Dos and Don’ts of a Cold Email: Common Cold Email Mistakes and Best Practices

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Cold emails are an important branch of email marketing and will not go away anytime soon. Many industries, including healthcare, real estate, and nonprofits, use them in their marketing campaigns, as they greatly benefit lead generation. Despite a high OR of 24%, only 8% of cold emails receive a response. For your cold email newsletter to be around or above this rate and reach the needed heights, it is worth using some tips, which we will discuss in this article. 

We will split it into five of the best things you can do for your cold emails and five bad strategies you should avoid.

5 Dos of Cold Email Marketing

Let’s start our discussion with the positives that will help you avoid ending up in the spam folder.

1. Come up with powerful subject lines.

Creating a catchy subject line is incredibly important, especially for cold email campaigns. According to surveys, 47% of email recipients open emails based on subject lines alone, as it’s the first thing they see when opening their inboxes. As a result, you should stick to the following tips for making your cold email subject lines impactful:

• Make them short and clear;
• Show recipients that you are going to share a way to solve their problems in an email—stats say that such subject lines can get OR as high as 28%;
• Avoid using spam words and phrases like “Free,” “Buy now,” and so on;

Here are good examples of subject lines solving problems and providing value:

2. Provide an unsubscribe option.

An unsubscribe link is the cornerstone of email made by the book. Recipients should always have the option to unsubscribe from your newsletter if they are not interested. By providing an easily accessible unsubscribe link, you not only show that you respect the recipient’s choice but also protect yourself from ending up in the spam folder, since if the recipient can’t find a way to unsubscribe, they may simply mark the email as spam.

3. Make your email concise.

Research suggests that average attention spans may be declining, so large emails and long texts are increasingly unable to inspire action. Consider short emails. All the important information is visible right away, and the CTAs are clear and noticeable. In cold emails, you are up against the attention span clock. 

In addition, your cold email will be treated with even more bias and severity, which reduces your window of interest to the recipient compared to an email from a recipient’s subscription. So, this time, “the more, the merrier” will not work as you expect.

4. Make it about the recipient’s problem.

Everyone loves to read about themselves, their problems, and, even better, the solutions to their problems. This is what your cold emails should aim for.

No matter how much you want to tell how good your services or products are, you should do so in the context of solving a specific problem for the recipient. Are you selling cosmetics and want to be on the virtual shelves of an online store? Send an email to the store owner explaining that your creams and lotions solve the problem of dry skin for a long time—a solution that the recipients’ customers may need. You provide an answer to one of the consumer problems that the store owner is trying to solve.

5. Keep in touch with follow-ups.

One email may not be enough, and politely reminding the recipient about yourself with a follow-up email will never be superfluous. Perhaps your email got lost among other emails in the recipient’s inbox or accidentally went to spam. The main thing is to keep the golden mean and not turn your cold email newsletter into spam with constant follow-ups. Statistics have shown that your email chain, for maximum effectiveness, should consist of three messages:

1. Your main email (response rate around 8.5%);
2. First follow-up email (open rate around 21%);
3. Second follow-up email (open rate around 25%).

If there is no desired response from the recipient after the second follow-up email, leave it be. Most likely, the recipient does not need your services.

5 Don’ts of Cold Email Marketing

Now, let’s talk about the no-nos of cold email newsletters. These will definitely drop your performance rates.

1. Don’t use purchased email lists for your cold email newsletters. 

Many businesses and marketers don’t have the time or resources to create a list themselves and resort to buying ready-made lists. However, sending unsolicited emails using a purchased email list to people without their explicit consent is illegal in many countries, as it may violate local laws (GDPR for Europe, CAN-SPAM for the US, etc.).

2. Don’t send attachments. 

Many recipients will find it strange to receive an email with an attachment from a stranger. Many cybersecurity classes will remind them not to open such attachments, which will lead to the important information the sender wanted to convey simply not being read. Instead, pack all important information in the body of the email or as a hyperlink to the needed website page.

