Cold Emails Are Far From Dead — Here’s Why

Some people say cold emails are ghosts of what was once effective. 

But that’s far from the truth. Cold emails can still be effective, and they are an option every small business should consider. 

First things first: let’s talk about how to not write a cold email. 

The Wrong Way To Write A Cold Email

Cold emails can be extremely effective, but many people do it wrong. 

Some cold email strategies are dead. But if you do it right, they can increase your open rates and the number of responses. 

Here are some mistakes you might be making in your cold emails:

• The email has too much: if you’re using more than one color or one font, that’s too much. Also, don’t include links. You want the reader to have one clear call-to-action (i.e. reply). 
• The subject line is meh: if your subject line doesn’t entice the recipient to open it, then you’ve sent a dead email. Use a title that is relevant to them. A good example: “Quick question.”
• The opening line is not personalized: using the person’s name and/or company name increases your chances that they’ll open and respond. More on this below.

Why Cold Emails Are Alive And Kicking

The stats support cold emailing

Statistics are compelling because they tell us what’s actually happening. And when it comes to sending cold emails, the stats show us some interesting facts. 

For a typical mass email related to business, subscribers open it on average between 14-23%, according to MailChimp and ConstantContact. And those are decent numbers. 

But when you look at the numbers for cold emails, 23% seems like minor league numbers. 

Jon Youshaei, founder of EveryVowel, and Shane Snow, co-founder of Contently, ran a cold emailing test. They sent 1,000 cold emails — 293 bounced, 707 went through successfully. Of those 707 emails, 45.5% were opened.

That’s double the number of opens as a basic mass email!

Personalizing each email works

The biggest difference between mass emails and cold emails is personalization. Yes, you can use a subscriber’s name in your mass email if you have it. But you can’t personalize the body of the email for each person. 

Youshaei and Snow found that personalizing the emails was crucial in order to have any success. 

“Tactics for optimizing sales emails are well and good,” Snow writes. “But they’re not as important as personalized research and sender/sendee fit.”

Want some more stats? Personalizing each email can increase your response rate by 100%, according to Woodpecker. 

Personalization is the key to a cold email that lives and breathes. 

You can generate leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

So how do you find email addresses? And not just any addresses, you need the right ones. 

Enter LinkedIn Sales Navigator. 

We already know LinkedIn is a great networking tool. But with Sales Navigator, you can find leads that are more likely to open and respond to your cold emails.

Using the Advanced Search tool, you can whittle down your lead list to the best options using filters like:

• Industry
• Location
• Professional history
• Keywords
• And more…

Within literal minutes, you can have hundreds of solid leads and their email addresses at your fingertips. Exporting those emails is what brings this whole process to fruition. Instead of limiting yourself to InMail or best-guess emails, you can use valid emails for the widest reach and best deliverability.