To make things more entertaining for you, I think it's good to start with a real-world cold email example. The example is an email I've received a couple of months ago - so it is a cold email. I don't know who the sender is, but let's see what was written, shall we?
This comprehensive guide covers the most common email marketing mistakes and provides actionable cold email tips to improve your outreach strategy.
Table of Contents
- The Worst Cold Email I've Ever Received
- What Was Done Before Writing This Email?
- Mistake #1: No Clear Goals Defined
- Mistake #2: Target Audience Too Broad
- Understanding the Customer Decision Making Process
- Mistake #3: Skipping the Trust-Building Phase
- What We Can Do to Improve Our Chances
- Email Content Analysis
- Mistake #4: Terrible Subject Line
- The AIDA Method for Email Structure
- Mistake #5: Generic Attention-Grabbing Attempt
- Mistake #6: Weak Desire Section
- Mistake #7: Not Using Email Sequences
- The Science Behind Repetition
- Building the Right Cold Email Strategy
- Using Scrap.io for Lead Generation
- Advanced Filtering Options
- Frequently Asked Questions
The Worst Cold Email I've Ever Received
"Hello good morning did you mean Hello or good morning your website is amazing and so beautiful I would like to discuss a business opportunity with you our focus on search engine optimization and digital Marketing Solutions is at an affordable price in your area we also provide website redesign and mobile app if you are interested please share your contact number on requirements may I send you our quotation best regards"
Now let's try to translate it. I have forgotten to add a variation of synonyms, so here's what this email is really saying:
"I try very hard to scratch your balls. I would like also very much you to spend your money. Our product is at an affordable price in your area" - which doesn't make much sense because I sell digital marketing solutions. "Buy my product, I repeat, buy my product - but this time I highlight it in case you didn't see it in the first place."
I know what you are going to tell me - François, this email sucks! And you are absolutely right. It raises one question however: why does it suck? I mean, apart from the fact that there are a lot of nonsenses, how to analyze this email and how can you draw a conclusion to improve your own emailing campaign?
One last thing - if you have enjoyed this video once you have watched it, of course, we have created an online training to further describe a semi-automated system to collect leads and to contact them in an efficient way. It is free of charge, the link is in the description. This training covers proven cold email best practices and email marketing tips to help you build successful campaigns.
What Was Done Before Writing This Email?
Before talking about the email in itself, we will try to make assumptions about what was done beforehand - what was done before the writing of the message. If I put myself into the sender's shoes, I might say that there are no defined goals here.
Mistake #1: No Clear Goals Defined
Defining our goal is the first step before implementing anything else. Indeed, based on our goal, it will be then much easier to elaborate a suitable strategy. The SMART method is probably the best one to describe what we are looking for - it stands for:
- Specific - Clearly defined objectives
- Measurable - Quantifiable results
- Achievable - Realistic expectations
- Realistic - Based on actual capabilities
- Time-bound - Clear deadlines
One cannot deny that there is nothing specific with this email. I simply don't know what he expects from me. Does he want to offer me his SEO expertise? Website redesign services? Mobile apps? I don't know. The problem is that it seems like there are several objectives at the same time.
There is nothing wrong having multiple goals, as long as you keep one single goal for each email campaign. Moreover, the term "digital Marketing Solutions" is not specific at all.
An example of a suitable goal could be: "selling two subscriptions of my software every week by sending a maximum of 250 emails a day encompassed in a sequence which will be stopped in 30 days."
Mistake #2: Target Audience Too Broad
Once your goal has been clearly identified, we can focus on our target - or I should have said our targets, because usually speaking, we have more than one target. We have one big target which can be split up into different subtypes.
If we target restaurants, your sales arguments will be different depending on the kind of restaurants you are thinking about. Would you talk the same way to:
- A fast food restaurant vs. a three-star restaurant?
- A French restaurant vs. a Mexican one?
- A small restaurant in a village vs. a famous international brand?
Of course not!
