bad cold email Archives

4 Ways This ‘Business Continuity’ Sales Email Could Have Used Better Planning

August 15, 2017 By Jennifer Marston Leave a Comment

Everyone loves a good tangent—that is, if you’re reading a science-fiction novel or listening to a story over happy hour.

Cold emails, on the other hand, are one of the worst places to wander away from the main point of the message. You have literally seconds to grab the reader’s attention with a sales email, and you won’t do that with long, convoluted messages.

This person apparently didn’t get the memo when emailing me about disaster recovery and business continuity plans. See email #1, below:

With a little more focus, the topic, why companies should plan for unexpected disasters, would be relevant to a lot of people out there. But there are multiple issues with this message that make it feel like less of a first cold email and more of an identity crisis. Let me explain:

1. It wants to be sales email and marketing newsletter simultaneously.

The email starts with a potentially interesting fact: there’s a difference between disaster recovery and business continuity. Now, it just so happens that understanding this difference is a current “hot topic” in business, so maybe the sender has something to tell me about managing it (although I’m probably not the most qualified lead for them, since we’re still a lean startup).

They don’t. The email quickly becomes a marketing promotion that explains “business continuity” with dramatic phrases like “essential to the future” and “statistics don’t lie.” Then we’re told to download an e-book. What happened to that compelling fact the email started out with?

Just because someone reads the first line of your email doesn’t mean they’ll finish it if you don’t give them a good reason to. In this case, an interesting idea I’d love to discuss gets waylaid with blatant product promotion. Not only does it leave me feeling confused, I also feel tricked.

2. Multiple “main ideas” are overwhelming.

In one email, the sender covers: the relationship between two areas of business, the definition of business continuity, the risk of not having a continuity plan, and why I should download the free e-book.

Any given email in a campaign should stick to just one idea or value proposition. If you have more than one idea, that’s when using a multi-touch email campaign comes into play.

Alone, each of the above ideas would make a solid email. Thrown at the reader all at once, every one of them loses value, and we’re left wondering what, exactly, the sender is trying to tell us.

3. The information repeats itself.

Even riddled with multiple ideas, the email still manages to club us over the head with the same statement: you better plan for disaster, or your company will meet an untimely end. Although disasters do happen, saying it four different ways tends to diminish the effectiveness of the statement.

A much stronger way to highlight this fact would be an opening line like, “Did you know that 73% of companies without a business-continuity plan fold when a cyber-disaster strikes?” The number alone would frighten most of us into action, or at least into hitting the “reply” button, but there are plenty of other openers that would work as well.

4. There are multiple calls to action.

The sender has a few different requests: download a product, consider having a conversation with them, and to send an email or make a phone call. That’s too much to ask a stranger over one cold email.

The email would have closed much stronger had there been one simple call to action that didn’t require much thought: “Let’s talk about preparing your business for the unexpected. When do you have 10 minutes next week?”

That doesn’t make the other calls to action, like the e-book download, unusable. This is one of the reasons eight-touch email campaigns are so important. They give you a chance to offer different kinds of call to actions to see what works best.

5. It gives too much away in the follow-up message.

Email #1 didn’t provide any real value, and email #2 seems determined to make up for that by giving away more than any company should realistically share for free:

Email #2:

The second email gets one fact right: business continuity is a daunting task. But the length and detail in this email don’t make it any less cumbersome. We don’t need to see all six steps of the planning process in a single email. While this may be appropriate in a slide deck during a meeting, none of this belongs in an email to a stranger. Not to mention, providing all six steps and a free ebook removes a lot of the incentive to respond to this email.

The moral of the story? Be mindful of how much value you’re giving away over a sales email. Give too little, and recipients will instantly forget your email—if they open it at all. Too much, and they’ll bypass your expertise and get the job done themselves for free.

Mixed Messages You Shouldn’t Be Sending in Your Sales Emails

April 12, 2017 By Elizabeth Krisher 7 Comments

Just like with dating, the best cold emails make a point to be seductive. Your goal is to entice new customers into doing what you ask, whether that’s replying to your email, signing up for your newsletter, or making time for a call.

That’s why you need to provide your prospects with a clear and straightforward blueprint on next steps. Ending a date on a vague note leaves everyone feeling unsatisfied. The same is true for cold email: How can you lure someone in if they feel unsure of your intentions? Without a strong and singular call to action, your prospect may be confused or overwhelmed, making it less likely for them to respond.

