How to write B2B Cold Emails that Get Responses
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Cold emails are one of the best ways to reach potential customers and generate new sales leads consistently. However, the success rate depends upon the response rates. Generally, we all assume that we have written a perfect B2B cold email that will elicit more positive responses. But in reality, it doesn’t happen that way. So how to write cold emails that get responses?
When I thought I wrote a compelling cold email, I did not get an impressive cold email response rate in spite of my average open rates being above 45%. This made me search for the reasons, and in the process, I discovered that Targeting the Right Audience is the key to increase cold email response rates. It really helped me to double my B2B cold email response rates. I am sure these B2B cold email techniques will certainly help you to increase your cold email response rates.
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2 Key Elements to improve B2B Cold Email response rates
If you are desperate to improve your B2B cold email response rates, you need to master the following two key elements for success.
- Narrow targeting
- Personalization
Let’s look at these in detail.
Narrow down your audience for cold email relevancy
The first key element to increase cold email response rates is Targeting the Right Audience.
Define your Ideal Customer Profile & Buyer persona: B2B cold email response rates are directly proportional to accurate targeting. If you can draft a great cold email but send it to the wrong person, all the efforts you took to write that perfect email would be in vain.
So, if you want to increase the cold email to potential client ratio, you must define your ideal customer profile and buyer persona carefully. In my case, my target audience is top-level CXO’s, VP Sales & Marketing in tech companies who can be easily found on LinkedIn and other B2B networks.
One audience per search criteria works best: Mixing too many personas or search criteria can get you off track. Try to use only one or more search criteria to make your audience lookalike. I use LeadGrabber Pro to target a lookalike audience from LinkedIn. This helped me to narrow down my search result and target a small group of potential prospects. So I understood my audience better and personalized the cold email message accordingly.
Example: I used minimal LinkedIn Sales Navigator search filters to get a targeted email list.
Geography: Illinois (Email sending time covers one-time zone)
Industry: Catering
keyword: “Corporate catering services” – to make my email more relevant.
Personalize cold emails more than just {Name} & {Company}
The B2B cold emails you write should be relevant to your audience. One audience per search criteria helps you personalize the email better. Personalize a common element (maybe title, geography, or service offering) to make your B2B cold email look more personalized and relevant.
Here’s how narrow targeting helped me in writing a more personalized B2B cold email:
In the above illustration, I targeted prospects that belong to the catering industry. Now that I knew they offer corporate catering services, I personalized that common field across all the emails.
In the second line, I added my target audience’s potential prospects’ title with a benefit and a screenshot of where I found them.
I also stated how my product can add value to their business + a strong rational impact.
Finally, I ended up with a call-to-action.
Social Media and Website Research
The best cold email template should make the audience believe that you wrote the email manually. It must show you researched them and you are reaching out because you have a solution that can add real value to their business.
Social networks and corporate websites are some of the best places where you can find your targeted prospects. It helps you to research your prospects’ business, industry, services, products, solutions, geographical presence, probable prospects, accomplishments, etc. You can use any one of this information as talking points or you can relate them in your email.
4 Cold Email Strategies that Doubled my Response Rates:
- Start with a stronger personalization: I always spend some time researching about my prospect on social media and start my email by congratulating on a recent achievement or job change; talk about a common interest on their profile or quote about their recent social media post. This way, I can grab attention and compel to read further.
- Attach a social proof: I shared a link to the particular page that I researched on their website. Thus I can prove that I am not a spammer but genuinely reaching out to offer help.
- Explain the value proposition: I addressed their pain points more than quoting about the solution. As a result, I added a screenshot of my software and showed them how I can help their business.
- Add a clear call-to-action: Since most of the C-level prospects might be busy with meetings or traveling, they may not be able to commit 15 or 30 minutes straight out of their calendar. I tried asking for a quick call. Say, less than 5 minutes, which is a two-step process.
✔ A quick phone call to brief the solution and fix an appointment.
✔ An elaborate product demonstration.
This way, we can save both the prospect as well as the salesperson’s time and effort.
Remember to A/B test your personalized B2B cold email templates every day to get more cold email response rates and to measure the click-through-rates of your cold emails.
[Note: Use the idea and framework but not the exact email template as it may not produce the same results for you. The spam bot will identify common elements of the template and your email might land in the spam folder]
Fill up the contact form if you want to find a Lookalike audience and send personalized cold emails that get more responses. We will get back to you with a live demo.
