The Top 25 Cold Email Best Practices You Need To Double Your Sales [2022]

When it comes to sales and marketing, what your company is selling and what your potential customers need always wants to match. Unfortunately, many companies don’t use emails to sell, and many companies use sales emails wrongly. Cold emails are the most powerful way for lead generation. In cold email campaigns, email deliverability is the vital factor that decides the success of your email marketing. 

The best cold emailing practices are actionable, concise, customized, creative,  effective, ethical, eye-grabbing, goal-oriented, personalized, problem-solving, predictable, professional,  straight-to-the-point, timely, unique, well-written with complete contact information, and witty. The cold email outreach is most commonly used to nab a guest post of business, network, mutual connections with the prospect on LinkedIn or schedule a sales call.

Cold email strategy, in which you send emails to strangers in the hopes of engaging them in conversation. This marketing strategy works because you’re not asking for anything in return, just offering your help. 

Are you looking for ways to double your email open, click and reply rate? Are you looking for a way to maximize your close sales after initial outreach? Then this post has the 35 sales email best practices /  cold email tips you need!

1. Cold Email Deliverability

Email deliverability shows the rate of email's that land in your prospect's inbox. As said earlier, cold email deliverability is an essential factor in cold emailing. If the potential client doesn't receive your email, then there would be chances of conversational initiation.

Unless emails reach inboxes, prospects don’t receive them, and a sales conversation cannot start. If your emails are not appropriately delivered, there is no purpose in crafting a perfect subject line and personalized email content. 

Improve email deliverability by sending emails from your own server, control the email volumes, track the email engagements with the customized links, and ensure that the email is sent like a human (real person) at regular intervals between the emails. 

Many factors impact email deliverability. Usually, email deliverability failure occurs when emails are blocked by the ISP or emails went to the spam folder. However, there are some proven techniques to prevent email deliverability failure in the long term. The following practices help your business to maximize its email deliverability.

• Send emails from the authenticated email domain. 
• Manage proper IP allocation
• Maintain a clean email contact list 
• Use the perfect opt-in process
• Craft non-spammy subject lines
• Avoid the spam folder 
• Send an email to the interested people 

2. Have Friendly Tone

Write your email message in a friendly tone. Avoid fancy words and perfect grammar. The email context has to be professional without grammatical and typo errors. Effective email crafting has to be concise and clear. The conversational email is the best for email outreach. Before crafting the email message, have a clear goal in mind for email outreach.  Being friendly will build rapport among the potential customer. 

3. Avoid Sounding Like Template 
‍

Cold email templates are time-saving, but everyone uses the same email templates on the email marketing software, so it will be challenging for your business to stand out.  

Using the cold email template will worsen your email outreaches. The targeted prospects receive 100 emails that exactly sound like yours will not interest the receiver. They may not open, or there would be more chances of deleting the email. So the  cold email response rate will be less. 

If you use a cold email template, tweaking the email with personalization will give you better results. In addition, the personalization in the email template will boost your cold email response rate. 

Tweak the Template to give a feel that you have researched/ homework. The template has to sound customized written for the specific prospects.  The template model is better than writing a new email from scratch. Implement personalized touch and make your email unique to grab the receiver's attention for better cold email performance. 

4. Executing Customization And Personalization 

The customization and personalization will double your reply rate on your cold email campaigns.  As per  email outreach software, Woodpecker's research on their cold email campaigns found 17% more response rates when they implement advanced personalization. In contrast, the email that has no personalization has only a 7% of response rate. Therefore, the key to improving the reply rate can be achieved only through advanced personalization. 

The email has to be written particularly for the recipients instead of sharing the generic email message to all cold leads. How do you advance personalization? Utilize the email marketing software platform Smartwriter.ai to customize each recipient and use variables in the email marketing software to customize email messages. Customization elements have to provide a feel of one to one email to the potential email receiver. 

‍

5. Your Cold Email Need A Clear Purpose 

The biggest mistake in email marketing is sending emails without any goal in mind or a clear purpose. It is time-wasting for both the sender and receiver. The receiver just checks in and there would be lesser chances of a reply. If your business sends emails without having a clear purpose, then it's like you are training the email receiver not to open your emails. 

