Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for businesses to connect with, and grow their customer base. With 3.9 billion daily email users, it’s no wonder why many business owners spend their marketing efforts crafting solid email marketing campaigns.
While email marketing certainly has proven itself useful, many business owners are left wondering whether cold emailing is effective for business. Here’s a quick rundown of what cold email is and whether it can actually work for your company.
What is Cold Email Marketing?
A cold email is an email that is sent without the explicit prior permission to send it to the recipient or without previous contact with the recipient. Essentially, cold emailing is the same as cold calling, except it’s less intrusive, making it a more suitable marketing strategy for many businesses, and less labor-intensive.
Many businesses engage in cold emailing because they can cover more ground quickly. Ultimately, building an organic email list can take time and needs proper nurturing. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t have the time to wait for their email list to grow.
It’s important to note that cold emails and spam emails are not the same. Spam emails refer to emails that are sent to countless addresses at one time. These emails are sent without researching the relevancy of the email to the recipient and without confirming whether the email even exists.
Does Cold Email Marketing Actually Work?
The short answer is yes. Cold email marketing, when done effectively, can be a great way for businesses to reach prospects. Users spend a great deal of time sifting through their inbox. This alone is reason enough why business owners should prioritize cold emails. According to the Adobe Email Usage Study conducted in 2019, Americans check their work email at least 3 hours per day while their personal email is checked at least two hours a day.
By leveraging cold emails on a consistent basis, businesses are able to get in front of their ideal customers and improve their response rate.
Another benefit of cold emailing is that it is persistent and can reach your target audience directly. For instance, social media campaigns are an excellent way to reach many people in a short time frame. However, businesses can’t predict whether users will be online to see the campaign. Cold emailing puts your email right in the user’s inbox, reducing the likelihood of them missing your pitch.
Cold email marketing is also measurable, which is important for business growth. Businesses can rely on the data they receive from cold emailing to improve their email marketing campaigns in the future. For instance, businesses can analyze metrics such as delivery, open, click-through, and bounce rate. This information can help businesses scale and improve their email marketing campaigns to improve their results going forward.
Now that you know cold email marketing can work for your business, it’s time to look at how you can master your cold emails for the best results.
Crafting the Perfect Cold Email for Prospects
Many business owners stray away from cold emailing out of fear that their emails will appear as spam to prospects. Here’s how business owners can craft the perfect cold email and improve their response rate.
1. Build a Tailored Email List
Just because you’re sending a cold email doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on building a tailored email list. Your email list should consist of a focused buyer persona as this will likely improve your open-rate. To define your buyer persona, simply summarize the characteristics of your ideal customer.
By doing this, you can get a better idea of what kind of information is relevant to your prospect and increase your chances of receiving a response to your email.
It’s important to note that there are two ways businesses can generally build a list. This can either be through manual prospecting or purchasing a list from a website. Manual prospecting can lead to higher-quality leads but can be time-consuming. Purchasing a list can give you quick and efficient results. However, some companies provide incomplete and inaccurate information. With that said, it’s a good idea to receive a quality list from a trusted website.
Here at Interseller, we know how important it is for businesses to simplify business processes while improving the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. This is why we help businesses reach out to new and existing contacts. In addition, we verify emails to ensure businesses can improve their marketing efforts and gain real leads.
2. Writing an Email
There is an art to writing your cold email. Therefore, businesses should avoid relying on a template to send emails to prospects. Not only is this generic, but your prospect may have seen a similar email to yours and immediately label your email as spam. Instead, it’s worthwhile to learn the art of writing a stellar email each and every time.
For starters, it’s important to have an effective subject line. Your subject should be honest, straight to the point, and ignite the recipient’s curiosity. Along with the subject line, businesses need to focus on the body content of the email. The body of your email should also be straight to the point but ensure that it is relevant to the recipient to keep them interested.
Ultimately, your email should add value, which means you need to be able to answer a few pertinent questions. Here are a few things to think about.
What will the recipient gain from the contents in this email? Is this email addressing a pain point for the recipient? Does this email have a clear purpose that the recipient will be able to easily identify?
After you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to think about closing statements. Most business owners are trained to provide a clear call-to-action. While a CTA is still important, it’s best to not be too pushy when it comes to cold emails. Remember, you currently don’t have a relationship with the prospect. But, an effective cold email could be the start of one.
While your recipient may not be ready to purchase an item or schedule a phone session, they may be interested in learning more about your company’s offerings or be willing to opt-in for weekly emails.
3. Scale Your Cold Emails
A lot of marketing is about trial and error, which means businesses will need to scale their cold emails if they want to improve their results. With that said, if you want to understand the effectiveness of your subject lines, pay attention to your open-rate insights. If you want to learn about the effectiveness of your email’s body content, look at your click-through rate.
Use this information to your advantage in order to make better changes moving forward. The more you leverage your data, the closer you will become to crafting cold emails that actually work.
Cold Email Marketing? It Works
Like cold calling or direct mailing, cold email may not be the most exciting marketing technique, but the numbers don’t lie, and it works. Cold emails can have a powerful impact on your digital marketing and business development strategy when done effectively. Most people check their emails often, which means it’s the perfect opportunity for businesses to get in front of their audience, increase brand awareness, nurture prospects, and grow their business. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can improve your cold email marketing efforts, contact us today.