Companies are different, so are the backgrounds, their fields, their goals or problems. Therefore, they do require a different approach. And the same way as one email campaign is related to a single goal, one email campaign is equal to a single and specific target.
The problem here is that the target looks too broad-based. One may assume that his target was "everyone having a website," which makes quite a lot of people actually. And it makes me realizing something - I don't have any website!
Understanding the Customer Decision Making Process
The graph you can see represents the consumer decision making process. It shows us the behavior of a customer when he wants to buy something. The five steps are the following:
- Need recognition
- Information search
- Evaluation of alternatives
- Purchase
- Post-purchase evaluation
As you can notice, the purchasing part comes at the end. What needs to be remembered from this method is that selling something is somehow a time-consuming process.
Mistake #3: Skipping the Trust-Building Phase
The biggest misconception about automation is that we are allowed to skip the first three steps, not to build any trust, and simply claim "hello, we offer blah blah blah, buy my product." It's not gonna work! It's not gonna work because people need time - so you need time to know you, they need time to trust you.
What we should do is to ask for a conversation prior to a conversion. In other words, we have to use the commitment principle described in the book "Influence and Persuasion." Rather than asking for a sale, we ask for something requiring fewer commitment:
- A conversation
- A free resource download
- An added value consultation
- Any intermediary step that builds trust
And the point is that conversation cannot and should not be automated. Still, some people prefer to use automation right away in the hope that their low - really low - conversion rate will be offset by a huge volume. It's not gonna work!
Quality over quantity! I can tell you that 250 targeted, personalized messages are way more powerful than 5,000 low-value emails. The more emails you send, the more likely you will kill your deliverability. There is no need mentioning that the email I've received ended up in the spam box. Playing the life and death of your email campaign in the pure game of luck doesn't seem the right thing to do.
What We Can Do to Improve Our Chances
Here is what we can do to improve our chances: People want to talk to other people. In this regard, I invite you to send the first 100 emails manually. Then we try out different messages, different sequences, until we've got something giving substantial results. At this moment - and at this moment only - it's time to use automation and to scale things up.
The key principles for improvement include:
- Manual testing first - Start with 100 hand-crafted emails
- A/B testing different approaches - Test various messages and sequences
- Quality over quantity - Focus on targeted, personalized outreach
- Gradual automation - Only automate after proving what works
- Continuous optimization - Keep refining based on results
Email Content Analysis
We can now pay attention to the content of the email. The first thing to be seen in an email is the subject - the title. A title has to be brief. Your prospect doesn't know you yet, so its sole purpose is to prompt an opening by attracting attention.
Mistake #4: Terrible Subject Line
How can we do that? Well, by not doing what he did. It's by far the worst title I have ever seen - given that there is none actually. There is one, but he simply wrote down my email address. He could at least have pretended to give a name!
Let's take another example then. Ramp is a company selling personalized t-shirts for companies. So far, nothing fancy. However, a couple of years ago, they wrote what they call "the best cold email ever." I don't know if it's truly the best cold email example ever, but indeed it is a good cold email example.
Here is what a random title could have looked like: "Looking for personalized t-shirts?" According to the FAB model, we are merely describing here the features of the products - it's just a t-shirt - and not how it could benefit customers. So it's not a very good title.
And now here is what they truly sent: "I'm wearing your company t-shirt." If you work at Amazon, the title is "I'm wearing an Amazon t-shirt." The title has worked well because it's based on curiosity - you wonder why someone not in your company would wear your t-shirt.
We can also use opportunity with a formula like "how to achieve X results without Y constraint." We can find a lot of examples, however, examples have to be taken for what they are - examples. The best way is to A/B test your own titles several times until you find something working for you.
The AIDA Method for Email Structure
The rule of thumb of copywriting is to follow the AIDA method. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. If we come back to our email, I believe attention is here, desire might be around there, and action is at the end. Even though most of the steps are defined, the sales pitch remains irrelevant. Let's find out why.
