How to Write an Effective Cold Email: Complete Guide!

Writing an effective cold email is a crucial step in email prospecting. Also known as cold mailing, it's a prospecting technique that fits into a company's business strategy and aims to generate new leads.

Writing a cold email is a unique exercise. You can't write to 10,000 people in the same way. You're likely to fail. This is where personalization comes in. The more personalized your email, the less your recipients will feel spammed.

However, personalization takes time. It's up to you to decide where to draw the line. It's all about return on investment. You're not going to do ultra-personalization if your product costs $10. But if you have high average order values, using personalization in your cold mailing campaigns becomes interesting.

An effective cold email must be well-structured and contain the following key elements:

The sender: Your name and email address should be professional and consistent with your brand or company. Recipients are more likely to open an email from a credible source.

The subject: Your email's subject line should be attention-grabbing and encourage recipients to open it. It should be short, clear, and give an overview of the email's content. Consider using relevant keywords and personalizing the subject line for each recipient.

The hook: The hook is the first sentence of your email and should capture the recipient's attention from the opening. Use a personalized icebreaker to show that you've researched the recipient and are interested in them. We'll talk more about this later in the article.

Social proof: Include testimonials, case studies, or key figures to show how your product or service has helped other similar businesses. This strengthens the credibility of your offer and encourages recipients to learn more.

The CTA (Call To Action): Your cold email should have a clear goal and encourage the recipient to take action. Whether it's scheduling a call, signing up for a demo, or visiting your website, make sure your CTA is simple and easy to understand.

By adhering to these five key elements in composing your cold email, you will increase your chances of receiving positive responses and improving the performance of your cold mailing campaigns.

Today, people are inundated in their inbox, but also by phone, on LinkedIn, and through online advertising. They are highly vigilant and recognize prospecting practices. As a business developer or growth marketer, you need to stand out from the crowd.

Personalization starts before writing a cold email

To capture your prospects' attention, we recommend focusing on ultra-personalization by combining as many variables as possible: the position held, the industry, the company size... But most importantly, exploit all the elements of the contact list you've built.

If you've prepared your cold mailing campaign well, you've carefully compiled your list of prospects. Targeting is the number one ingredient for a successful prospecting campaign. This targeting should form the basis for part of your campaign's personalization.

When creating a list of prospects in Sales Navigator, you'll identify common characteristics. These characteristics should correspond to search criteria available in Sales Navigator. These criteria will allow you to create a personalized cold email template for the prospect segment you've just created.

• You identify prospects who have been with the same company for more than 4 years.You can personalize with a phrase like this: "Considering the time you've been with {{CompanyName}}..."

• On the other hand, if you target prospects who have recently joined a company less than 3 months ago, you can write: "I see that you've recently joined {{CompanyName}}, I hope everything is going well."

Icebreakers is a technique to capture the prospect's attention when opening the email. It is a crucial element in a cold email. The icebreaker is, by design, ultra-personalized. Goal: Reassure the recipient of your cold email and show them that you are interested in them.

Crafting good personalized icebreakers takes time and research for each of the contacts in your prospecting list. It's important to assess the return on investment of the operation. If you sell inexpensive products, it may not necessarily be profitable to focus on ultra-personalization in your cold emails. On the other hand, if you are, for example, a service provider and a sale can represent thousands of dollars, then it's worth taking the time to do it and to do it right.

Examples of effective icebreakers

Classic and effective icebreakers include compliments such as a new position appointment, mentioning a recent funding round, bouncing off the latest LinkedIn post...

Here are some examples of icebreakers:

• "Congratulations on your recent promotion to the position of {{Position}} at {{CompanyName}}! I imagine this must be an exciting time for you."

• "I noticed that your company {{CompanyName}} recently raised funds. Congratulations on this great achievement!"

• "I came across your latest blog post titled "{{ArticleTitle}}", and I must say that I found your ideas very interesting."

• "I saw on LinkedIn that you celebrated your 5th anniversary at {{CompanyName}}. Congratulations on this impressive journey!"

• "I read your interview in {{MagazineName}} and was inspired by your vision of the {{Industry}} sector."

• "I see that {{CompanyName}} recently won the {{AwardName}} award in the {{Category}} category. Congratulations on this great recognition!"

• "I attended your conference at the {{EventName}} event and was very interested in your thoughts on {{Subject}}."

• "I came across a LinkedIn post where you mentioned your passion for {{Passion}}. I'm also a big fan of {{Passion}}!"

• "I noticed that you recently organized a webinar on {{Subject}}. How did it go? I would have loved to participate!"

• "I saw that you are involved in the {{AssociationName}} association, which works for {{Cause}}. This is a cause that I also care about."

For each contact, you will look at the LinkedIn profile and find the information that will allow you to write an attention-grabbing sentence to include at the beginning of your cold email.

To use icebreakers in a campaign with hundreds of contacts, you will insert the attention-grabbing phrases into your Google Sheet in a dedicated column. You will get, for example, a table with the following columns: Email, First Name, Last Name, Company Name, Domain Name, LinkedIn, Twitter, Recent News, Industry, icebreaker.

Creating a prospect database

To create your database, you need to use a scrapping tool like Vayne and an enrichment tool like Enrow after saving your list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The scrapping tool is an extension that will extract all the information from your LinkedIn Sales Navigator list. The enrichment tool, on the other hand, will add the email, phone number, and other information such as the company's domain name, title, or social media accounts.

Using artificial intelligence to personalize each cold email Don't worry; this doesn't mean writing emails one by one, but using AI to write a personalized cold email for each contact on your list.

Here are the different steps to use artificial intelligence to personalize each cold email:

• Research information about prospects: Use a scraping tool like Vayne and an enrichment tool like Enrow after saving your list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The scraping tool will extract all the information from your Sales Navigator list, while the enrichment tool will add email addresses, phone numbers, and other information such as company domain names, salutations, and social media accounts.

• Create a database of prospects: Once you have your completed file, use a cold mailing tool like Emelia and add an {{icebreaker}} variable in your email template, making sure to use the column name you added in your CSV file.

• Use artificial intelligence to personalize each cold email: Don't panic; you don't have to write emails one by one. Instead, use AI to write a personalized cold email for each contact on your list. Provide ChatGPT 4 with the raw copy-paste of the CSV file line concerning the contact, and it will rewrite your cold email template with the given information. Add an additional column to your contact file with the email content. In your Emelia cold mailing tool, import your CSV file and add the {{ContentEmail}} variable, which uses the column name from your file.

Avoid using ChatGPT version 3.5, as the results will be less relevant.

Here's an example of the email content in Emelia:

Example of content generated by ChatGPT 4:

This practice does not involve personalization, but it improves your deliverability and, therefore, your performance. Spintext is a technique that creates multiple versions of the same text using synonyms or different phrasings to generate unique content for each email sent.

Use ChatGPT to generate spintext by asking it to rewrite certain parts of your email in several variants. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to rewrite your introduction, product or service description, or call to action. Use the prompt "Add spintext to this email" and paste your email template below.

Here's an example of spintext for a cold email:

In this example, the words and expressions between braces are the different spintext variants. The spintext tool will randomly choose one of these variants for each email sent, making each email unique.

Throughout the article, we've seen how personalization helps create high-performing cold emails. However, it's essential to remember some good practices regarding your CTA or call to action.

Have one CTA per email. Avoid asking the recipient at the beginning of the email to reply, then in the middle to sign up on your website, and at the end to book a call on Calendly. It's highly likely that they won't take any action. One cold email = one goal.

By applying these tips and leveraging the tools and techniques presented, you can optimize your cold mailing campaigns for better results and generate more leads for your business.