Cold Emailing Tips - How to Get Prospects to Open and Respond to Your Cold Emails

Cold emailing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies with a 3% success rate. However, getting prospects to open, read, and respond to cold emails can make a huge difference. These tips can help you build an effective cold-emailing strategy.

Cold emailing is one of the most effective strategies to reach prospects with a 15.3% acceptance rate. While cold calling is great for getting immediate feedback from prospects, cold emailing works better in building trust and relationships. Remember, in the world of business, companies conduct business with people that they trust. Thus, while your ultimate goal is to sell, getting prospects to trust you should be your initial goal, and you can attain this through cold emailing. The following tips can help you increase your acceptance rate while cold emailing.

1. Start by addressing the prospect by their name
Remember, an average executive receives 15-20 sales messages daily. Whether it's on their phones, Linked In, Twitter, or drop-ins, everyone is trying to get the attention of the CEO. Your salutation should give them a reason to open your email, read, and probably respond. Generic emails like 'Dear Sir/Madam' are ignored and quickly reported as spam, and this is what you have to avoid. However, a personalized salutation like 'Dear Eric' is likely to be opened, read, and responded to. Thus, conduct thorough research about the company before emailing your prospect. Using LinkedIn, you can get the names and positions of the company employees and use the information to personalize your salutation.

2. Grab your prospects' attention
Nothing puts off a CEO, sales executive, or any decision-maker like a boring, generic, sales cold email. Remember, cold emailing is an interruption on someone's time and space, making your emails intriguing to give them a reason to continue reading. A generic email introducing your company and your product or service is a total turn-off. Instead, seek to achieve two things:

3. Create a knowledge gap
In the research field, a knowledge gap is defined as a discrepancy between what you know and what you should know. In the context of marketing, creating a knowledge gap means informing the CEO, executive, or marketing director of something new and exciting about their business. While this strategy is effective, don't make your prospects seem ignorant about their business. Give an overview of how the next decade will look like based on facts and data; present a game-changing technology in their field or solutions to common problems in the sector. The knowledge gap should reveal insights about the business, industry, or general environment.

4. Tell a story
A short, mysterious, relevant, and realistic story can capture the attention of a CEO or any executive. Use a case study of a small start-up that used your product or service to launch, scale or expand their business. Make the story real, authentic, and genuine, not some internet scam. Further, avoid using big giants like Fortune 500 Company as your case study unless your prospect is a fortune 500 company. Storytelling is an interesting, fun, and effective way to capture, retain and compel a prospect to take a call to action (CTA).

5. Focus on the value proposition to your prospect
Understand that cold emailing is the first sales interaction with a prospect; thus, your aim is to show the prospect you can add value to their business. Focus on the challenges, opportunities, threats, and competition facing your prospect. While selling your product or service is important, focus on giving the prospect value for their time. Show them that you understand their business, culture, challenges, opportunities, or industry. Instead of outlining the features of your product, focus on how these features can solve their problems. Your value proposition should answer four questions:
1. What do you do?
2. Who is your target client?
3. What challenges do your potential clients face?
4. How can you solve their challenges?

In a nutshell, these are the questions that your entire marketing strategy should answer; but in the cold emailing context. Remember, never email a prospect asking how your product can help them; instead, have this question answered through your value proposition. Further, include a sense of urgency in your value proposition; show prospects that you can help them now.

6. Make your CTA (Call-to-action) easy and simple.
The best call to action is that which doesn't require the prospect to do much. Instead of requesting a meeting, video call, or Skype call, simply sent them a link to a video that you have customized. The call to action should not be aggressive or demanding more from your prospect. Don't force them to decide during the first interaction. Instead, aim for another chance to interact. Use direct words like the watch, click, start, or discover to make the prospect take action. Instead of asking a prospect to sign up or provide their email, offer a free resource to compel them to sign up. Free eBooks, videos, links to a webinar or a journal are some of the best resources to entice a prospect to sign up. Remember, never end a cold email without a call to action.

With cold email, you can attract and retain high-value clients by adhering to the above tips.

Have you migrated your email list to your company’s custom social media audiences yet? If not what are you waiting for? For more information on how The Mediatwist Group can help your email marketing, please contact us today. CLICK HERE for our “HIRE US” inquiry.

5 Steps Every Small Business Owner Can Follow to Choose CRM Software

Written by Vic D. 5/31/2021

The premise behind customer RELATIONSHIP management (CRM) is to manage the customer's experience with your business, from the minute they become a prospect to when the sale has been fully concluded and they are recurring customers.  Every business, no matter how big or small, can benefit from CRM software.  The important thing is to make sure the software you choose is right for your business.

There are all manner of CRM software available on the market.  Some are more detailed than others, and all offer various features and levels of interaction between you and your customers. There are steps you can follow to ensure you get the right CRM software for your small business.

Identify Your Needs

Step 1 to choosing CRM software for your small business is to identify your needs.  You can have software that is all-encompassing, allowing you to manage the customer lifecycle from front to back and everything in between, including managing marketing, sales, processing point-of-sale (POS) transactions, handling accounting and vendor relationships, and so on.  

You need to figure out what you want to get out of the CRM software, fleshing out such details as how many customers you expect to be managing within it, and the ideal features that would help your small business flourish.

Prioritize the List

Once you have decided on the features you would like to have in the CRM software, prioritize them. What are the features you absolutely cannot live without as a small business owner?  Are there any features that would be nice, but are not necessary? For example, if you need software to help you process sales electronically, POS transaction processing should be at the top of your list.  

Figure Out the Budget

Once you have an idea of what is truly important to you, you must figure out the budget, and what you are comfortable spending, for CRM software.  There are a lot of buy-once and subscription models available at varying price structures.  You should do a cost-and-benefit analysis to be sure the benefits outweigh the cost of getting the CRM software up and running.

Put Out a Request for Proposal

With a budget in mind and needed features set, it is time to put out a request for proposal (RFP) from the various vendors in the CRM software market.  You may not need something custom built, as a vendor may already have a sound solution available, but that does not mean you cannot field offers from those looking for your business.  See what is available from the major players in the market and get their bids for your business. 

Make Your Final Decision

With all of the proposals in front of you, it is time to determine what will be most beneficial to your business. This should help you get the mix of features and price point you are looking for.  Rely on those lists of features that you put together as well as your budget to guide the decision.

CRM software is highly important to any business, especially small businesses.  This type of software can truly help facilitate the customer lifecycle, find leads, and turn those prospects into new and recurring customers.  It all starts with making the right decision about the software you will use and rely on daily.

For more information on CRM implementation and to get a free CRM audit/consultation for your business, please fill out our “Hire Us” inquiry form.