Mixed messages, like the ones contained in this email, are better left unsent:

From the start, this email is impersonal, indifferent, wordy, and vague. More importantly, it’s unclear as to what the sender’s call to action really is… because there are eight.

Let’s take a look at where her requests went wrong:

1. Uses a boring, tepid hook

The sender opens with a vague statement that she is “following up to see what business we might do together.” Not only is this an incredibly snooze-inducing opening, it also implies a lack of preparedness on her part. Why is she emailing if she doesn’t already have an idea as to what business you can do together? Isn’t she the one seducing you?

2. Fails to incentivize

Her next ask, after a long-winded introduction to her unnamed company, is that you visit her website and watch a video about another company, LinkedIn. But does she really care?

By using lazy language like “If this is of interest to you” and “feel free to visit,” the sender makes it seem like she’s indifferent as to whether you follow through. Instead of leaving the invitation so open-ended, she should have incentivized you with added value. Imagine how differently this would read if she promised to share the company’s top secrets for generating hot leads!

3. Builds barriers to responses

But no. Instead, the sender asks you to request a custom proposal from her website, “if this makes sense for your business.” Is she just playing hard to get? A call to action should be simple and clear, and by asking you to take two steps—visiting her site and then requesting a proposal—she just made it less likely that you will respond.

4. Includes too many links

“I know,” the sender might think, “maybe you’d reply if you just watched the short video again.” Fun fact: 80 – 90% of readers will not click on links, so we don’t recommend including them. Plus, they can seem a bit spammy, especially when you include them more than once, as this sender does.

5. Fails to target her pitch

You should also request a custom proposal. Did she mention that already? This is starting to seem a bit self-serving, and no one appreciates a self-centered call to action.

6. Goes for a hand-off

If you are the exception, though, and this redundant generic email has you so intrigued that you want to hear more, the sender tells you that you can email her a lot of information and she’ll arrange a call for you with someone completely different. While a phone call is often the goal of a call to action, the sender’s hand-off approach is impersonal and doesn’t cast the sender, or her company, in a positive light.

7. Includes irrelevant info

That’s okay, though, because she invited you to mine her connections, if you want! Talk about blowing hot and cold.

8. Redundant, redundant, redundant

But really… did you watch the video? Because nothing says fun like a boring demo video.

It’s a lot to unpack, and with the sender delivering so many mixed messages, you can bet the prospect took a hard pass on that [business] relationship.

Have bad cold emails in your inbox? Send them to us!

Help us fight the thoughtless spammers, one crappy cold email at a time by sending us the worst cold emails you’ve ever received.

We’ll put them up anonymously on the “Hall of Shame,” and shoot you an email when they go live.

Please send all submissions to “[email protected].”
(And feel free to suggest what you want to nominate the “bad cold email for!”)

Why Domo’s Cold Emails Are Ugly and Spammy

September 19, 2016 By Heather 1 Comment

Domo is known for their great business intelligence technology, but apparently, some of their cold emails aren’t so great.

I received this strange and lazy cold email from them a few months ago. It immediately caught my attention because it’s unusually bad, but it contains many of the cardinal sins I see other B2B sales teams making.

Let’s take a look at what’s wrong with it:

Wow! …talk about overwhelming!

This ugly cold email is an attempt at an extremely strange and confusing breakup email. As you can see, it wasn’t even possible to fit this bad cold email’s screenshot into a single image, which gives you a sense of how hard it was to read on mobile.

Through this ginormous photo affixed inside their email, Domo attacks my eyes with every available feature they’ve got, without any attempt to give context as to who they are, what they’re talking about, or what they want.

What’s even stranger is that this email starts with the sender mentioning he’s previously reached out to me before, but this is the first and only email I ever got from him.

He’s using a lazy tactic and I’m calling “BS.”

Who would want to respond to a salesperson who’s taking such a thoughtless and self-focused approach?

Why this email made it to the front of our queue for “The Hall of Shame:”

The image is HUGE, giving it an especially spammy image/text ratio, dramatically increasing its chances it will wind up in spam
It’s super challenging to read, physically and mentally–with how busy the image and text is, there’s no way anyone could quickly glance and know what the heck is going on, or what the call to action is
If the image doesn’t render properly, most of the email’s information would be lost
I’ve caught the sender in a lie–they’ve never contacted or interacted with the recipient before

How to Fix This Bad Cold Email:

This strange attempt at a breakup email could be a lot better if they took out the eyesore of an image and replaced it with a link to a valuable resource (actionable content that’s less promotional). This would make it much easier for the reader to understand what the salesperson’s goal is, giving them much better chances of actually getting a response.

