Worst cold emails ever & how to do it better.
If being a spammer is your career choice, we have some awesome tips for you. The world goes crazy about personalization and knowing your clients in the best possible ways, but you can always do it the old way — often, general content, send to random people. Here, we present some of the worst e-mail examples and share some tips on how to fix them.
Dear [First Name]
Have fun with sending the same e-mail to everybody, but remember to go deeper and use a template without filling in the blanks. Everybody knows their own first name, right? Dear Authority, Dear Friend also sound awesome and uninviting. However, the best way to not get a response from a stranger and have a 100% delete, is to address it to “To whom it may concern” or to “Dear Sir or Madam”. Basically a time waste for you and your prospects.
Don’t just personalize an email with a name and company, take time and effort to research, write something more personal, make contact on basis of having shared interests or the same business profile — but, in a detailed manner.
Hi, I just have a quick question — would you like to buy this?
Like please, seriously, come on. We have this great product / service that is so worth clicking on. Make a purchase, give your money to us. Like, please. We need your money — click now and you’ll get 10% off. Needy & greedy at the same time? That’s the best way to get you to the SPAM list. Be sure to make the offer as soon as possible and throw the pricing into your prospect’s face. The sooner you’ll do it, the sooner they will be checking your company for “unsubscribe”. Don’t bother making the value talk or even giving a damn on how your recipients would benefit from the service. Just copy-paste your pricing. Let them figure out the rest.
Sounding desperate rarely works, and making immediate sales works on ads, but not in cold emails. If you already have contact with your client, make sure to ask questions, and then to tailor the pricing to their needs. Be sure you made the best offer ever, in the best time possible. Your future clients already know you want to sell something, so make your email sound interesting enough to build the “I want to read more” feel.
Make a billion in revenue with us!
To extremely annoy your prospects, just build up propositions that are impossible to reach and sound rather silly than true. Billion in a year, The next queen of England or make 10k$ with just a click sound pretty ridiculous. Use them to repel any clients, add some unwanted capital letters & exclamation marks, wow emoticons and cheap cliparts to make your point. We always believe in everything we read in internet, right? Golden mountains with just one service is as possible as Elon Musk sending people to Mars… Oh, wait…
Easy. There are obviously some improvements that your service or product provide, but we just don’t believe in things, that sound too good to be true. In order to have your offer read, it needs to be taken seriously, with trust, and some realistic steps on how to make this product work. It’s not about the money, it’s about the business potential.
Dear Becky, you have not responded. Are you mental or just very shy to ask about the details of our offer?
If there’s no response to your email, make sure you send it again. And again. Maybe work on a different title — the offer is so good, that it’s almost impossible to not follow by. Raluca Pascu has posted via Linkedin the worst cold e-mail ever and it’s a followup one: “I’ve tried to reach out to you a few times to go over suggestions on your content marketing objectives, but I haven’t heard back. This tells me one of three things has occurred (…) You’ve fallen and can’t get up and in that case let me know and I’ll call someone to help you…”. Sounds great, on the spot and abusive. All you need to turn people off at hand.
Making a follow up is basically making a new contact from scratch. New interesting content, new interaction and new reason to write. Last time it didn’t work? That means you need to change things in your communication. Start over and analyze the mistakes
Our service allows you to…. Bla bla bla…
Talk too much and talk about yourself only. That’s the most interesting thing you can share — your features, your product, your business. People love to read about you, that’s why they can’t get enough. Send more details in a long email, that will encourage prospects to even click on a link and have some more info on the offer. The world revolves around you, have no doubt about that! Don’t bother mentioning in the e-mail how you can help out with your prospect’s problems, just ignore it over your awesomeness.
This example shows once more, that personalization is the key to interesting your recipients. When you reach out for the first time, it’s very important to have a good reason to contact this person and this person only. Don’t talk about yourself, talk about them! Address their problems in detail.
