Newbie Copywriter Series: How to (Not) Write a Cold Email

Most cold emails suck. You receive a lot of them every day. Chances are you don’t open the majority of them at all. You will either delete or send to spam most of them, just like me. The problem I see with most emails is that they are vague and lack conviction. It’s like the seller is not sold on his own belief.

If you and I become a seller suddenly, we can take this learning and write better cold emails. You can stand and have far more chance of engaging and selling through email if you get the basics right. Let’s jump right into it.

Don’t use buzzwords: 99% of cold emails are full of buzzwords that don’t mean anything. If you jam-pack your email with buzzwords, a reader won’t feel like you have anything real to offer them. You’re gonna sound like one of 10,000 other people in their inbox who just want their money, don’t do that.

Don’t try to sell: Your goal should be reader engagement first. People usually don’t buy on the first introduction to a product or service. Treat the email as an engagement copy. Inform the reader and poke their interest. Don’t be desperate to sell.

Specificity: I receive cold emails selling services. But they don’t specify anything. They say they are results-oriented, but they don’t mention any results. How about saying “I increased client X’s sales by 20% in one year”? You are a stranger. I receive dozens of emails every day. Your email needs to include specifics to engage me.

Research the receiver: If you are cold emailing a business, you better do some research on them to find out what they do and may need. Re-read your email and see if this can be sent to any business. If it can be sent to any business, please re-write and be specific to one business. Respect a business and give them the time to research and then you can expect engagement from them. A properly researched and personalized email sent to one business is much better than an email that is sent to thousands of businesses that won’t read your email. And don’t sell them something they have or are already doing.

Close the email properly: “Please let me know if you are interested”. This is the worst and most common closing of cold emails. It is like approaching a pretty girl and then asking please let me know if you are interested in dating me. Be confident and just ask her out man. Give her a date and time. An email is closed better if you give the reader a specific time and say I am available at that time and we can have a 15-minute Zoom call to discuss your needs. Then the onus is on them to say yes or no.

Email marketing is here to stay. Email copy is easy to start with but hard to master. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter may perish as platforms and be replaced by newer platforms, but you will keep using your email as a method of communication. You will keep receiving cold emails and sending them to your spam folder. But if you need to sell something, you better take the learning and do the opposite of what most cold emailers are doing. There are endless opportunities out there if you can master this.