Don’t Make These 5 Cold Email Mistakes

The most common mistakes to look out for when launching your cold email campaigns.

Bruce Martinus | 1/1/2021 | 5 min read

Cold email is one of the best outbound sales methods, when set up correctly, to generate more leads and make more sales.

The problem is that the majority of us don’t write emails that warrant a response.

So, without further ado, here are 5 things to avoid when sending cold email outreach campaigns.

Mistake #1: Subject Line Isn’t Personalized

Putting a personalized subject line in your email will dramatically increase the probability of your email being opened.

It’s more effective than putting a generic subject line because it can look like an email newsletter, which many people will send straight to the trash folder.

Bad example:

“Are you free this week?”

Good Example:

“Hey {Name}, are you free this week?”

A personalized subject line adds that human connection and shows the reader that it’s sent directly to them. This is sufficient to pique their interest, and the curiosity will provoke them to open your email.

Mistake #2: Emails Are Waaaaay Too Long

Being that you’re not the only person trying to grab your prospect’s attention, it’s important that you get to your point quickly.

Most readers are checking their email on the move whilst on their mobile phones – they don’t have time to be reading through a novel-sized email.

Your email should be clear, concise, and efficiently gets to the point you’re trying to make.

As long as your message presents a valuable solution to your prospect’s problem, it doesn’t need to be very long at all.

Mistake #3: Sending Generic Emails

You don’t have to write completely customized emails for every single one of your prospects, but it’s still important to do a little bit of research into them.

Having an opening line that congratulates them for recent achievements or their latest updates on social media will prove to be much more effective than sending a generic message that talks all about the nuts and bolts of your company, and has no benefit for the reader.

This is a more one-on-one approach that your prospect will feel more inclined to respond to.

Mistake #4: No Call To Action

With no clear Call To Action, your email is going to be a big waste of time.

The goal of a CTA is to encourage your prospect to connect with you and engage in activities with your company. So it’s absolutely essential to add a good CTA in your cold email campaigns.

Bad example:

“Get back to me.”

Good Example:

“Have you got 10 minutes spare this week to hear the ideas I had for {Company}?”

Furthermore, asking an open-ended question, rather than a yes or no question, will dramatically increase your results. And the more specific you can make it, the more likely your prospect will respond to your question.

Mistake #5: No Follow-Ups

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is giving up after sending one email.

Your prospects receive hundreds of emails every single week, so it’s highly likely that your email won’t be opened.

Another reason could be that the reader did actually open your email and was interested, but could have been too busy to respond at the time and forgot to do it later.

Therefore, it’s important to always follow up with your prospects in your cold outreach campaigns.

And there’s no perfect way to follow up, it all comes down to your prospects and the industry you’re working with. This can all be found with a few simple tests.

Here are a couple of examples of things you can test:

Different times of the day
Different days of the week
Adding case studies in your follow-up messages

The most important thing to remember here is staying in your prospect’s inbox for longer periods of time will provoke far more responses than giving up after one attempt.