospect or to get referred to a person. It should not be anything else. In each email, a question or call to action should stand out clearly. If you are sending a cold email do you want to find the fastest way to reach the decision-maker within an organization without a pre-existing relationship?

A sales guy should ask himself the following questions :

Who is receiving your email? Who is your perfect customer? How do you find the ideal customer?

The more specific you are and better are the chances that you will succeed in your email outreach. It is easier to write it in English than French. As you know that in French, like Spanish, Chinese, Russian too, we have more specificities when writing to someone we don’t know. Nevertheless, you can still write a broad enough message that will touch anyone just put the company name and a positive message.

To write effective cold emails you have to focus on an industry specific first and then move on to the next vertical.

In your sales emails, you want to specify something special about the industry with higher precision.

In your email, you want also to speak in the same language tone so let your sales rep speak freely.

Then you want to make sure that you spot the right type of decision-maker. The decision-maker can vary based on the company size.

Where to find email addresses?

There are four ways to get email addresses.

The first highest quantity/lowest quality is to buy lists. The second high quantity/low quality is web scraping. The third low quantity/high quality is outsourced, lead generation team. The fourth lowest quantity/highest quality is to create customer profiles.

You can also scan your card with CamCard, export list from Linkedin, enrich them with Dropcontact…

Another way to do it is just to look into your most successful customers. When I mean by successful customers it is customers that give you must value to your solution. They pay you the most or just simply endorse the DNA of your company. If you find a DNA match then this is the ideal customer you’re looking to harvest.

What are their common denominators:

● How large is the company?

● How many staff do they have?

● What other software tools do they use?

● What are the titles of all the employees?

● What kind of social media do they use?

● Where are they located?

● What’s their average deal size?

● How long have they already been in business?

● How did they hear about you?

● How did we acquire them?

Based on those elements, you will find a way to write effective cold emails. Then you will try to find 5 to 30 other businesses that have the same DNA in their core values. You don’t need hundreds of thousands of prospects just focus on 30 to 50 companies per month. Then try to focus on the right response rates gaining some insights about the latest flavor, the rights problem they have and this is how you will convince decision-makers to contact you.

If you’re asking the higher-ups for a referral down at some point someone will forward your message your phone call to the right person in the organization.

Test, measure, optimize your emails

You have to capture positive responses from prospects to expand your strategy to the next targeted audience. It is important to optimize your templates to create a better result in your niche market. InvestGlass keeps track of all your email and phone communications and has powerful reporting and analytics features that allow you to show open and response rates for all of your templates.

Here are the metrics that you should care about and your sales team too:

What’s your open rate? You should expect a +45% open rate. What’s your response rate? You should expect a 15% response rate. What kind of position/title responds to your emails? How do responses convert into qualified leads? Do not include undeliverable emails in your stats. If you send out 600 emails and get 100 undeliverable messages, use 400 for your calculations. If 40 people respond, you’ll calculate that as a X% response rate.)

Your email template will have only one goal. You want to make sure they understand exactly what to do. The cold email template should have only one link to click for example:

Click this link…

If you’re the appropriate person to speak with, what does your calendar look like? If not, who do you recommend I talk to?

Please refer me to the person responsible for media buying.

When to send cold emails?

Well, some people say the best time to send emails is between Tuesday through Thursday. I would say that there’s never a good time or bad time to send an email. Definitely, Mondays or holidays are not the best days. Then Friday it’s a complex day because people are out at least in their minds. Sunday could be also a good day … but if you are dealing with people in the Gulf this day is their Mondays.

Your email should be smartphone-friendly emails

You should keep your email short and also you should try not to add any pictures to your email to prevent any additional spam blockers. Your email should appear to be a real email sent by a real person. Therefore we should avoid any complex HTML designs. It’s a called email template right this is not a blog post.

How to respond to responses?

If you get an answer… well done!!! How do you respond? You should have some pre-defined answers. Here are some examples :

Positive set up call/meeting

Not interested

Not interested right now

Send me more information

We are already working with someone

I told the right person about you, and they’ll get back to you if they are interested

Out of office notifications

“Urs Gaillard from buying is the person you want to talk to…”

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

Just following up, does it make sense to talk about this? If not, who would be the right

person to talk to?

Thanks,

Kind regards,

A good cold email template starts with a clear subject line

Your subject line should be short and clear such as “who is responsible for this”, “who is responsible for that”, perhaps you can also put into the subject line the company name.

