How long are your cold emails?
If you can’t answer this question in 3 seconds your emails are too long.
The average length of my cold email is 3 sentences long. Some of my most successful emails were only 2 sentences, and I rarely write emails with more than 5 sentences.
Today people have the attention span of gerbils and barely enough time to chug a shot of espresso, so you can’t expect prospects to read an email that resembles the length of marketing’s latest white paper. Because every sentence counts, it’s important to remove weak language whenever possible and consolidate words and phrases that aren’t helping you persuade the prospect to respond.
This cold email critique is the second piece of a two-part critique on this email submitted by a reader just like you:
How to Cut Redundancies from Your Emails: Avoid the Obvious
“ Obviously, getting signups for demos of [!COMPANY] is super important to your team. I made a personal video going over a few ideas on increasing demo signups with a/b testing. [link]“
If you want your emails to actually be read and your call to action to work, you need to make your emails as short as possible. Cut them to the bare essentials, and then cut some more.
Don’t tell your prospects what they already know. It weighs down your email and distracts from your core message. Yes, demos signups are important, but what the text of this email doesn’t say is a preview of “how this product/service will help increase your customers’ demo numbers.”
I somewhat like the fact that the sender included a personalized video, but you can’t assume that your prospects will actually click your link and watch your video to understand your main benefits. In fact, they are especially unlikely to click on your link if your email doesn’t offer them new interesting and valuable insights. Your cold email needs to give your prospect a quick preview of how you will solve their problems and benefit them. The video can reinforce this or go into deeper detail of your business, but you can’t exclude this from your email just because you include a video link.
How Much Value Should You Give Away In Your Email?
“ In the video, I go over a few ideas that you can implement right away with. I also explain a system I’ve created to help busy teams automate the process of getting fresh a/b tests live every month.
If you like the video and think this is something your team might be interested in, just shoot me a quick reply.”
I appreciate that the sender has designed a video that gives a few quick actionable nuggets specific to their prospect. Giving away a small amount of value can help build rapport and credibility, and can be very effective with a laser-focused list of prospects.
However, there is a fine line between giving enough value to entice your prospects and giving away too much too soon. If this salesperson is getting high click rate on an embedded video with a low response rate, then they can assume that either:
- Their list is not targeted enough.
- The video is not interesting or enticing enough to their prospects.
- They’re giving too much value away without leaving enough allure for a call.
- All of the above.
Any video or article you add should only be treated as a teaser that will further pique your prospects’ interest and entice them to request a call.
While I can’t share the link to the actual video with you because this is anonymous, I can say that the video is too long (~4.5 minutes) and doesn’t have a lot of enthusiasm. Like the email, I would cut the video down and only mention a few main points that the prospect could use for improving their business.
In both cases the Call-to-Action needs to be improved.
The email’s last sentence is weak and passive. Instead it should say something like, “I have another idea that I think can double {!Company}’s conversion rate that worked well with {!Client}. When can we connect for a quick call so I can share this with you?”
—
Stay tuned for next weeks’ cold email critique! We welcome your submissions for the “worst cold email,” but we’d also love to anonymously critique your cold emails. For submitting emails for critique or requesting cold email consultations for your business, please email haley (at) salesfolk (dot) com.
