The ultimate guide to creating a winning cold email strategy

November 2, 2022 13 min

Author:
Josh Gillespie, Director of Enterprise Sales at PandaDoc

How to create a cold email strategy?

1. Pick an email provider and get things set up properly
2. Define the goal of your outreach campaign
3. Research your audience
4. Find their (correct) email address
5. Personalize, personalize, personalize
6. Use a compelling and straightforward subject line and intro sentence
7. Provide value
8. Make it short and sweet: include a clear call to action and offer something in return
9. Use follow-up emails (or pick up the phone)
10. Test different approaches and measure outcomes
11. Deliver what you promised

Cold emailing is a difficult marketing strategy for two main reasons.
Your audience doesn’t know you and has no reason to trust you, and you don’t receive any feedback in real-time — either verbal or non-verbal — which makes it impossible to adapt your approach to their immediate reactions.

Cold emails are emails sent without prior contact with the recipient, with the purpose of establishing a relationship and eventually making a sale.
Cold emailing can yield positive results when done correctly, and in this article, we’ll talk about the what, whys, and hows of cold emailing.
By the end, you’ll have a step-by-step blueprint you can use to build your own strategy — and transform those leads from feeling frosty to serious sizzle.

Are cold emails still effective?

The short answer is yes.
They can be effective, especially when combined with the right sales management software.
Cold emails are difficult, but this doesn’t make them ineffective — it just means that it’s complicated to get everything right, especially on the first try.

What is the goal of a cold email?

Cold emails have different goals and can be used in different scenarios.
For example, you can use cold emails to:

• Reach out to people or companies that might be interested in your products or services
• Start building a relationship with prospective leads
• Get people to sign up for a webinar, download a report, or come to an event
• Send a tailored proposal
• Negotiate a deal and make a sale
• Grow the email list or social media following of your organization
• Interview a subject-matter expert for your company’s blog
• Negotiate backlinks to grow your online presence and boost your website’s rankings

What is the success rate of cold emails?

Generally, response rates for cold emails are low.
However, when you take the time to personalize your cold emails, response rates can climb up significantly.
Even simple strategies like adding the name of the recipient in the subject line can increase open rates by 22%.

Do B2B cold emails work?

Yes, B2B cold emails can be an effective lead-generation strategy.

Email templates for cold emails: yay or nay?

The answer is…it depends.
You can use cold email templates successfully but you need to always personalize them.

How to create a winning cold email strategy: A step-by-step guide

1. Pick an email provider and get things set up properly

The first step is to pick your email provider and set up your account, name, and signature.
The best option for companies is to go with a paid provider.
Your company is almost certainly already using a paid email provider.

2. Define the goal of your outreach campaign

Next, you need to define what you want to achieve with this cold email campaign.
Concentrate on a single goal that’s both realistic and measurable.

3. Research your audience

Research is crucial for cold outreach because it enables you to personalize your messaging.
Research each person you plan to send a cold email to.

4. Find their (correct) email address

If you send emails to non-existent email addresses, you’ll quickly lose credibility with your email provider.
Make sure you’re not guessing any email addresses.

5. Personalize, personalize, personalize

Add the person’s name in the email and, even better, in the subject line.
Include specific information about the industry, the company, or the person’s work.

6. Use a compelling and straightforward subject line and intro sentence

Be direct and interesting with your short subject line.
The intro sentence should also be straight to the point.

7. Provide value

One of the best ways to get a response to a cold email is to provide value to the person receiving it.

8. Make it short and sweet: include a clear call to action and offer something in return

Keep it short and actionable: include a clear CTA.

9. Use follow-up emails (or pick up the phone)

Instead, follow up with them at least once more.
A good rule of thumb is to follow up a maximum of 2 or 3 times.

10. Test different approaches and measure outcomes

The only way to know how successful your strategy is is to measure outcomes.

11. Deliver what you promised

After all, it was you who contacted them, so you need to be certain you have the capacity to move quickly and provide what you promised.

Cold emails can be a successful marketing strategy if executed correctly

Cold emails have a bad rap but it’s because they’re difficult to get right and very often poorly executed.
But if you spend the time and resources to build a cold email strategy, you’ll have another high-performing sales tool in your toolbox.