How to Deal with the Negative Cold Email Responses
The success of every cold email campaign is measured by the number of people who opened your email, actually read it all the way to the end, and respond to your email. Positive and negative cold email responses are the terms that every cold email marketer would use pretty daily. But, marketers tend to ignore the negative cold email responses just because everyone usually get some emails.
Negative cold email responses actually help us realize that there is still something to improve in our outreach strategy. These can be analyzed and used to improve your cold email campaigns.
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What do the types of negative cold email responses mean?
Negative cold email responses are distinguishable into several types. Let’s see the different types, what each of them indicates, and steps you can take when you receive such cold email responses.
“Please take me off your list” ; “SPAM”
Displeased cold email responses like above can be seen very often. If the response is in capital letters and exclamation marks, then the prospect is expressing their anger towards you. But these kinds of cold email responses need not be impolite necessarily.
Reasons your prospects may get angry with your email
- Your email copy may look too salesy.
- Your emails might be designed to talk more about you and your products/services.
- Your prospect is in a position where they receive more cold emails.
- They may receive a follow-up email from you a little too often.
What you can do?
- Make your first email is more conversational and make sure you offer real value to your prospects.
- Personalize more than just the first name.
- Try reaching co-workers of your prospects probably one level low. Coworker emails help you to reach your prospect through multiple contacts in a company. It helps you to reengage non-responsive prospects, increase engagement rates & sales conversions.
- Set a good time frame between emails.
“Thanks for your email, but, I am not interested”; “Not interested at this time”
This is a more common cold email response that you might have received. These kinds of responses do not disclose the reason as to why they are not interested. They just express that they are not interested in your offer.
Reasons your prospect might not be interested:
These replies indicate that your prospects do not wish to receive further emails. This might be because
- Your target market for that particular cold email campaign was not valid.
- Your Value proposition or CTA is not appealing
What to do?
- Your value proposition talks more about your products/services and not the benefits.
- Highlight their pain points and how they can benefit from your solution.
- Pitch other gains that are unique.
- Check your target group.
“Its not a fit for me” ;“I’m not a good fit”
The above cold email responses clearly shows that the prospects are not interested as they do not match your Ideal Customer Profile.
Reasons prospects think they are not a good fit:
- Probably your target base was not precisely targeted.
- The prospects did not find real value in what you offer.
What to do?
- Make changes to your search criteria and narrow down your search to accounts that fit your ideal customer profile.
- Make changes to your email messaging more precisely to your target audience, so you can connect with the right audience who will find real value products or services.
You will always see some negative responses, so do not ignore them. Instead, analyze them and use them to improve your cold email campaigns. In order to reduce the negative response rates, you should constantly work on improving the targeting, email content, and cold email sending etiquette.
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How to nail your cold email call to action and reduce negative cold email response rates
In order to write a compelling call-to-action, it is important to set up a goal. What would you like your prospects to do when they receive your email? For instance: 1)You want your prospects to click a link on your email and visit a landing page or your website 2) You want your prospects to sign up for a free trial of your product 3) In most cases, you want them to set up some good time for a product demo with your sales representative.
The tone of your CTA matters a lot. Because if your cold email call-to-action sounds more salesy, you may lose your prospects who are interested but not yet ready to buy.
Here are some techniques to achieve your goal
Call Invite with Specific Date and Time – Sending a call invite with a specific date and time helps in convincing your prospect to mentally make up their mind and respond easier and faster to the email. You can give your prospects an estimated time.
Include a Calendar Link – It is a modern method to schedule appointments. Adding a calender link to your cold email call-to-action reduces various conversations on choosing date and time zones.
A simple Yes/No Question – To start a conversation with your prospect just add a simple Yes/No question in your CTA without requesting or trying to sell anything.