Let’s say you asked for a referral to the right person. When you write your subject — the correspondent should know if you are prospecting or selling. In an ideal world, you don’t want to let account execs and sales reps prospect do the same job and therefore the subject line will be different.

When it comes to subject lines try those ideas:

Use their name/company name in the subject line when it makes sense. Make the subject line as specific as possible — the more personal the subject line, the higher the open rate. If you wonder if it sounds too much like a marketing email then bingo it’s a marketing email. Experiment with questions in subject lines.

Cold email subject lines that get open rates of +40%

1. “Introduction: {Name}” or “Introduction {your name/company} <> {their

name/company}”

2. “quick request”

3. “Trying to connect”

4. “{Name of their company}”

This subject line is not only a promise that the message will be relevant — it’s a key factor for a higher open rate. Try not to be misleading but sharp and short to get your emails opened.

Cold email template body wording

Using the right — prose — words is an art ! It should be a short sweet and precise request — no more than 4 sentences.

There are two approaches to cold emails:

You are emailing someone high up in the company and asking for a referral down to the right person You are emailing the decision-maker directly, pitching them to sign up, setup a call

With InvestGlass.com you can copy and paste those text directly into your email template so if you’re an InvestGlass.com happy user, you can copy and paste them directly into InvestGlass.com as an email template.

— — — — — — — –

Cold email: Referral V1

Short subject line

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

My name is {{user.first_name}} and I head up business development efforts with {{organization.name}}. We recently launched a new platform that [one sentence pitch].

However, based on your linkedin online profile, you appear to be an appropriate person to connect with… or point me in the right direction.

I would like to speak with someone from {{lead.name}} who is responsible for [handling something that’s relevant to my product/service].

If it is you, are you open to a fifteen-minute call on [time and date] to discuss ways the {{organization.name}} platform can specifically help your business? If not you, can you please put me in touch with the right person?

I appreciate the help,

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

— — — — -

Cold email: Referral V2

Short subject line

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

I hope I’m not bothering you. Could you please refer me to the person in charge of [something that’s relevant to your product]?

Thanks for your time,

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

— — — — — — — — —

Cold email: Referral V3

Short subject line

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

My name is {{user.first_name}} and I’m with {{organization.name}}. We work with organizations like {{lead.name}} to [one sentence pitch].

One sentence unique benefit.

Could you direct me to the right person to talk to about this at {{lead.name}} so we can explore if this would be something valuable to incorporate into your events?

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

— — — — — — —

Subject line : Can you point me in the right direction?

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

Would you be so kind as to tell me who is responsible for [insert your biggest pain point here that resonates with your ideal customer OR insert function like “sales” or “recruiting”] and how I might get in touch with them?

Thank you,

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

Organization cold email referral are short — i saw your company online doing this and that … can we talk… time and date cheers.. and a call to action.

— — — — — — —

Cold email: Selling V1

Short subject line

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to reach out because [explain how you got their contact information and how you relate to them: talked to a colleague, saw their company online, etc.] {{organization.name}} has a new platform that will help [their team] at {{lead.name}}. [One sentence pitch of benefits.]

We do this by:

Benefit/Feature 1

Benefit/Feature 2

Let’s explore how {{organization.name}} can specifically help your business. Are you available for a quick call [time and date]?

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

— — — — — — —

Cold email: Selling V2

Short subject line

Dear {{contact.first_name}},

I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to reach out because [explain how you got their contact information and how you relate to them: talked to a colleague, saw their

company online, etc.].

{{organization.name}} has a new platform that will help [their team] at {{lead.name}}. [One

sentence pitch of benefits.]

I know that {{organization.name}} will be able to help {{lead.name}} [insert high-level

benefit].

Are you available for a quick call [time and date]?

Kind regards,

{{user.first_name}}

Let’s get them with InvestGlass Email feature!

Now you know the secrets to successful cold email templates. Actionable sales advice gets real when you test them. You have to adapt the templates until you find your own magic sauce.

InvestGlass team is glad to share with you more CRM sales tips resources so don’t hesitate to contact us. Email subject lines cold test first then measure your result inside InvestGlass.com CRM. Engaging a quality prospect is better than a large quantity. Effective cold email templates contain only one call to action!

Your sales teams are now ready to engage a quality prospect strategy. Don’t forget to match your ideal customer to the right email template.