Mistake #5: Generic Attention-Grabbing Attempt
Attention is always represented by the first sentence. As with the title, the aim is to encourage the reader to read the following sentence. "Your website is amazing and so beautiful" - actually, if memory serves, I think that flattery is somewhat related to the liking principle from the book "Influence and Persuasion."
So to some extent, we can use flattery as long as it looks genuine. And the thing is, I don't have a website! And back when I had a website, it wasn't so beautiful - actually, it was awful. So let's not talk about it.
It's possible to write an efficient icebreaker, but it does require a little more effort. First of all, we have to collect data regarding our leads. They don't know us already, but we do. We have to pick up something specific - the last content they uploaded, the last reviews they received, we can mention a referral, we can ask for a rhetorical question.
In any case, the attention part can only be suitable if we target a small audience. Otherwise, it's not gonna work out. This is why this sentence cannot work - it's way too generic. The prospect must have the feeling that the message has been specifically created for him.
Missing Interest Section
Interest comes next, and this part is missing from the email. It's time to emphasize customers' problems. If possible, the problem should be recognized, painful, and urgent.
The golden rule is that people don't care about you. They don't care about what you sell. They only care about themselves, about their interests. Even the guy giving money to poor people in the streets mainly cares about his ego, about his brand image, whether he recognizes it or not.
This is why the description of the problem comes early on. I'm not a CEO expert, but maybe he could have said something regarding missing opportunities: "I don't have a website, so I'm missing out on potential customers that I could have had with more exposure" or "maybe my WordPress version is outdated and this can raise safety issues."
Mistake #6: Weak Desire Section
Desire - desire is all about creating the right conditions to encourage prospects to answer our CTA. The only thing he told me is that he sells "health services at an affordable price." It looks like a bad joke! Again, it is too generic. What does "affordable" mean?
In the desire part, we try to demonstrate our expertise and to build trust. The purpose is to remove - or at least to minimize as much as possible - what we call loss aversion. We have to show that we are able to bring value and that there is no risk in accepting our call to action.
Poor Call to Action
The CTA is considered as the easiest part of the sales argument. However, in that case, we can't really call it a success. There is one good thing, however - the CTA is usually a question. The worst thing he could have done is to send me a link. We never send a link in the first place. We better ask prospects if they want to receive it; otherwise, it's a red flag showing the email as spam.
Talking about red flags, he asks for a conversion instead of a conversation. Apart from this mistake, he also wrote down two CTAs, so I'm confused. I don't know what he expected from me. We always keep one CTA for each email sequence.
Mistake #7: Not Using Email Sequences
The last common email mistake to avoid is not to use a sequence. How to define a sequence? A sequence is a campaign including multiple messages, each one sent at a different time. In that case, it wouldn't make much of a difference because the email is spam - 0 times 10 always equals zero.
Overall, why is it paramount to send multiple messages? There are at least two reasons:
Number one: The more messages you send, the more people you will reach out to. It helps you to get higher exposure. Maybe your first email won't be seen because the receiver is overwhelmed by work. Maybe your second email won't be opened because the receiver is on vacation. Ultimately, your third email might reach its target.
The second reason is a bit more subtle. Even if we assume that your first two emails have been seen, there is a point in sending a third one as long as you didn't get a response, of course. Conversion lies in repetition.
The Science Behind Repetition
Did you wonder why an international brand like McDonald's spends over 300 million dollars on advertising every year? Why do they even do that? All right, from time to time they have to promote a new product, I understand, but what if they don't? Everyone is aware that the brand exists, and everyone knows what their burgers taste like. Still, advertising remains relevant because of what we call the mere exposure effect.
People tend to develop preferences for things because they are familiar with them. If I want chocolate spread, I always buy a jar of Nutella simply because I've never heard of other brands. In the wonderful world of advertising, it is also known as the rule of seven. It states that a potential customer needs to see your brand at least seven times before they commit to a purchase decision.
In other words, in a world where people can't handle 10 seconds of nothing, it's important to stay at the top of customers' minds. It raises one question: what is the ideal number of repetitions? What is the ideal number of emails? Seven?
