Cold emails are not the same as spam. Pay attention to their differences, and write cold emails, not spam.
Spam is called spam because it is “irrelevant”, “inappropriate”, and “sent to a large number of recipients”.
Cold emails are unsolicited emails attempting to sell a product or a service or simply an idea. It’s unsolicited, but the similarity with email spam ends there.
In another Medium post, I shared 3 cold emails that work. Even though the emails were not solicited, the recipients responded positively and it resulted in mutually benefit business relationships. The recipients of those cold emails did not consider them as spam.
To write cold emails that are not spam, you have to make it “relevant”, “appropriate”, and “send only to highly targeted prospects”.
- Relevant? What’s the benefit for them?
It’s all about them, not about you. They don’t want to know what you want to say or the product or service that you are selling. It’s not relevant to them. They want to know how it can help to improve their lives. That’s relevant to them.
So state clearly why you are contacting them. What’s the compelling value proposition on what you can do to help make their life better? Why they should invest sometime to have a conversation with you.
2. Appropriate? Why them and why now?
This step is the key step. Do your homework and carefully select people to who will very likely respond to your value proposition. Understand your customers well and what event triggers bring them to purchase your product or service. Find similar people with needs. Let your prospects know that you are not just randomly sending emails to everyone, but they have been carefully selected because you understand that they have the needs and you can help them make their lives better.
3. Show empathy, be a human, and don’t just write based on templates.
Personalize the email to establish connection to the person. So do your research homework. What is he/she passionate about? You can find some information from LinkedIn or twitter. Mention something that you have in common to establish connection. How do you learn about the person? Did you follow his/her blog? Did you see an article about them?
So if you are writing cold emails, make sure to do your research and write emails that are relevant, appropriate, and personal. You may be surprised on how people respond to it. I’d appreciate if you let me know if the above tips work for you or not.