However, that would be my advice for a breakup email, but this email was actually the first email that this sales guy at Domo sent me, unless all the ones before this just caught in spam.

Have bad cold emails in your inbox? Send them to us!

Help us fight the thoughtless spammers, one crappy cold email at a time by sending us the worst cold emails you’ve ever received.

We’ll put them up anonymously on the “Hall of Shame,” and shoot you an email when they go live.

Please send all submissions to “[email protected].”

(And feel free to suggest what you want to “nominate” the bad cold email for!)

Why Presumptuous Emails Are Complete Turn-Offs

June 27, 2016 By Riley Huffman Leave a Comment

Hall of Shame Award: The Cold-Email Dictator

Why This Cold Email Won The Hall of Shame:

Talk about forceful! This email is the definition of a turn-off— who wants to be vaguely coerced into an interview without any details of the product?

It begins with a promise, a classic promise that this email will truly be the last email. That’s BS. Rambling on, it assumes a condescending approach coupled with strange formatting and the “heart stopping” dot dot dots- as if the reader and sender had been meddling over a deal for quite some time.

Aggressive much?

Although the sender guarantees a seemingly swift process (the reader simply responds with a specific date/time), it is clear that the reader is dealing with a stranger.

Who would want to follow up and trust someone who a stranger who has provided no social proof or value that is presumptuously dictating an exact interview time after we already haven’t responded to their previous emails?

Stop shoving words down the reader’s throat: Give the reader some breathing room.

Why this email fails and got on “The Hall of Shame”:

· From the start, the tone is obnoxious, “turning off” the reader
· Gives a regurgitated way to respond, as if the reader was interested in responding in the first place
· No detail or reminder about the sender’s product/service and the benefits their business offers

How to Fix This Cold Email:

The hook is everything, and this one suffered miserably. Instead, focus on an opening that targets the reader’s desires (perhaps a catchy sentence or an intriguing question).

Scratch the whole “I’ll do all the work, you sit back and relax” approach. Instead, invite the reader into a rapport that would eventually lead into scheduling an interview, rather than arranging one right off the bat.

Have bad cold emails in your inbox? Send them to us!
Help us fight the thoughtless spammers, one crappy cold email at a time by sending us the worst cold emails you’ve ever received.

We’ll put them up anonymously on the “Hall of Shame,” and shoot you an email when they go live.

Please send all submissions to “[email protected].”

(And feel free to suggest what you want to nominate the “bad cold email for!”)

This Ironic Email Demonstrates the Dangers of Not Researching

March 3, 2016 By Riley Huffman 6 Comments

Hall of Shame Award: The Ironic Email that Lacks Research

This crappy cold email is amazingly ironic — it’s from a B2B lead generation company that is trying to convey how they can “Identify and hand pick highly targeted leads that match your idea customer bio,” and yet it is reaching out to Salesfolk (we write cold emails as an alternative to working with outsourced lead gen companies in case you didn’t know) as a potential client.

Talk about a lack of research?

They definitely didn’t “hand pick” their potential target list, and Salesfolk definitely doesn’t match their ideal customer profile. The only truth to their pitch is how they “automate email outreach,” which they are definitely doing at scale.

Why this email fails and got on “The Hall of Shame”:

Lacks research for the prospect (we’re the wrong target for their product/service)
Lacks a strong value proposition, and instead relies on a very lazy list of “features”
Also needs a captivating hook to catch my attention and stand out from the noise

How to Fix This Bad Cold Email:

The best fix for this email would be to go back to the drawing board and look carefully at their own prospecting list. They should plan their list more carefully and ask themselves questions such as “Who are we contacting and how does this product add value to them?”

A highly targeted list is far better than blasting out mass emails to people who have no benefit from your product, who will only mark you as spam (or put you on our “Hall of Shame”). This kind of “mass-blasting” will only result in low response rates, and even worse, can damage your company’s name or IP’s reputation.

So please, research your prospects when sending cold emails!

Have bad cold emails in your inbox? Send them to us!

Help us fight the thoughtless spammers, one crappy cold email at a time by sending us the worst cold emails you’ve ever received.

We’ll put them up anonymously on the “Hall of Shame,” and shoot you an email when they go live.

Please send all submissions to “[email protected].”
(And feel free to suggest what you want to nominate the “bad cold email for!”)

4 Ways This ‘Business Continuity’ Sales Email Could Have Used Better Planning

1. It wants to be sales email and marketing newsletter simultaneously.