B2B cold emails provide companies with a direct bridge to a wide audience of their potential customers. They’re cost-effective, scalable, and easily automated.
They’re also what your leads want: with email being voted the most preferred channel of communication by 77% of B2B consumers.
Done right, they can convert cold leads into warm prospects at a pace that matches each individual’s buyer journey.
In this article, we uncover the secrets to writing cold emails that sell, and show you exactly how to up your game with a compilation of ten cold B2B email templates.
Let’s dive in.
Best Practices for Writing Sales Emails That Sell
Deep Research
You might know your lead’s name, company, designation, and location, but to have and hold their attention, you’ll need to demonstrate you understand (and can solve) their biggest challenges.
You can find these by hanging out in the same places as your leads, and listening to their complaints and doubts.
Join Quora, Facebook and LinkedIn groups, sub-Reddits, and Discord servers catering to your target audience.
Follow industry leaders on these platforms, and also on Twitter and Instagram.
Many noteworthy observations are made in the comment sections of popular accounts, so don’t overlook them.
Powerful Subject Line
By powerful, we don’t mean ALL CAPS subject lines that scream at prospects.
Or promise them shortcuts to ‘Making millions of 💰💰💰💰’.
You need your subject line to:
- Not get in the crosshairs of spam filters
- Get your prospect’s attention
Here are a couple of easy ways to do it.
- Keep your subject line non-generic.
- Use the prospect’s first name, or company’s name.
- Ask a question, or leave a sentence incomplete.
- Try experimenting with lowercase, emojis, and internet acronyms.
Personalization at Scale
To maximize the potential of your email automation process, create templates personalizing different aspects of the email copy based on the quality of lead information you possess.
If all you know about them is their name and their organization, instead of overdone merge tags like ‘Hey {first_name}’, go for the less conspicuous “I don’t know how to break this to you, {first_name}, but your sales software is holding you back.”
If you have a link to their blog or social media, comment on or compliment recent posts they’ve published.
Set up news alerts for their company and send emails whenever a noteworthy event occurs.
If you have any mutual connections on LinkedIn, or an event you both attended, mention that to build rapport.
Strong Opening Line
The very next thing your leads see after the subject line is the opening line.
Apart from the personalized openers mentioned above, you can get their attention by addressing their biggest problem in the first line itself.
“Are SEO costs making you bleed, with little to show for the fortune you’ve spent on them?”
Starting with a statement or question that resonates with their current challenges or goals will establish the email’s relevancy and ensure they keep reading.
Clear Value Proposition
Every cold email you send should highlight the benefits of your product, not just its features. It should leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that they need what you’re offering.
Putting it in terms they use and understand only makes it that much easier for them to scan the value proposition and assess if it’s worth it.
Demonstrate that you know exactly who the target consumers are, what problems they face, and that yours is the ideal solution they need.
Appropriate Call to Action (CTA)
The worst thing you can do as an email marketer is communicate offer value without stating what you expect in return.
Where a value proposition represents the final destination, a CTA shows the first step to getting there.
Do you want leads to take a quiz, read a white paper, or book a meeting? Always end your email with a clear call to action that nudges them toward the next stage of the sales funnel.
Mobile-Friendly Format
If the emails you send
- take too long to load on a mobile device,
- have images that don’t scale properly,
- have clunky layouts that are only partially visible, or
- tiny buttons or links that lead to accidental touches,
the impact on your engagement rate will be massive, especially considering most emails are read on mobile devices.
Design your cold emails keeping mobile users in mind, and always test them across devices to see if they display correctly.
Test and Optimize
The beauty of email lies in the data it lays bare. With A/B testing, you can hone every single element in your email to perfection.
You can compare subject lines, email openers, images, CTA buttons, footers, time of sending, and even the offer, by experimenting with two different versions of an email sent to a control group (~1-10% of your leads).
The winning version can then be sent to the rest of your list.
Follow-Up Strategy
You can’t bank on a single email to convince your lead to do business with you. Nurture leads to prove, with a series of follow-up templates, the value of your offer.
In each email, find different ways to present the value of your offering.
Send them free ebooks, webinar invites, case studies, customer testimonials, free trial offers, etc. to sell them the benefits of your product.
You can send these after certain intervals, or based on specific triggers such as a lead opening but not responding to your email.
Visual Elements
Images and videos can break the monotony of text and complement email copy to make it more impactful.
You can use gifs or memes to infuse humor or interactive elements like scratch coupons to improve engagement.
