Posted by Ever heard of cold calling? It is when you randomly call a potential client and try to convert them into a customer without them having any knowledge. but sometimes sales email is ignored by our client, right?
Similarly, a cold email is the same but is in the form of an email. It is reaching out to a prospective client via email without any notice to them in order to change the lead to a potential client or a sale.
According to some people, cold emailing is a dying art that is no longer effective. Although cold email receives a lot of bad reputation at its end, it is considered to be one of the most effective ways to land a potential client and for outbound sales. People make some email writing mistakes due to which their success rate is extremely low.
According to a recent study, the average cold email response is 1%. So, if we put it in layman terms, for every 100 people you send a sales email, there would be 1 client that you’d receive a reply from. If cold mailing is done right, they can prove to be effective at landing new leads and probably even new clients. If, however, you’re not receiving any response from their sides, you might be making some mistakes. The following are some of the errors that you have to avoid.
1. NOT YOUR TARGET MARKET
One of the reasons that people are not responding to your sales emails is because they are not in your target market. Making sure that you got your target market right is perhaps one of the essential rules of getting a successful cold email campaign.
The more on point it is, the higher the chances of the customer replying because you’d be targeting their needs directly. There is no point in sending emails to the wrong person, they would probably not even reply, or they might reply to let you know about their discontent in regards to your email.
2. NOT THE DECISION-MAKER
There is a possibility that the person you’re sending the email to is not the decision-maker, and is instead just another employee.
Therefore, he/she might not feel the need to reply to your message, and it ends up being ignored.
To be on the safe side, what you can do is always add a line in your email, which says, “If it’s not you, could you please refer me to the relevant person in the XYZ department.”
Since you have done your part, it’s time for luck to play theirs. If you’re lucky, your message will be sent to the right person. If not, it’ll be ignored.
3. YOUR EMAIL GOT LOST IN THEIR INBOX
Email is the most important and essential tool for business communication. According to research by Forbes, 269 billion emails were sent every day, every single day. The good news is that Forbes was right, and there is a lot of potential for cold sales emails. The bad news is the competition that you’ll have to face out there.
On average, a single person receives up to 121 sales emails a day, which makes it very much possible that your email might have been lost somewhere in all of those other important emails.
Furthermore, some people use the email list cleaning service, which would automatically flush out your email out of their inbox as spam. Let’s just hope it does not come to that.
According to a recent survey, it is said that the best time to send your cold emails is between 5 am to 6 am, which gives you a higher chance of your sales email being read. Well, you can never be sure if you don’t try.
4. IT HAS GONE TO SPAM
One of the saddest things that can happen to you is that your effort-oriented cold email goes to spam. You need to make sure how many sales emails you send in a day. You need to set up limits as every email service provider has its own.
Gmail has a limit of 250-300 emails; Yahoo has 500 emails a day. Make sure you don’t exceed this limit. On the other hand, what you can do is create multiple alias email and send 150-200 emails from each of them.
This would increase your limit and reduce your chances of ending up in the spam folder.
5. YOUR SUBJECT LINE IS TOO BORING
When you receive an email, the first thing that catches your attention is the subject line itself. Imagine being a businessman and receiving an email that has the subject line; “RE.”
No matter how good the email is, how catchy the deal you’re offering, there is a high possibility that the person will not even open your email. You need to make sure to have the right email subject line.
You need to try and avoid the following mistakes:
- Your company name: You need to consider the possibility that the prospect has never heard of your company, so there is no point in writing that.
- Your prospect’s name: Do not start on a first-name basis as If you are friends with them, you’re not.
- Making a quick call: Try to avoid terms that are too clichés, as they will not get you any good.
6. TOO LONG; DIDN’T READ
According to a study, we delete 48% of our emails on an average every day. This takes us only 5 minutes. The key to an attractive and successful cold email is to keep it short and precise. Since people’s attention span is getting shorter, you need to make sure that your emails are the same.
According to another study by Boomerang, the response rate to your cold emails will be over 50% of your word count is between 50-125 words. The highest response, which was calculated, was between 75-100 words, which was 51%.
Most people tend to access their email from their smartphones instead of their laptops. There are usually some emails that are not accessible from our cell phones and can only be accessed from our laptops. You need to make sure to develop mobile-friendly emails for your marketing campaign.
7. A CALL TO ACTION IS MISSING
How many times has it happened that you forget to add a CTA to your sales email? How can you expect your prospects to respond to your email if he/she does not know what to do in the first place? Make sure to nail your cold email CTA, or they would probably ignore the sales email as they rightly should. You can add a CTA link or button to your email signature to make it look natural.
8. THE ISSUE IS ALREADY SOLVED
Why do we consume products and avail services? Everything that we use is a solution to some of our problems.
For example, the only reason you’ll buy a deodorant is to eliminate the problem of odor.
Therefore, since every service or good is a solution to one of our problems, what if the cold sales email is in regard to a problem or an issue of the prospect that has already been solved?
If this is the case, there is nothing that we can do. You need to move to other potential prospects, looking to provide a solution to their problem.
As times change, people change. The same techniques that were used a decade ago will not be working if you use them now.
As a salesperson, you need to make sure that you are changing and evolving with time and coming up with newer ways to attract the customer, whether it is through cold emails or any other form of marketing.
AUTHOR BIO:
Amanda Jerelyn is currently working as a marketing manager at Crowd Writer, having a team of the best academic writers. She possesses vast experience in the marketing field. Amanda is known for developing effective marketing strategies. She is an expert at problem solving and innovation.