Do you use email for marketing? How about cold emails? The following summarizes an interesting article by a business owner who discovered what works with her email marketing. Perhaps it will work for you.
Initially, they began with LinkedIn emails to friends-of-friends and colleagues-of-colleagues. They mostly got the brush off with “they’d keep us in mind if something came up.”
After reading the book Sell Like Crazy: How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle by Sabri Suby, she changed tactics to cold emails. Their initial campaign got less than ideal response, but they found success over time using these techniques:
1. Hand Build Your Email List
Carefully build your list to send the right people at the right type of company. Choose the correct prospects who can make the decision and companies that match your product. Then use LinkedIn to check your list. Laborious but worth it. You can use a freelance service if you don’t have someone on staff.
2. For your subject lines, write concise, relevant sentences
Rather than using saley language, write like you were sending to a colleague. If you wouldn’t say it in conversation with a friend, rewrite it. Then utilize A/B tests to find out which are the winners.
3. Add a P.S. at the bottom of your (short) email
The theory here is that many readers scroll down to see who an email is from before reading. Use this to your advantage by making the P.S. something that will make them want to read the email, like an interesting fact or statistic. Keep it short and sweet, like the email. The article has great examples and even recommends you bold the line.
4. Include and highlight a simple call-to-action at the end
Your primary goal is to get a response, so make it easy! The email should have only one purpose and request one specific action. Consider something like, “If you’re interested, just reply to this email, and I’ll send you more information.”
5. Send a sequence of emails.
Most marketers recommend a sequence of three to six emails spaced out over two to three months. Be sure to set it up so that people who respond are removed from the remainder of the series. Use a variety of calls-to-action as you compose the sequence. The final email may ask, “Are you the right person to speak to about [company name and your product]? If not, could you please connect me to the best person?”
Give it time
Learning what works for you can take a few months, and will involve a time commitment. But once you find the formula that works for your business, you can generate a steady stream of qualified leads—the dream for any B2B business.
For more, read this guest post on the Zapier blog by Nikita Agarwal, Director and Head of Growth at Milestone Localization.