An infographic explains benefits or processes in a user-friendly manner.
Personalized images and videos can make recipients more appreciative of the fact that they’re not just another name on a list for you and improve response rates.
10 Winning Templates for Cold B2B Sales Emails
The Referral Approach
This template provides a straightforward structure for a cold email to a lead you have little information about.
Its no-nonsense style also makes it stand out from competing cold emails that could be perceived as gimmicky and spammy.
The Compliment Tactic
Compliments make for easy conversation-starters, and this template is perfect for when you’re chasing big-ticket leads or using an Account-based Marketing approach.
It already has a great ask-to-offer ratio (a single-word reply for a free solution custom-created for their organization), and eases the path to a positive response with its sincere appreciation for their work.
The Value Proposition
From the subject line to the short copy, everything about this email is designed to be hard-hitting.
First, it grabs the lead’s attention by using their name in the subject line, then tells them exactly what they can achieve by teaming up with you.
A strong and clear value proposition can move along conversations with leads much faster and reduce the chances of the deal falling through due to unrealistic expectations.
The Relevant News Hook
This one uses an organizational milestone to build a connection with a tepid lead.
If you’re unable to find one, however, you can just as easily substitute it with an industry update and share resources to tackle the change.
The Mutual Connection Mention
If you’ve had limited success with hard-sell cold emails, you might want to try to build a rapport with your leads first.
This template doesn’t pitch a product or service or even a newsletter sign-up, just cites a common acquaintance and asks for the opportunity to connect, a refreshing change from the plethora of impersonal, sales-y emails leads receive regularly.
The Educational/Insight Share
Falling squarely in the ‘give before you receive’ category of cold emails, this template offers free advice to solve the lead’s problem.
By demonstrating your expertise through the tips suggested, you establish yourself as a credible and knowledgeable industry insider that they can benefit from hearing.
The Success Story/Case Study Share
Cold emails can benefit greatly from the trust generated by social proof.
Sort your leads according to their niche and size. Send customized emails to present them with proof your solution has worked for another entity similar to theirs.
The Problem-Solution Approach
If you’re struggling with a slow-moving pipeline, or have had multiple deals fail to close because of the same client objections, it makes sense to address them head-on in your cold emails.
The template here clearly lays out the results achieved by another customer, and ever so subtly triggers FOMO in the reader to encourage responses.
The Event/Conference Follow-Up
Post-event emails are a great way to forge a lasting bond with attendees. Sharing a resource, like this template does, increases engagement and can be used to show recipients the allure of continued contact with you, for example, by subscribing to your newsletter.
Even if the event in question wasn’t yours, you can still use your mutual presence there to spark a conversation.
The Personal Touch
How many times have you been irked by cold emails that feel less personal than a flyer on the subway wall?
This template pulls out all the stops to ensure that its recipients don’t feel the same way.
It collates information from their LinkedIn, third-party websites, and factors in their industry, niche, and challenges in its highly personalized copy, establishing just how important the lead is to your business.
Leveraging Technology and Tools for Efficient Cold Email Campaigns
Combine your cold email templates with a reliable cold email software and email address finder to get the most out of your cold email sales campaigns.
You can find all the email addresses associated with a domain using Hunter’s Email Finder and select the best person to reach out to.
If you already have their contact information in your database, before sending your email, verify their address to keep email bounces at a minimum.
Constantly monitor KPIs such as
- Deliverability rate
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Average reading time
- Response rate
- Unsubscribe rate
and other metrics depending on the end results you wish to achieve.
For example, improve low response rates by increasing the number of follow-up emails sent to leads.
Tweak and revise the emails to perfection till you hit your campaign goals.
Wrapping Up
An effective cold email sets the stage for connecting with your leads — a sales call. To succeed, do proper research on your prospects, personalize subject lines and email copy, optimize for mobile devices, have a clear CTA that leads to the next step, automate follow-ups, and test different approaches.
Cold email is all about testing different approaches and measuring the impact.
Armed with a powerful tool like Kixie, you can follow up with warm leads over a phone call and nudge the hesitant ones with SMS outreach.
Sales reps can access a centralized database containing each lead’s responses to previous contact attempts and close more deals than ever before.
Antonio is an outreach manager at Hunter. He is passionate about testing different outreach tactics and sharing results with the community. When he is not connecting with industry leaders you can find him on his motorbike exploring off-the-beaten paths around the world.
