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Get access to our community's favorite templates. Clay gives your prospecting superpowers! 🧙
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Get access to our community's favorite templates. Clay gives your prospecting superpowers! 🧙
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Cold emails play a crucial role in lead generation and can help to drive sales for your sales team. In order to generate new leads and attract potential customers, it is essential to optimize your cold email strategy with targeted and relevant information. In this post, we will explore key elements of cold email copywriting and strategies for effective lead generation.
Nail Your Copywriting
The success of your cold email campaign depends heavily on the quality of your copywriting. Every line of your email should sell the reader on the idea of continuing to read the next. The best copywriting appeals to the reader and demonstrates how your product can help them achieve a desired outcome.
Write Like a Human
When writing your cold emails, it's important to write in a way that comes across as human and authentic. Avoid using robotic or inauthentic language and instead, aim to write in a way that you would speak to a colleague or friend.
Focus on Getting a Response
Don't try to trigger a purchase in your first cold email. Instead, the goal of your initial email should be to get a response from the recipient. Building a relationship with your prospects takes time, and all you want from your first cold email is a response.
Demonstrate Your Value
To increase the likelihood of receiving a response, make sure to demonstrate your value to the recipient. Provide insights or results that others cannot, or are not willing to provide for free. Your claims should be unique and specific, setting you apart from others in your industry.
Emphasize What You Enable
The best cold emails communicate the transformation that your product can help the recipient achieve. Make sure to emphasize the end goal that they will be able to reach by using your product.
Keep It Short
Prospects are busy and your emails will be an interruption in their day, so keep them short, ideally under 75 words. If you find it difficult to keep your emails short, consider that you may not understand your product or customers well enough yet.
Limit Follow-Up Emails
Most positive responses will come from the first or second email in your sequence. It's best to send about four emails over a span of six weeks, after which you should move on to new prospects.
Define Your Offer and Marketing Angles
Define your offer and marketing angles before starting your cold email campaign. This will help to ensure that your message is targeted and relevant to your target audience.
Use Relevant Lead Generation Tools
Make use of relevant lead generation tools to streamline your cold email process and improve your conversion rate. Examples of lead generation tools include marketing automation, email marketing, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.
Utilize Marketing Channels
In addition to cold emails, make use of other marketing channels such as social media platforms, webinars, and LinkedIn to reach your target audience and generate high-quality leads.
Measure Metrics and Optimize
Measure the metrics of your lead generation campaigns and use the data to optimize and improve your efforts. Utilize A/B testing, lead scoring, and lead magnets to enhance your lead generation strategy.
Consider Outreach and Referrals
Outreach and referrals are key components of a successful lead generation campaign. Encourage satisfied customers to refer new business, and make use of outbound marketing techniques to reach new leads.
Leverage Marketing Teams and Sales Reps
Marketing teams and sales reps can play a critical role in the lead generation process, from the creation of content marketing and email campaigns, to the follow up of inbound leads.
We recommend using the following line: We help [types of people] accomplish [result] in [time]. For example, if you are an SEO optimization product, your offer might be: We help founders improve organic search traffic and get 125% more direct traffic within the span of six months.
Once you’ve nailed down your offer, you need to frame it with a marketing angle that will resonate with your prospects. What are they most concerned with: making more money, saving more time, or something else? How can your product help them do so?
Someone selling the SEO optimization product above could emphasize that their customers will get more revenue and better leads without having to manage salespeople or write copy anymore.
Overall framework for your first cold email
Now, let’s take a look at a line-by-line framework for writing your first effective cold email to a prospect. This includes your subject line, reason for reaching out, your offer, social proof, and finally, an interest-based call to action.
