What is Cold Email and How to Do It Right

You might have already heard that cold email is a powerful tool for generating leads, building relationships, and growing your business. But what is cold email exactly, and how do you do it right?

Let’s understand step by step.

What is Cold Email?

Cold email is a type of email that involves sending personalized messages to prospects who have not expressed interest in your product or service before.

Unlike spam, cold email is not unsolicited or mass-sent. It is targeted, relevant, and valuable to the recipient. It aims to start a conversation, not to sell something right away.

Cold email can be used for various purposes, such as:

– Generating sales-qualified leads

– Booking meetings and demos

– Building partnerships and collaborations

– Recruitment outreach to candidates

– Backlinking outreach

In this regard, I’ll be quoting Jeb Blount of Fanatical Prospecting – Chapter 19, “Email Prospecting”:

Email … when leveraged intelligently opens doors, gets results, and generates far more engagement and response than Social Prospecting. When I say far more, I mean 10 to 20 times more.

That sentence has “when leveraged intelligently” as a conditional clause, so let’s dive deeper into that.

Chapter 12, “The Law of Familiarity,” in the same book, speaks about the number of touch points you need with a cold Prospect – someone with little to no familiarity with your company. That could easily be between 20 to 50 touches.

Once we have this framework in mind, we understand that cold email prospecting is an extended play; you need a strategy. Those 20 to 50 touchpoints have to be planned. You cannot hard sell in every email; that won’t work. Additional work must be done to show customer value, buy mindshare using a newsletter, a good blog on your industry, and maybe some case study material to drive your point home.

You are not physically present in front of your Prospect to speak, gauge their reactions, and tailor your pitch. Hence, you must do additional work to anticipate possible objections and develop material you can use in your cold email campaign to engage your Prospect.

Importance of Mind-Share in Cold Email Strategies

Why do we emphasize the idea of “buying mind-share”? Cold emails are not just about quick sales; they are part of a long-term strategy. Here’s why:

Imagine if someone sent you an email asking you to buy something within the first message. Would you be likely to spend your money or give them your time? Probably not.

Cold email success often depends on multiple touchpoints. Research suggests that establishing familiarity with a prospect takes around 20 interactions. This is where the concept of “mind-share” comes in. You want your brand or product to occupy a place in the prospect’s mind.

Now that we have this process down as a long game, let’s break it down into steps and set you up for success.