{"id":597,"date":"2014-11-19T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T14:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salesfolk.com\/?p=597"},"modified":"2015-10-07T21:10:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T04:10:54","slug":"99-of-your-cold-emails-get-deleted-immediately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/99-of-your-cold-emails-get-deleted-immediately\/","title":{"rendered":"Why 99% of Your Cold Emails Get Deleted Immediately"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cold<\/a><\/p>\n

Have you ever received a cold email that was so completely wrong and untargeted, you wondered how it ever wound up in your inbox?<\/p>\n

As a cold email specialist, nothing makes me sadder than emails that lack an attention to detail. Sending cold emails addressed to the wrong name, or trying to sell me a product that isn\u2019t even closely relevant to my business, is a waste of my time and yours. Outbound prospecting is incredibly effective, but if you\u2019re not going to do your homework on your prospects, you shouldn\u2019t be spending time and money on outbound.<\/p>\n

Blasting out untargeted emails indiscriminately is only making yourself look like an obnoxious spammer.<\/p>\n

Doing your homework doesn\u2019t mean writing one-on-one emails for every prospect though either. In the era of mail merges, big data and predictive analytics, it\u2019s easier than ever for you to write customized email templates that leverage the rich information in your database. How do you expect to gain your prospect\u2019s trust and confidence from a cold email if you can\u2019t even take the time to understand their business and send them a relevant message?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on a crusade to save your inboxes from bad emails.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t guessed already, this week my cold email critique focuses on the mistake of poor email targeting and segmenting.<\/p>\n

Pay attention so your emails make it past the trash folder!<\/p>\n

\"bad<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold Email Mistake #1:\u201cReconnecting\u201d with Someone You\u2019ve Definitely Never Met<\/h3>\n

“I understand you’ve connected with us in the past, at which point you might’ve been exploring *****. I wanted to circle back,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s fine to reconnect with potential customers that have shown interest in your company or product in the past, but make sure your prospects have actually reached out to you before.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never connected with this company, and I definitely haven\u2019t been exploring any of their products. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure where they retrieved my contact information from, but considering they didn\u2019t even use my name correctly, it was probably scraped or bought from a random list.<\/p>\n

While social engineering and hitting people from a conference list sometimes works, there is a right way and a shady disingenuous way to do it. If you\u2019re going to \u201creconnect\u201d with a prospect, make sure that your information is coming directly from that stack of business cards on your desk or from your company\u2019s database.<\/p>\n

Screwing this up risks turning off your prospects from your business entirely.<\/p>\n

\"stranger<\/a><\/p>\n

COLD EMAIL PRO TIP #1:<\/b> If you are trying to target prospects you\u2019ve never met from an event list or other source, you should email them saying something like,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like I missed you at {!Conference}. I had hoped we could have met because I really wanted to learn more about {!Company}\u2019s business and how you\u2019re scaling your sales team.<\/i><\/p>\n

I have an idea that I think could dramatically increase {!Company}\u2019s sales productivity that I\u2019d like to share with you. The same idea helped {!Client} double their sales revenue in Q3.<\/i><\/p>\n

When do you have time for a quick call?<\/i><\/p>\n

Cold Email Mistake #2: Poorly Targeted Prospecting List<\/h3>\n

“Perhaps we can schedule some time to detail ******’s\u00a0added capabilities from a technical perspective and see if they align with the business issues you’re looking to solve?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The goal of your cold email campaigns is to reach prospects that you\u2019ve never met to set an appointment for a call or demo. However, if you\u2019re blasting out messages from a broadly or untargeted list you won\u2019t be very effective. Sending out mass emails from random lists is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it will stick.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t blindly ask your prospect what their issues are; it\u2019s lazy. Although it\u2019s acceptable to ask questions related to their pain points, it\u2019s your responsibility to have an understanding of your buyer persona\u2019s pain point and needs before you build your email campaign. Effective cold emails should demonstrate that you understand your prospects\u2019 problems and how to solve them. This is how you build trust and credibility.<\/p>\n

Unless you already have a highly targeted list with a laser focus, sending the same email to all your prospects is lazy and will burn valuable contacts. It\u2019s important to filter your list by the buyer personas and build your email campaigns to be relevant to each persona. Sending the same email to a VP of Sales as a CTO probably doesn\u2019t make sense. At best, you\u2019ll end up with one highly effective email and another that is entirely ineffective, but chances are your emails won\u2019t be very effective for either persona if you were too lazy to personalize your message to the recipient.<\/p>\n

\"missed<\/a><\/p>\n

COLD EMAIL PRO TIP #2: <\/b>Build detailed buyer\/customer personas before creating your email campaign to ensure that you\u2019ve created a persuasive personalized message. \u00a0Put yourself in your prospects shoes.<\/p>\n

PS: If you\u2019d like to learn more about cold email best practices or would like to have your own email critiqued, please join me with RingLead and their CEO Donato on for a webinar on\u00a0Thursday November 20th at 2pm EST<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As always, if you have some terrible cold emails sitting around in your inbox that you\u2019d like to share with me to anonymously critique, please shoot an email to Haley (at) Salesfolk (dot) com. \u00a0(If you\u2019re up for it, I\u2019ll even give you a free critique of your own email on here anonymously!)<\/i><\/p>\n

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