So before starting, your cold email campaigns need to have a clear purpose. The email outreach has a clear purpose, such as free audits, sharing guidelines through the blog post, providing live demo or previews, etc. 

Your business needs to state the purpose clearly in the email early segment of your email message.  Your email needs to concentrate on a single or one purpose throughout the email. The goal and email messages need to be accurate. Take a moment and explain quickly why you're reaching the prospects. 

‍

6. Align Your Purpose With the Pain Points

On your email message, align the real pain points of the people along with your email purpose. In this part, ensure your email has the answer to the question on it. 

For instance, why does your email receiver mind your email?  Why does a busy person need to take time to reply to it? What benefits does your audience gain from your business?

The email message has to lighten your targeted audience’s pain or give them something they want or a solution to their problems. If your business performed research and identified your potential customer pain points, then highlight how your business offerings will relieve them.  Your email has to offer the people's wants so that it will take your targeted prospects to customers. 

‍

7. Avoid Mentioning Your Product on Email 

The primary purpose of the email is to create a connection with the targeted audience. Therefore, your email has to generate credibility and trust among the potential customer. Therefore, ensure your cold email is not mentioning your product/service at the initial stage itself. 

However, if you mention your product or services in the email, have your email message not in a sales tone, craft the email message by highlighting the benefits or outcome of using your product or service.  

The sales kind of email will not get a reply. In contrast, an email that highlights the benefits will induce the user to respond to the email. So use your email to cultivate interest and develop trust, not to sell.

‍

8. Start Introducing Yourself \w Benefits in Your Cold Email 

People are busy and you need to grab their attention quickly. They can smell templates and automation from a mile away. So focus on personalisation and WIIFM (What’s in it for them)

Hi , [First name] 

{{personalised first line}}

I work with {{Niche / Competitors}} to help achieve {{Outcome}} by {{unique strategy}}. 

This shows the prospect right away that emails are sent by a real person not automated emails by bots. Therefore, inducing yourself on the email will build trust and make the email receiver read further.

‍

9. Explain Quickly Why You Reached Them

After introducing yourself, the next step is to explain why you are emailing and explain why they need to listen to your email.  Here you can share the purpose and relate the pain point.  Include your client experience.  The client experience and pain points can easily relate to them, and it will give a clear view of how your brand can offer solutions. This will create trust among the receiver about your business.

10. Place Yourself On Their Shoes

Think about what your potential clients need from your email. So before outreach to the targeted audience, put yourself in their position, understand the user wants, and start composing emails accordingly. It will help grab the targeted leads' attention. Give them a feel like your offerings would benefit them. 

11. Test Your Subject Lines

Perform an A/B test with different headlines and find which one is the most effective for your email campaign. It is good to test several subject lines and figure out which subjects best resonate with the receiver.

You can make formattings like All lowercase letters and sentence cases in the email subject line and avoid weird capitalization. Make your email subject line shorter and crisp to the point. 

The more prominent element in your email campaign is the subject line, the deciding factor. Email subject influences the receiver's inbox and impacts your email open rates. Focusing on the A/B testing will help to increase email opens. 

A recent study says the ideal length of an email subject line can be around 61-70 characters. However, many individuals use mobile devices to read their emails. The short subject line works better. 

Perform an A/B test for word placement on your subject line that impacts your email opens. For example 

• Apply this discount code to receive 25% off on your next purchase
• Get 25% off your next purchase by applying this discount code

12. Warm-up Your Email Receiver

Warm-up your email recipient by asking how their week is going, etc. The email warmup is an excellent way for your business to establish a reputation for the new email account. The email warmups include the number of emails sent from the new email accounts. To begin with, it is always good to start with a smaller number of email outreach and gradually increase each day.

When a user generates new email accounts, the email service provides limits on their daily sending limits. Thus, once you build your reputation through email warmup, you can use the full potential of sending limits. Ideally, you can achieve maximum deliverability in 8 to 12 weeks.  

Email warmup develops a reputation and has a higher delivery rate. When planning a larger volume of email campaigns with a new account, it is more important to make sure emails land inboxes.

If your new email account is 6 months or less, the number of warm-up emails per day is 30. So you can send 70-80 emails per day if your email account is new, whereas if the email account is old, you can send a maximum list of 100-120 emails per day.

