It’s a noisy environment out there. Everyone is talking about cold outreach best practices, and quite frankly, there are a ton of differing opinions.
The big thing is that you should test, test, test and find what works best for you, your business, and your target audience. At the end of the day, data never lies.
With that said, here are seven of my top tips for cold outreach success.
1 - Scheduling Links
Don’t include a scheduling link in any of your cold emails to prospects or candidates. Scheduling links should be shared after interest in booking a call has been expressed, mainly as a way to ease or eliminate any back-and-forth on finding a day and time.
Here’s a great way to position a scheduling link once interest is there:
Hi Jenn, thanks for getting back to me. Does Tuesday at 1 or 1:30pm EST work for you? Alternatively, you can select a day/time that works better here: [insert scheduling link].
2 - Follow-up Emails
A lot of folks struggle with what content to use in a follow-up email after a first touch to a prospect or candidate. As a result, many people use the following words: “thoughts?” or “just checking in here” or “bumping this back up” or “did you get my last email?”
This type of follow-up doesn’t provide any value to the recipient and should be avoided. It’s what I like to call “unnecessary fluff.”
Instead try this type of follow-up message:
Hi Jenn,
Do you follow LinkedIn’s talent blog? They recently shared this article about recruiting job postings exceeding software engineer job postings worldwide. Crazy, huh?
Thought I’d share in case it’s an interesting read to add to your list.
Also, if you’re up for it, I would still love to get some time scheduled for that intro chat. What do you think?
Cheers, Kristina
You’re adding value by sharing a 3rd party, reputable source of information as a “bump” to your original email. It serves the same purpose without spelling it out.
3 - The Triple Threat
If you’re not following a multi-channel or omni channel approach to cold outreach, you’re leaving opportunity on the table. The strongest teams we’re working with here at Interseller are the ones leveraging email, phone, and social media channels for getting conversations going with prospects and candidates.
Even if you are really strong at one channel, try to take the time to brush up your skills in other channels to scoop up additional opportunities along the way. After all, different folks respond to different channels, am I right?
4 - Refreshing Sequences
A good rule of thumb is to refresh your cadences or sequences every quarter or if/when you reach 500 contacts. This keeps your content and copy fresh and helps your overall deliverability.
It’s also the same reason we caution people from googling things like, “high performing recruiting email templates” or “high performing sales email templates” and just pulling a template off the web with little to zero changes.
Chances are a lot of other people have tapped into the same templates, and you could already be hurting your chances of landing in the inbox from the get-go.
5 - Attachments
Piggy-backing off of deliverability, attachments are a great way to hurt your outreach from getting in front of the right people as well.
For one, you’re not even there yet. Meaning - you don’t have a relationship with your recipient, and they haven’t asked to see your case study or one-pager.
Second, if you must add an attachment, you’re better off reserving it for a 3rd or 4th email and sharing a hyperlink after adding it to Dropbox or Google Drive first.
6 - Messaging Multiple Contacts
I don’t know who came up with this as a good idea, but messaging every decision-maker or key contact from one of your target accounts isn’t going to get you the right kind of buzz. If anything, they are going to chat internally, figure out they all got the same email, and then you’re going to get domain blocked.
And guess what? It’s much harder to handle that objection and gain trust for a conversation in the future than if you took a more thoughtful, intentional approach.
What is a more thoughtful and intentional approach? Reach out to one contact at a time. Maybe it takes you 3 months and 5 contacts to book that big meeting with one of your tier one accounts, but that’s okay.
7 - Using Humor
It doesn’t matter who you’re reaching out to (a CFO, CISO, or CMO, etc.) with your email. Everyone laughs, so using things like GIFs or self-deprecating humor can sometimes get the conversation going.
Will you maybe get a few people who don’t like your approach? Yes, but that’s with anything you do.
Here’s a final sequence email I like to use:
Hi Jenn,
I’ve reached out a few times with no response, so I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that my timing is awful.
If I’ve got it all wrong and you feel like being a good Samaritan and cheering me up, you can ping me back.
Otherwise I’ll stop my outreach for now.
Cheers, Kristina
You can also use GIFs in LinkedIn messages if you’re using that channel as a way to reach out to your prospects and candidates.
These are just some of the hot tips I like to share when talking to audiences about cold outreach, but stay tuned for more in the future.