The Art of Writing Cold Emails That Leads Actually Want to Open

 

• There’s more art than science to crafting cold emails that work well
• Successful emails are the result of careful testing, as well as solid principles
• Techniques like A/B testing and market research inform email writing efforts
• Boom Demand takes on the experimental burden so sales teams can focus on building relationships!

  Crafting cold emails, as the name implies, is an art, not a science. Imagine if there really were just one single, tried-and-true method or formula or format that always worked, no matter what company or industry you were reaching out to. There would be no need for the hundreds of other articles and blog posts out there talking about how to do it. And yet, here we are. Since clearly no one has yet discovered the One True Email Template, sales professionals are free to innovate and experiment. There are some good principles and practices, however, that we do know about. Following these is the way that the most successful salespeople achieve better email open rates.

First, Don’t be Afraid of a Little Trial-and-Error

We’ve all heard the famous quote attributed to Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” There’s certainly something to be said for persistence in the face of a difficult goal. Sometimes the way forward only becomes clear after traveling a short distance down a wrong path. What we’re getting at, though, is not that you need to get lost in the woods or keep sending out messages that are clearly not getting a good response. It’s that crafting cold emails is an iterative process. It works best in the context of A/B testing. Each time you have an idea for a better way to approach a certain class of cold lead, compare the performance of that idea with a control group like the previous best performer.

A/B testing allows individuals, teams, and companies to make careful changes to their user experiences while collecting data on the results. This allows them to construct hypotheses, and to learn better why certain elements of their experiences impact user behavior. In another way, they can be proven wrong—their opinion about the best experience for a given goal can be proven wrong through an A/B test.   More than just answering a one-off question or settling a disagreement, A/B testing can be used consistently to continually improve a given experience, improving a single goal like conversion rate over time. (Optimizely)

Always strive to improve your open and response rates by testing different email sales copy in a controlled way!

Severe Underperformance Calls for Deeper Analysis

If you find that a cold email campaign is getting very poor responses, you may need to consider how to reformulate it completely. First, though, you need to know why it’s not getting the kind of engagement you expected. One common reason for this is having a simple misunderstanding of the quirks of a particular market segment. Different industries and industry sectors tend to have distinct traditions and tendencies. Some of them, for example, are incredibly tech-savvy, but others may have a strong preference for face-to-face relationship building. Your email pitch should reflect that in your call to action. You also may need to make sure that your template addresses the real pain points that are common in that industry. Likewise, the solutions and value you present should be relevant. Many of these things you can only easily discover through that process of trial and error. That’s good, though. The sooner you learn of them, the sooner you can correct for them.

Let Boom Demand Take the Lead at Crafting Cold Emails

This process of crafting cold emails in the context of trying to get better open and response rates is an essential chore, but clearly, it’s time-consuming. Your in-house sales team probably does not have the time to be constantly adjusting their messaging. They would rather be building relationships and closing deals. That’s why Boom Demand’s sales development teams are such an important and game-changing solution. Our SDRs not only specialize in sending warm leads directly to your best account executives, but they also serve as a kind of sales laboratory. We can test and determine the most effective ways to reach your target markets. Contact us today to start enjoying museum-quality sales art!