3. Don’t send cold emails without thoroughly proofreading them.

Remember, cold emails are always treated with more bias since they arrive in inboxes without the recipient’s prior consent. The slightest typo or error can ruin your email marketing efforts. Multiple rounds of proofreading will help you avoid email imperfections and allow you to send cold emails with peace of mind. Besides that, giving your email a fresh look can help you notice weird design decisions or readability issues that you can fix before sending your newsletters.

4. Don’t give off “annoying salesman” vibes. 

A brute force approach is not what you are looking for, as it can be off-putting or annoying, even if the recipient wants what you are selling. Instead, focus your email message on creating beneficial relationships and long-term business partnerships. Aiming only for the sale can lead to the loss of potential customers, bringing you back to square one of your marketing journey.

To make your cold emails more natural, you should avoid phrases like:

• We guarantee the lowest price (as you force the recipient to think about price, not the value);
• Our product increases revenue and reduces costs… (if you can’t be specific — don’t bother with the vague descriptions carrying zero value for the recipient);
• I hope you are well (even though it’s a polite gesture, you don’t know each other, so someone can perceive it as playing pretend);
• To be honest… (may imply to the recipient that the rest of your pitch may not be truthful);
• World-class or Best in class (it doesn’t tell the potential buyer anything and they’ll rather decide who you are in the competition for their attention).

5. Don’t neglect your cold email performance.

Statistics and data are important pillars of email marketing improvement, as is competent, thoughtful analysis. Even if your cold email campaign achieved the desired results and you sold 10 boxes of cookies, always ask yourself the next question: “How can I sell 20 boxes of cookies now?” The data from the previous email campaign will show you the way, highlight mistakes, and give you the necessary insights. 

The most important email metrics to keep your eye on are:

• Deliverability that shows the percentage of emails reaching their destination. The higher — the better
• Open Rate, which indicates the percentage of emails being opened. Same as the first one: the more — the merrier.
• Spam rate shows the percentage of your emails being sent to spam (both automatically if your sender’s reputation is low or sent there by the recipients). Keep it as low as possible at all times.
• Click rates, are responsible for showing your email performance in conveying actions. Clicks on the buttons, banners, attachment, and more. 
• ROI, or Return On Investments, is the overall metric for assessing your email marketing success. The higher your return-to-spending ratio, the better your emails work.

Best practices for cold emails

Finally, here are a few general practices that will help make your cold email campaigns effective and give them a needed boost.

Set goals that you can achieve and measure.

Marketers create email campaigns to achieve certain goals. Cold emails are no exception. Before your emails start dropping into recipients’ inboxes, you must have a strategy of achievable and measurable goals for a certain timeframe that your email campaign must achieve. Only then you will be able to understand whether your campaign is successful. 

Make your ideal customer portrait.

The ideal customer who “just buys, no questions asked” is the first thing that may come to mind. But it’s worth sitting down and brainstorming the characteristics of your ideal client in more detail. What are their pain points? Where might they live? What are their hobbies? What is their average age, gender, and so on? You should have answers to all of these questions before you start crafting your cold emails. Without knowing your ideal customer, you will have a hard time offering a selling solution to problems that will hook recipients.

Warm your email domains before going live with campaigns.

Without this practice, all of the above will be difficult to implement. Domain warming is the process of gradually sending legitimate emails from your new IP address or domain to build a good sender reputation before launching full-fledged email marketing campaigns.

This practice is used everywhere, and cold emails will benefit from such a careful and thoughtful approach. After all, if you start sending a large number of cold emails without warming up, you risk getting your email account banned.

Wrapping up

Cold emails require a special approach if you want this marketing strategy to work for you. The tips and practices shared above aim to make sure that recipients perceive your emails not as “another unwanted, spammy message,” but rather as “an unexpected but potentially useful email worth reading.” Wishing you successful and effective cold email campaigns.

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