Now, a sequence mustn't look like harassment, but sending three messages is a minimum and five is a maximum. We never send more than five emails because:
Number one: It's kind of embarrassing if we don't get a response at this point. It simply means our prospect is not interested.
Number two: The more messages you send, the fewer new people you will reach out to. If your first message reached 50 percent of your target audience, your second one might reach 25 percent of your target audience, and the third one would reach 12.5 percent, and so on. At some point, another message is simply not worth sending.
When we talk about repetition, we don't mean doing the very same thing over and over again. There is no use sending the very same email three times in a row. Each email is more impactful if it is unique. We can choose a different angle - for example, the first message can underline customer problems, the second one can bring value by offering a free resource, and the last one can be a case study or a testimonial in which case we apply the social proof principle.
We can also use different marketing channels by implementing a multi-channel campaign. You can complement an email campaign with a phone call or with a LinkedIn message. The only thing that has to remain the same, no matter what, is your CTA.
Building the Right Cold Email Strategy
Obviously, creating an email campaign is not only about knowing what mistakes to avoid. It's also about implementing the right infrastructure and developing a comprehensive cold email strategy. This part is mostly explained in the online training, but we are going to discuss the first step together.
We are going to discover how to get real-time data, how to retrieve email addresses and additional data fields, which comes in handy when we will create our different targets. And we can gather our leads thanks to Scrap.io, a powerful tool for cold email prospecting and lead generation.
Using Scrap.io for Lead Generation
All you need to do if you want to make use of Scrap.io is to create your own account, and once it is done, you will have access to your dashboard. I invite you to click on it in order to take a look at how Scrap.io works.
This is the place in which we'll be able to retrieve all your leads. We've got a couple of filters, so let's start with the first one: Activity. Activity means a category - meaning which category you want to choose for your campaign. And if you are not aware of it, there are around 4,000 different categories listed on Google Maps.
Obviously, I cannot show you all of them, but keep in mind that Google Maps is a perfect platform if you want to target small or medium-sized businesses - the kind of businesses you can see by just walking down the streets, businesses you can see in your everyday life.
Your first task is to pick up the right category. For example, if you want to target a restaurant, well, it could be a good idea, but is it accurate enough? As you can see, you've got lots of different restaurants:
- Thai restaurant
- Dojo restaurant (I don't even know what that is, I'm sorry)
- Swiss restaurant
- Dutch restaurants
- And so on...
So you've got a lot of different subtypes. So maybe it could be a good idea to segment your market even more.
I can choose another category, for example. Depending on the plan you choose, you can get your category at the scale of an entire country, or at the scale of an entire state (which is related to what we call level 1 division), same thing with a level 2 division (which is a county in our case), or at the scale of a city - the same way as you can do it on Google Maps.
Let's choose another country. So we don't have all countries in the world, but we've got quite a lot. So if I want to change it from Poland to United States, I can perfectly do that. I click on it, I can choose - I don't know, maybe Tennessee as an example. I can say I'm not really familiar with American counties, but maybe as a city, I can type Nashville or something. Or you can directly type Nashville and forget about Tennessee - it will make much sense. Nashville. I click on search, and I will be able to have an overview of my results.
I'm perfectly aware that I've got 1,337 results. The thing is that I can segment my leads even more. As you can see, I've got a filter button, and if I click on it, I will be able to split my leads in different subcategories.
Advanced Filtering Options
So you've got essential filters and advanced filters depending on what you are looking for. The first one is a bit enigmatic: "main activity only." If you don't know, on Google Maps, you've got a primary category, which is a single category, and you've got different secondary categories. So in our case, we've got a bar, but a bar can also be a restaurant, or can be - I don't know - a hotel, a café, or whatever else.
So if I say that I want to get restaurants as a main activity, I can click on "yes." I can also get:
- Closed restaurants - in some cases, they are also displayed on Google Maps
- Restaurants with website - for web-focused outreach
- Phone number - for calling campaigns
- Email addresses - for direct email outreach
- Social media links - Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn
So all of these filters - those are essential features. Most of them are directly displayed on Google Maps detail page. So we've got a website, in some cases we've got a phone number (not in this case, however), but we don't have email addresses or social media links. I know there is an Instagram account here, but this is an exception. The idea is that we will get this information by scraping the website.
