Cold Email Copywriting 101: Essential Tips for Getting Responses

Crafting an effective cold email is similar to trying to strike up a conversation with a crowd full of strangers. You need to give it your all to break the ice and make the other person engage with you.

However, just like you, many others are also vying for the same connection. As a result, your target audience’s inboxes are brimming with emails. So, making prospects open and respond to your cold emails is a major challenge!

But don’t worry—with effective cold email copywriting tips. You can connect with the audience effectively and attract opportunities.

So, let’s dive into this guide and learn all the tips to get real engagement!

Personalize Each Email

The first and most important part of your cold email copywriting is personalization. When people find something is written solely for them, it grabs their attention way better and boosts their chance of getting a response.

Every cold email copywriter must avoid using generic, cookie-cutter emails. Otherwise, recipients will identify them easily and send them to the trash.

However, personalization isn’t just about adding the recipient’s name to the email. You must go the extra mile to impress them further by adding the following:

• Their company name and professional role (e.g., I saw that you got promoted to <designation name> at <company name>.)
• Their recent milestone achievement or project completion (e.g., Congratulations for your achievement in <project name/milestone> at <company name>.)
• Some common experience (e.g., Your <content/speech> at <where it was published/event name> was so inspiring!)

This shows that it’s not just any cold email pitch. Rather, you’ve done your homework about them and make your cold pitch email appear *warm!* Thus, they feel they owe you (the cold email copywriter and the entire team) a response.

Write Engaging Subject Lines

The first thing a recipient notices about your cold email pitch is the subject lines. It’s a crucial factor behind whether they will open the email. So, pay special attention to this section in your copywriting cold email template.

Let’s review some rules about creating a compelling subject line in cold email copywriting.

• Make it short and clear, about 50 characters or 6-10 words. Don’t go any longer than this, or the sentence will get cut off.
• Include something about their pain points or respective solutions. It might be in the form of a question. (e.g., Are you struggling with <paint point>?) You can also use statements (e.g., Boost ROI in 60 days.)
• Statistics even show that you can boost email open rates by 50% with personalized subject lines ^source. So, you must also personalize the subject lines in your cold pitch email using the recipient’s name and company name.
• Create a sense of urgency with terms like “Quick Question” or “Don’t Miss Out.”

Now, let’s know a few common things you must not add to your subject lines while copywriting a cold email pitch.

• Clickbaits: They undermine your email’s credibility. This will make recipients mark your email as spam and ruin the cold email copywriter’s efforts completely.
• Overpromising: Never make unrealistic claims, or they will ruin any scope of building trust.
• All Caps or Too Many Punctuation: Writing the entire subject line in uppercase and using too many punctuations seems overwhelming and aggressive.

Use Targeted Email Templates

Often, businesses use templates in their cold email copywriting. This helps them save time. However, if you forward the same old generic email to everyone, nobody will like to open it.

Don’t just focus on copywriting a cold email template once and reusing it without any change. Instead, make them targeted toward the recipient.

Being a cold email copywriter, you must follow these tips:

Segment your target audience

Study your target audience and segment them into small groups based on their characteristics. This is a great tip for copywriting cold email templates and building different versions.

For instance, you can segment them into CEOs, sales directors, and marketing managers if your services are for other businesses. If you directly send cold emails to customers, segment them based on demographics.

Build different templates

When copywriting a cold email template, think about what resonates the most with each segment and tailor the message accordingly. Here are some key elements to include in your cold email pitch.

• A personalized greeting using the recipient’s name
• Relevant details and pain points for each segment
• A clear value proposition that explains how your business offerings solve their problems

Note: Track each template’s performance based on open and response rates and tweak them accordingly.

Keep Emails Concise (<120 Words)

In cold email copywriting, less is always more! Ideally, it’s best to use less than 120 words in each of your emails.

If you’re wondering why that’s the case, here are some reasons.

Low attention span and time

Remember, your recipients probably have hundreds of unread cold pitch emails in their inboxes. They can’t afford to give up too much time on each email.

So, you must grab their attention and convey your business offering as quickly as possible. The only way to do so is to use fewer words on each cold pitch email.

Clarity

A short, cold email pitch always forces you to stick to the topic and reach the point soon. The low flexibility prevents you from adding unnecessary information and industry jargon. This makes your email easier to understand and doesn’t overwhelm recipients.

Mobile readability

Busy recipients don’t have the time to check emails on their laptops. Instead, they do it while on the go on their smartphones. If you write long emails, they can’t check that on a smartphone’s compact screen and might skip yours for good.

Actionable

Shorter emails highlight the important pointers faster. It tells recipients how you can help them and your next action.