Subject lines
Try to write subject lines that could’ve been sent to your readers by their own customers or colleagues. Make sure to keep them short (2-3 words) and casual (no formal language, not capitalized). Example (good): monthly SEO analyticsExample (bad): Don’t hire your next sales development representative until you do this!(Tip: listicle-type headlines that work well for SEO articles never work well in emails).Needless to day, never bait-and-switch people in your subject lines. **(Don’t pretend that you have a customer for someone and then pitch lead generation services.) Make sure that your subject lines are connected to your message.
Line 1: Why you’re reaching out
In the first line of your email, describe the reason that you’re reaching out. Did you notice an announcement about your prospect’s company? Did you just read their LinkedIn post? Show that you’ve done homework to ensure that the connection is relevant.A useful template for this is: It looks like your company is [experiencing an event], and from my experience, this means [insight].Example: I was looking into your company, and I used the SimilarWeb Chrome extension to see that your web traffic has been declining in the last three months
.Line 2: How your product enables them to do better
Now, it’s time to describe a problem you noticed that your prospect might have and how your product can help them solve it. Example: Your web traffic might be declining for many reasons, but one big factor may be that you don’t have enough content on your site. I noticed that your last blog post was from three years ago.
Line 3: Social proof
Then, give your reader social proof to show them that you’re reputable and have past experience helping companies with similar problems.Example: I just helped [X company relevant to your prospect’s industry and size] increase their search traffic by 250% in six months through SEO-optimized content.
Line 4: Interest-based call to action
Finally, give your recipient a way to engage with you. Your biggest goal is to get an email in response. A good template for this final call to action is: if we could help you with [problem], would that be useful to you?Let’s put all our learning together in this example of a cold email from an external sales team to a financial services company:
Hi [X],I noticed that you're in the financial services industry and you've got a company with 15 employees. From my experience, I assume that you’re keeping a lean sales and marketing team. I’m currently working with [a financial services company similar in size to the prospect] on a campaign that is getting their sales team 2-3 interested leads a day. We’re targeting people who’ve recently changed jobs to see if they’re doing their rollover correctly. If I could help you connect with potential customers like this, would that be helpful to you?
Cheers,[Y]
Overall framework for an entire email sequence
In the previous section, we shared a framework for your first cold email. To recap, your first email discusses how you noticed a company, how you can solve their problems, and how you’ve done this in the past. Now, let’s go over the rest of your email sequence.
Email 2: Additional context
Email 1 was meant to succinctly communicate that your product could help your prospects solve important business problems. Email 2 is meant to add more detailed context on how. This is the place to add more information about product features or the transformation you’ll enable for your customers.Here’s an example using the financial services company we pitched above:
Hi [X],
I previously mentioned that I’ve been helping [X company] find customers by contacting people who’ve recently changed jobs to see if they need help with new benefits packages or rollover plans. For a bit more context, we do this by constantly monitoring LinkedIn Sales Navigator for people who are changing jobs. When they change jobs, we reach out on your behalf to see if they need your services.We have the copy ready and I have a video that can show you how to build this kind of list. Would that be interesting to you?
Cheers,[Y]
Email 3: Angles
If your prospect still hasn’t replied, you should try using a different angle. Your first two emails, e.g., may have emphasized that your product would help your reader earn more revenue. But what if driving more revenue isn’t their biggest priority? Email 3 gives you the chance to change your angle. Perhaps, instead of emphasizing that your product can help someone make more money, you can emphasize how it can help them save time.
Email 4: The breakup email
In your final email, ask your prospect if there's somebody else at their company you should speak to. Example: I noticed that [your company] has 255 employees. Perhaps this isn't your area of focus. Is there somebody else that I should be speaking to? Data indicates that people respond to breakup emails more often than they respond to the other emails in a sequence. If you remain available to connect while offering to route yourself to a more relevant person within their organization, you will increase your chances of getting a positive reply.
By now, you have a framework to use to write effective cold email sequences. This is a simple baseline that you can supplement with many different kinds of marketing tactics (LinkedIn, cold calling, ads, etc) to strengthen your results. If you have any suggestions or questions, please reach out to Eric!
