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My Buddies Send Better Emails Than My Vendors

5 Components of a Less Shitty Cold Email

Names redacted to protect the innocent, and guilty.

It's amazing, with all of the data mining designed to improve cold email performance ("Emails sent at 3:24 am on days that begin with T have a 0.04% higher open rate") that I received the following from a vendor over the past week:

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Most cold emails get deleted, so kudos to this guy for catching my attention by literally doing nothing to catch my attention.

Not one to play the numbers game like this guy, and actually want to TRY improving your cold emails?

Well then, here's a tip...go find the last hilarious email chain you've shared with friends, and compare it to your prospecting emails. Here's one of mine:

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Emails need to be HUMAN. We've been desensitized to everything else - too much spam, too much marketing-automation, and too many sales people governed by sales managers measuring "how many emails did you send?" instead of "how relevant were you?"   

Here's my approach to making cold emails more human, using 5 key components pulled from the exchange with my buddies:

1. Personal Connection - I call my buddies trolls. Likewise, I always try to kick off my prospecting emails with something specific to the recipient. Have you interacted with their brand? Do you love what they stand for? Do you have a mutual connection on LinkedIn? Thanks to Google, you have no excuse to not be human here.

 

2. Your Prospect's Desired Outcome - My crew likes to celebrate special occasions in Atlantic City. My prospects are trying to...again, Google. It is so easy to determine what is top of mind for your prospects, and whether you can potentially help.

 

3. Your Ability to Help Them Achieve That Outcome - Be specific. For me, it's doing the leg work hunting down hotel prices for my friends. For you, it may be helping me source great candidates for a specific role I've been desperately trying to fill. Whatever it is, please be specific.


4. Compelling Event - WHY should I respond now? Don't insult people's intelligence with some fabricated compelling event. A helpful salesperson shines light on the TRUE compelling events that the prospect should be considering. For my friends, it is the knowledge that hotel prices do in fact increase. That doesn't play in B2B. Things like implementation timelines versus key dates for your prospect, do.

5. Strong Call to Action - Don't believe any bullshit psychology here. Proposing 1-2 day/time windows to connect is not "more likely" to garner a response...it simply saves one additional back and forth if in fact your prospect is willing to speak with you.

Bonus #1 - Send yourself a test email, and view it on your mobile device. You're not important enough to garner desktop time, so make sure your email's no more than a few scrolls long, with lots of paragraph spaces.

Bonus #2 - One of the responses to my AC proposal:

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