The foremost thing in the email campaign, your email needs to reach the recipient’s inbox. Once you achieve good engagement will create more relationships. Ensure the email is well warmed before sending cold emails outreach to avoid the cold email spam/spam folder and improve the email deliverability and open rates. 

13. Write Email Messages Similarly To How You Talk

Most of the conversational tone emails are very successful. These tones will connect one-to-one with the email receiver. In contrast, composing emails, generally carefully that the communication is verbal with a professional tone. Knowing your email audience and aiming for clear, engaging, and short writing is the most significant way to connect with people. 

It’s a great idea to write emails with conversational & friendly touch in the email communication is a good thing. These email messages improve your engagement rate. Avoid complex words and phrases. Try to stick to the basics tone to help the readers to read the email message more effectively with less effort. 

14. Don't Forget A Hyper Personalised Introduction

Don't miss out on your email introduction part. It is the most crucial element in the email message. The email introduction hooks the reader. So writing a perfect email intro will grab the people’s attention to read. 

The ultimate aim of the email intro is to build value for all the participants. In addition, email introduction in emails helps you build relationships and reputation. Here is some science-backed email introduction to a new client. This email intro makes any consumer spend more money on your business. 

It is an essential part of establishing credibility among the two strangers. The introduction gives a compelling reason why your business wants to connect with each other.

15. Make It Clear & Get To The Point Quickly 

Writing long, open paragraphs and making the reader guess what you are going to say will lead to disappointments. Instead of a long explanation, make it straight to the point or provide the answers to the reader's questions on the email campaigns. The cold message has to be clear and concise and straight to the point. If you answer the user queries, keep your email message in the open paragraph with the point quickly.

16. Cold Email Formula -Personalize Where Ever Possible 

Personalization in the email messages shows the receivers that you have taken time to understand their pain points, business, requirements, etc, before getting in touch with them. The study says that targeted & segmented emails campaigns produce 58% of all revenue. 

The purpose of personalizing emails is to make email subscribers feel like VIPs. As a result, customized email marketing will increase open rates and drive engagement. In addition, personalization has proven a method to increase revenue. 

Simple and smart personalization by including the variable name, business name, etc., and using Smartwriter to hyper-personalize each lead will improve your email opens. Email personalization increases user experience and improves sales. Personalized emails have more open rates when compared to non-personalized emails.

Your business can perform email personalization by implementing user segmentation, browsing history, applying triggered emails, welcoming emails, reminders, emailing on important anniversaries, personalized content, and more. 

‍

17. Employ Social Proof To Win Your Prospects

Showing your current client experience over your product or services will build the credibility of your brand. Social proof is a great tactic to ease the confused mind of customers and to increase conversion rate optimization.

People are more likely to believe if many other individuals like your product/service. Therefore, it would be an excellent word of mouth sales to potential customers. The study states that 92% of the customer reviews before making a purchase decision, so implement the social proof in an email. 

Consumers want proof from their peers. As a result, the product reviews from the customers are 12-times more trusted than product descriptions. Include some real-life social proof examples on your email marketings. 

18. Clean Your Email Contact List Frequently

Avoid sending emails to an email address that doesn't exist. Clean your  CSV email list before starting your email campaign. Ensure that you have cleared the non-existing email address. Email service providers continuously improve their algorithms to protect customer inboxes from unwanted information.

Sending email messages to invalid email addresses will increase your hard bounces on email marketing campaigns. Whenever you receive a hard bounce, your sender reputation takes a hit. So utilize email verification tools like Hunter, ZeroBounce, Smartwriter, Mailfloss, EmailListVerify, Clearout, and more to validate your email address in the email contact lists to avoid hard bounce.

‍

19. Building Your Cold Email List for Campaign

Building your email contact list for the campaign is a more important part of email marketing. Identifying the right audience and their email addresses accurately to succeed on email outreach. Before coming to tools to find out client emails. Your business needs to find your ideal customer profile. Emailing everyone is a bad idea. Finding the relevant target audience, sending email customized, is a good way of cold emailing. 

