11 Mistakes You Should Avoid In Your Cold Emailing

Janani -

Cold email is one of the most effective ways to get your business a boost and position yourself as an expert in your industry. It is the practice of generating leads by sending a sales message directly to a business, rather than through a salesperson.

For example, your cold emails could be sending an email to the marketing department, or CTO, of a company you are targeting. The purpose is to get the name of the decision-maker or influencer and get your message in front of them.

Even though email has taken a back seat behind social media, it has not died yet. In fact, a survey shows that 66% of marketing professionals still find email to be an effective way to market their businesses. It’s a no-brainer, then, to create email campaigns that help promote your brand a new business, its products, and services, as well as its upcoming events, campaigns, or offers.

Your cold email is probably your first point of contact with a potential new client. It’s your chance to generate interest and buzz about your business but only if it’s well written and personalized.

Are you looking to get more responses during your cold email outreach campaign? If so, these common mistakes will put a big dent in your results. Learn how to eliminate these mistakes to maximize your cold email success here.

Mistake #1: Lousy Subject Lines

Most people, what they will do is they will write a very long subject line like, ‘I would love to provide social media services for your business’ or ‘I would love to work for free’ and that just doesn’t work.

So instead, here for a few subject lines, you can use in your email:

  1. Hi from {Name}
  2. About {Company Name}
  3. Question about their company

Other top-performing subject lines:

  1. Relevant emoji to the client.
  2. I was born to work with {Company Name}.
  3. Meeting next week?

These subject lines have a huge open rate rather than other long and explained subject lines.

Instead of using a lousy, un-customized subject line, test out some generic but customized subject lines for better open rates.

Look at the subject line, short and specific - that's what your cold email should have.

If your email campaign still isn’t working. Then check your email open rate first. Improving email open rate is as simple as testing a new subject line per 10 senders until you get 60% and above.

Mistake #2: No Customizations

Sending a generic email is never an eye-catchy one.

Write an email specific to a customer and customize the first line. Spend some minutes to ensure that the person you are emailing is the right person, the email is talking about something that is relevant to the person, the words are typo-free like check everything.

If you do that properly, you can get about 10 times the open rate and response rate.

LinkedIn send an template invitation for the people who are all register for their webinar. The name in the template is one type of customized email template. Try like this in your email.

Mistake #3: Super Formal Salutations

Most of the case, a simple ‘Hi’ would be more comfortable and suffice instead of using ‘Hello’ or ‘Dear’.

Always have a clear mind about what you are writing about. You shouldn’t greet (Hello) or wish anyone in your email. It is not a letter, it’s an email – a one person to another person.

So, don’t say hi with no first name. You need a first name in there and don’t say dear like you have regrets.

Your email should look like this for better communication:

{Subject line}

Hi {their first name},

{Email purpose}

Thanks,

{Your name}

Mistake #4: Starting The Email with “I”

Using an “I” in the very first line or too much makes the email way too me-centric and more about yourself than the client.

For this mistake, set your mind like a client and read your email. If your mind says, ‘Hey! I have no idea who is this guy sending this email to me. And why do I care about this?’

And then there is a slap in a face. Sit and rewrite your email properly for your client. Remember, use fewer I’s and a lot more You’s.

Mistake #5: Typos

Use grammar tools or hire a proof-reader for your email writings. There is no excuse for bad grammar emails. If your email is not grammatically correct, it means only that you didn’t double-check it or maybe, hey! please turn on your spell-checker. If you are still not sure about grammar, then give your email for proofreading to an editor. Be Safe Than Feel Sorry.

Google also provides a Smart Compose in Gmail for professional people to write emails correctly, without grammatical errors.

Mistake #6: Asking for Too Much

Your cold email is only for booking a meeting with your team. Sending a full proposal or price list or images of what you do will kill the email open rate and response rate.

By not asking too much, you can believe in almost anything... like... a starry night in the mountains, or even the existence of fate. - Aimee Friedman

Maybe this quote isn't related to cold email but the meaning is same. Don't ask for too much whether it is in email or in life.

