Personalizing Cold Sales Emails: Key Tips and Priorities

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Does anyone
really like sending cold emails?
Perhaps not … but they’re often an essential sales tool.

Done well, cold sales emails can be a very effective way
to grow your client base and your business.

Done poorly,
they’ll be a waste of your time – and they may actively alienate your best
potential customers.

Why
You Should Personalize Cold Emails

Personalizing
cold emails doesn’t simply mean adding in the recipient’s name (though of
course you should do that).

It means making it clear that you’ve done some research
on the person you’re contacting, and explaining why your offer will be a good
fit for them personally.

We all get a lot
of emails every day … and if yours reads like a lazy piece of marketing copy,
it’s going to simply get deleted.

If you want some examples of what personalization can look like in action, take a look at this post by Leadfeeder, which gives four real-life cold emails (and their results), and breaks them down into templates that you can use too.

Personalization
makes it clear that your emails aren’t spam, too: crucial if you don’t want to
run into technical and legal issues.

What
to Focus On When Personalising Your Cold Emails

When you’re
personalising your cold emails, look for opportunities to do one or more of the
following:

#1:
Mention Shared Hobbies, Interests, or Location

Do you and the
recipient share a hobby, like golfing or running? Did they once live in the
same town as you? Are you both keen fans of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad?

Whatever the
connection might be, it’s a great way to instantly personalise your email and
make it clear that you’re not just sending the same mass email to everyone.

#2:
Mention a Shared Connection

Did someone pass
on the recipient’s email address to you? Then mention that! Something as simple
as “John Doe said you’d be a great person to get in touch with” is enough to
give you some instant credibility.

For bonus points,
get your mutual connection to send the email for you – or at least copy them
in, as this makes it clear you’re not simply name-dropping without a real
connection.

#3:
Mention Something They’ve Recently Achieved

Take a look on
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to see what the recipient has been talking
about recently.

Have they
recently received an award, published a great piece of content, or been written
about in the media? Work this into your email – e.g. “Congratulations on the XX award – I’m sure it was very well deserved!”
or “I loved the post you wrote on [topic]
… especially the bit on [something specific they wrote about].”

#4:
Mention Specific Pain Points

Has the recipient
been struggling with something that they’ve mentioned on social media? Is there
a particular challenge that you can easily guess that they must be facing?
(E.g. if their company is advertising for several new positions, they could be
facing the challenges that come with rapid growth.)

If any of these things are relevant to your product/service, mention them in your email, and explain how you could help. For instance, “It looks like your company’s growing really fast! Our software is designed to help you with…”

Whichever technique you use, personalizing cold sales
emails means taking a bit of time and doing some research and digging.

Don’t fret about
spending extra time on your emails, though.

If you send 50 highly personalized emails and get a 20% response rate, that’s 10 new prospects. (For a case study, check out this post about one marketer getting a 50% open rate, a 29% response rate, and a 5% conversion rate.)

You’ll be doing a much better job than someone sending 500 rushed, barely personalized emails and only getting a 1% response rate – 5 new prospects. Last but not the least, make sure that your emails are aligned with your business marketing strategy. Otherwise, what is a point of all of this if your emails are not designed to bring you closer to your business goals?

Which technique
will you use to start adding more personalization to your cold emails?

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