Find the ideal client and write a fantastic pitch in your cold email that will resonate with recipients. Finding actual decision-makers and segment of leads for email lists will generate high-quality sales. Utilize tools like AeroLeads, Smartwriter, Woorise,  Voila Norbert, LeadIQ, etc, to collect email addresses of decision-makers for email marketing. 

20. Mention And Focus On One Thing 

In a cold email, have one focus/goal on each email campaign to avoid focusing on multiple things on a single email. Have one goal per email.  For example (demo email), if your client needs to set up a demo, then make the call to action on the last sentence of your email with a demo button or a sentence to schedule a call for demo. 

21. Set Email Follow up Sequence

Excellent customer service will create more happy and loyal customers for the business. Making customers happy and retaining them will help the business to grow rapidly. 

Mastering the automatic cold email sequence with your customers will help close the deals, and in the digital age, you can efficiently perform different touchpoints and follow-ups with prospects. Yet, many firms forget or neglect to do simple follow-ups. 

Follow-up emails are the biggest challenge for the sales rep or email marketer. The study says there 70% of responses are received through the 2nd and 4th email follow-ups. Similarly, as per the study by Marketing Donut, indicates that businesses need sales to do at least 5 follow-up phone calls after initial meetings to close 80% of sales. However, it was found in this study that almost half of the salespeople give up after just one follow-up. 

Having a persistent follow-up plan puts you ahead in the sales curve. The sales automation tool helps businesses send automatic follow-up email sequences to prospects in different time zones at different intervals of time. Here are the proven best ways to follow up with customers to close more deals. 

‍

22. Provide Values To The Prospects

You can find b2b email templates on the internet for your next lead generation campaign, but the templates are often unhelpful. For example, generic fancy email templates will not get results with cold emailing. Your cold email has to provide value to them. Share email messages that the potential prospects want.

Try the true reciprocity principle by offering your targeted prospect helpful and useful information before asking them to return or favor. The below  b2b email template is the best example of email by providing value to the customer and embedded with a convenient CTA at the end of the email, so the receiver can take action quickly once they receive access to the free tool.

23. Send Emails from Business Domain Email Address 

Sending emails from the brand email address will get credibility.  Emails from the business domain name will ensure that the receiver is not automated, or spam emails sent by bots. Avoid sending emails from personal email such as Google Gmail, Outlooks, or Hotmail.  

Sending emails from non-business IDs will break your response rates. It is ideal to use business domain emails like below. 

• name@company.com
• firstname@yourcompany.com 

Personal Gmail gives a feel of unprofessional, and there would be more chances for the receiver to think of a spammy account. For more opens and better cold email performance, build for yourself brands in all possible ways.  

‍

24. Match Your Subject Line & Email Message 

The success of a sales email begins with a relevant email message with the subject line that grabs your recipients' attention. Have eye-grabbing subject lines with irrelevant email content improves opens, but there would be no response. Avoid the irrelevant subject line and email messages.  Subject lines have to tell email receivers precisely what they will get in the email body. Good subject lines are personalized, quick question or descriptive, and provide a reason to prospects to check your email content. 

It's essential to keep your audience in mind and test different phrases and words to discover which are most preferred by the audience. You'll find tips for writing a solid cold email subject line that performs well. Avoid the spam words in the subject line and using appropriate header will pass the  spam filter

‍

25. Include a Specific Call-To-Action (CTA)

The primary purpose of the CTA is to convince your email recipient to take what you require. In other words, triggering the conversion through your call-to-action CTA. 

There are four different ways to use a call to action, such as 

• Developing a customer base 
• Obtain a sale
• Generate leads 
• Build a direct path to the product
  

CTA indicates what precisely the receiver wants to do after reading the emails. For instance, if you want the email receiver to buy your product or service, it utilizes the appropriate CTA to move the readers to purchase immediately. 

CTA indicates what precisely the receiver wants to do after reading the emails. For instance, if you want the email receiver to buy your product or service, it utilizes the appropriate CTA to move the readers to purchase immediately. 

Building a concise and ultra-specific CTA to maximize your chances for success in CTA. Use a CTA per email, making one specific suggestion to the email receiver.  The study says CTA has boosted 42%  click-through rate compared to the emails that have multiple CTAs.