To keep your emails concise, proficient cold email copywriters suggest avoiding certain phrases, such as

• “I hope you’re doing well.”: While your well wishes are appreciated, they make emails too generic.
• “I want to share some information about our services.”: The recipient is already eager to know that after opening the email. This bores them unnecessarily.
• “We have been in the business for X years and helped ABC companies in the DEF industry.”: If interested in your business offering, they’ll research your company website and learn more.

Vary Email Content and Subject Lines

Often, it’s important to connect to the same prospect more than once in cold pitch email campaigns. This might be because the recipient hasn’t responded or to nurture leads.

However, if you send the same old email to the same people, they’ll definitely mark the email as spam. So, here are a few ways to spruce up your cold email copywriting efforts:

• Showcase different features, benefits, or value propositions every time in a new follow-up.
• Encourage them to engage with you by asking questions about their needs and preferences.
• Offer social proof using customer success stories or the number of people you’ve helped.
• Forward links to helpful content, including relevant blogs revolving around your business offering or case studies to show your value in the industry.
• Be more casual or friendly in one email and more formal in another to gauge their responses.
• Approach audiences’ pain points and challenges from different angles.

The same goes for the subject lines. Craft different phrases relevant to the content.

Avoid Spam Trigger Words

A cold email copywriter’s greatest enemy might be the spam filters. Specific phrases and words can trigger the filter and direct your cold email pitch to land in spam folders. As a result, it wastes your entire effort to copywrite cold email templates.

The spam filter gets triggered by specific words and phrases that have been mostly used in low-quality and unsolicited emails. If you’re a cold email copywriter, never use these terms:

• Free Discount: Even if you offer something for free or at a discount, scammers often use them to lure in vulnerable people.
• Limited Time Offer, Urgent, Act Now: It’s great to create a sense of urgency, but it can overwhelm recipients.
• Guaranteed: Absolute promises appear too good to be real. It makes your email suspicious.
• Winner, Earn Cash: Promises of making money or winning some unrealistic prize also activate spam filters as scammers use them as well.
• Buy Now, Click Here: These are too pushy for a cold pitch email.

Note: It’s best to use spam check tools to ensure your subject line or email content doesn’t activate spam filters.

Limit the Use of Links

Any novice cold email copywriter might be tempted to include more links to the business, including websites, product pages, and case studies. After all, it’s natural to want to offer more sources and proof of business credibility to recipients.

However, that’s one of the major mistakes of copywriting a cold email pitch. This can reduce the deliverability and readability of your cold pitch email.

The presence of excess links in copywriting cold email templates makes the content too stuffy and overwhelming.

The email also appears spammy to recipients as they’ll be worried about why there are so many links and whether any of them has a virus. This will reduce the open and response rates.

Instead, follow these best practices for link addition.

• Add only up to 1-2 most essential and relevant links in each cold pitch email.
• Instead of adding entire URLs to webpages, hyperlink them to anchor texts such as “Learn more here” or “Go check our case study.” This will give a more professional look.
• Or you can add a soft CTA and ask them to reply, and then you can share your calendar links or any other links.

Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

The next significant step of copywriting a cold email template includes adding a clear and direct call to action (CTA) in every cold email pitch.

Without an effective CTA, cold email campaigns lack direction. Your prospects won’t know what to do next after reading the email. So, curate a catchy CTA with these tips in mind.

• The CTA must be specific, actionable, and relevant to the email’s purpose.
• Never use anything vague like “Let’s connect if you’re interested.” or “Reach out to share what you think.”
• Make the CTA easy to perform and simple. It must not require a lot of other actions from the recipients to complete.
• Mention the benefit of clicking on the CTA.

You can experiment with different CTA options, such as these:

• Check out how our <business offering> can help you.
• Are you in for a 20-minute call next week?
• Schedule a demo.

Note: Make sure you add only one CTA for every email and place it at the bottom.

Add a Professional Email Signature  

The last step of copywriting a cold email template is to add a professional email signature. This can build credibility and add more information about you.

A professional email signature must include

• Your full name
• Your designation
• Company name and logo
• Contact information, including your email address, your or company's phone number
• Social proof, including your or your company’s LinkedIn profile or company website
• Link to recent case study, article, or other resource

Conclusion

Cold email copywriting is an amalgamation of art and science. Learning what your target audience truly resonates with requires an artistic mind, practice, and several trials and errors.

Whether you want to generate leads, close deals, or build partnerships, you must incorporate personalization, unique subject lines, conciseness, compelling CTAs, and a professional sign-off. Avoid major pitfalls like too many links and spammy terms to boost your success rate!

Lastly, don’t forget that the goal of cold email copywriting is not just to get noticed by the recipients. You also want meaningful conversations and favorable actions.

Embrace these tips to the core and connect with your audience effectively. Start writing your heart out, test out what works, and watch your efforts turn into results!