Mistake #7: Writing Irrelevant Nonsense

Telling the prospect that anything that they already know, or they don’t want to hear anything fluffy compliments that are based on nothing. Customize the emails based on what customer problems are. Be specific and direct, you will definitely get responses.

For example, write an email like this:

Hi {First Name},

Read the paper you put out organization growth, love how detailed you were especially around the targets.

As a professional writer with 10+ years of experience in this industry, I have written dozens of white papers, and your team is on the right track. I have a couple of ideas for new white papers that will work for {company name} and can create them at a professional level. Can we have a quick call to talk about your goals?

Thanks,

{Your Name}

P.S. Also happy to send over a few white papers that I have written for {company name}.

This is an email of a technical writer who is trying to get a position in organization. Like this email, be specific and direct about the situation.

Mistake #8: Sending Crazy Long Email

Don’t bore your clients with unnecessary details or fancy words. Make your emails readable and easily digestible. They want to have a business deal not a story writer for their next film.

You want people to read your emails make sure that the email has only 5 sentences and comfortable to read it on mobile. Most people open emails on their mobiles rather than laptops or computers.

So, make a short email with specific details. Don’t put entire company details or product list in the emails. Just the purpose why you are sending the email to that person.

Mistake #9: AA (Avoid Acronyms)

Don’t use any acronyms in the business email. Or you can use some acronyms whichever the company is familiar using with. If you really want to use the acronyms in the email means, make sure that you provide what that acronym is in the closed bracelet ‘()’.

Some Acronyms related to Lead Generation:

  1. CRM - Customer Relationship Management
  2. KPI - Key Performance Indicator
  3. CTR - Click Through Rate
  4. CRO - Conversion Rate Optimization
  5. CMS - Content Management System
  6. CTA - Call To Action
  7. SEO - Search Engine Optimization
  8. BR - Bounce Rate

Mistake #10: Not Including Benefits

Tell them how you can be useful to your prospect rather than how awesome you are.

Ask yourself these questions:

  1. What will they get in return for a response to your email?
  2. How can he or she benefit from you?
  3. Why should they care in the first place?

Example email with benefits:

Hi {client name},

On average, you are spending half of your time finding the right customer for your business. And it is not an easy task in B2B business.

With LeadMine, you can be able to find customers for your business in a minute or lesser. We are providing an email finder and email verifier with a chrome extension. By using our chrome extension, you can be able to extract perfect audience's information for your business.

If you are looking for a simple tool so your sales team can focus on results, it would be great to connect for a 10-minutes call next week or by any day.

You can schedule a call by clicking the link below:
https://calendly.com/leadmine

Thanks and regards,

Javith

LeadMine

In the second paragraph, you see the benefits for the client. That’s how the cold emails should work. It should talk about their business benefit and growth.

Mistake #11: CTA – Call-To-Action

Remember about being clear and direct in your email?

Someone has opened your email and read it. But your email campaign is a failure! That’s because you have not included a call-to-action that they can react to your email purpose. Don’t make the mistake, folks!

Well, ensure that you include a specific call-to-action in your email, the one you are expecting your clients to click. It can be a direct response with an answer to your email, a meeting, or an information exchange. Just one CTA is a trick for your business.

From my personal experience, I find that two CTA’s work best in email campaign:

  1. Specific CTA like ‘Download our e-Book’ or ‘Attend our webinar’ etc.
  2. Generic CTA like ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ or ‘Follow us on Twitter’ etc.

Just pick anyone and place them in your email. You will visibly see the difference in your response rate.

Avoid These Mistakes For Better Results

Salespeople need to master email and integrate it into their day-to-day prospecting. But most make costly mistakes when it comes to email. Cold email is a great way to prospect a new business. But if you make these eleven mistakes, you are setting yourself up for a big failure.

As an easy-to-use lead generation tool in the market, we try to avoid these mistakes in our cold emails. If there is any mistake that you avoid during cold emails, feel free to share it with LeadMine.