What about advanced filters now? Google Maps listed claimed - if we say yes, it means that companies are at least aware that they have a Google Maps detail page. Another thing which is really interesting in our case is price range, because if I want to target upmarket restaurants, I will send them a different message than if I contact cheap restaurants.
For those interested in comprehensive lead generation strategies beyond Google Maps, you might also want to explore other proven prospecting methods that can complement your cold email campaigns.
If I'm a web agency, I might want to target restaurants with:
- A pretty bad rating (from one to three, for example)
- Less than 30 reviews
- Less than five photos
- Contact forms on their websites
- Ad pixels for retargeting opportunities
Let's try something a bit random. I want to target restaurants with an Instagram link, with a price range of three dollar symbols, and ad pixels on their websites. I filter, and I will get fewer results obviously, but much more targeted ones.
If I think my file is relevant enough, I can export it. As you can see, all the exports I have done so far are located within the "My Exports" tab. I can perfectly delete a file, or I can update a file, in which case it will launch the very same workflow with the same settings. The only difference is that I will get newer results, and the more updated your results are, the more relevant your email campaign will be.
My extraction is completed. I can download my file in a CSV or Excel format.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 30/30/50 rule for cold emails?
The 30/30/50 rule suggests spending 30% of your effort on crafting personalized subject lines, 30% on optimizing email deliverability, and 50% on follow-ups to enhance cold email response rates. This rule emphasizes that follow-ups are the most critical component of successful cold email campaigns.
What is the success rate of cold emails?
The average cold email response rate is around 8.5%, meaning for every 100 emails sent, you can expect roughly 8-9 responses. However, this can vary significantly based on personalization, timing, and email quality. Good cold emails can achieve response rates of 15% or higher.
What are some common mistakes to avoid in email writing?
The most common email writing mistakes include: writing poor subject lines, not personalizing greetings, announcing too much in one message, using ambiguous language, copy-pasting generic content, forgetting to explain attachments, using jargon words, and failing to use a proper signature.
How do you stand out in a cold email?
To stand out in cold emails: research the contact before reaching out, avoid anything generic, follow up strategically, respect privacy, write with clear intention, make it obvious why you chose them specifically, and provide genuine value in your message.
What is the 12-second rule for emails?
The 12-second rule suggests that you should make the main point or purpose of your email clear within the first 12 seconds of reading. Since busy recipients often skim emails, it's crucial to grab attention quickly and convey key information upfront.
How many emails should be in a cold email sequence?
The ideal cold email sequence contains 3-5 emails maximum. Sending fewer than 3 reduces your chances of reaching prospects, while sending more than 5 can be perceived as harassment and may indicate the prospect simply isn't interested.
What makes a good cold email subject line?
A good cold email subject line should be brief, specific, curiosity-driven, and personalized. Avoid generic phrases, spam words, or misleading content. The best subject lines often reference something specific about the recipient or their company.
Is it legal to send cold emails?
Cold emailing is legal in most countries when done correctly. You must comply with regulations like CAN-SPAM Act (US), GDPR (Europe), and CASL (Canada). Key requirements include providing clear identification, including opt-out mechanisms, and ensuring truthful content.
Conclusion
This is the end of the video. I hope you have enjoyed it! If it's the case, you can give a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and if you want to get more details about what we have discussed, if you want to have access to more examples, you can still get the online training for free by clicking the link in the description.
Remember these key takeaways:
- Always define SMART goals before starting any cold email campaign
- Personalize your targeting - avoid broad, generic audiences
- Build trust first before asking for sales
- Craft compelling subject lines that spark curiosity
- Use email sequences of 3-5 messages for maximum impact
- Leverage tools like Scrap.io for quality lead generation
- Focus on providing value rather than just selling your product