4 Cold Email Marketing Tips for 2021

Ah, cold emailing. It holds a special place in my heart and has helped countless others bring in new business. Are you interested in taking your own strategy to the next level? Keep scrolling for four expert cold emailing marketing tips to start implementing ASAP.

Is video more your style? Here you go!

4 Cold Email Marketing Tips for the Client-Based Business

Tip #1: Send Fewer Emails, and Send Better Emails

A lot of people like to argue that cold email marketing is all a numbers game.

It’s not.

Yes, it’s partly a numbers game, but not completely!

Imagine that you send 300 crappy cold emails. It’s not going to matter that you sent 300, because they all stunk.

And even if they DO bring you new leads, imagine the kinds of leads they would be. Ew.

Don’t be scared to slow down. Largely thanks to social media, so many of us are horrifically impatient. We want results, and we want them yesterday. I’m not saying that you can’t get results quickly. You can! But if you think you’re going to cut corners and rush through the process and still get there, think again.

I encourage you to care as much about quality as you do about quantity. Don’t just source as many leads as possible. Source as many quality leads as possible. Don’t just send as many cold emails as possible. Send as many quality cold emails as possible.

Psst! Want more help with sourcing leads using LinkedIn? I’ve got a video for that!

Never sacrifice quality for the sake of more. Remember that you’re reaching out to human beings. These are people, with minds and feelings and thoughts. They’re going to know if all you care about is closing the deal. Find the right people. Connect with them. Form genuine relationships. Have authentic conversations.

Try setting a goal to send 15 high-quality cold emails a day to qualified leads.

This number is low enough to manage but high enough to see results. You should be making progress within the first week.

Tip #2: Quit Hard Selling

You can probably guess what hard selling is, but let’s define it anyway. I like this definition from Revenue Grid :

“Hard selling involves directness, aggression and forward thinking to achieve a lead or sales quickly. Hard sellers rely on an absolutely solid sales pitch which frequently only has one chance to succeed. Hard sales usually put a high amount of pressure on the client.”

In a nutshell, don’t do this.

This approach will especially be a turn-off in the greater context of cold emailing because you are a total stranger reaching out to someone to pitch your services. If you go the route of hard selling, you’re just going to look like all the other dummies landing in their inbox. No bueno.

Hard selling might be appropriate in some circumstances (which I honestly can’t even think of, but hey, I don’t know everything), but that’s not what we’re doing here. Why? Simple. It won’t work.

Earlier, I told you to remember that you’re talking to real, live human beings. Humans don’t like being sold to, even though everyone is spending money. So, that’s the trick: Sell to them without overtly selling to them.

Building relationships and nurturing your leads is crucial here. This isn’t about you. It’s about them. Make your cold email templates all about them.

Psst! Want to copy the exact cold email templates I use? Get ’em here!

One of the best pieces of advice I can give you? Help, don’t sell. That should be your mindset. Approach this as, “They’ve got a problem, and I’ve got a solution,” and not, “I want to close this deal so I can make more money!”

People are far more receptive to being helped than being sold to. Yes, we still care about making money. But if you prioritize the lead’s needs above your own, the money naturally follows.

Tip #3: Prepare a Follow-Up Sequence

If I didn’t follow up with my leads, I probably wouldn’t have any clients.

This is a very normal part of the process that you should 100% expect, especially with cold emailing.

These people don’t know you. They have no reason to know you. They also have no reason to like or trust you. So, why would they respond?! Plus, they’re busy, distracted, their inboxes are packed with messages just like yours, and your cold email can easily get buried.

Follow up.

You can keep this email very simple, casual, and to-the-point. All you want to do is remind them that you’re still there, and you’d love to talk.

A lot of professionals skip following up because they’re under the impression that cold email marketing is all a numbers game. So they’re just trying to hit up as many people as possible. But you know by this point that such is not the case.

Tip #4: Track ALL of Your Work

When I say all of it, I mean it. You need to be keeping track of details including:

Who you’re contacting.
When you emailed them.
If/when you followed up.
When they responded.
What their response was.

And so on and so forth.

We diligently track our work for a few main reasons.

You can’t commit all of this information to memory.
You need a way to stay organized. Otherwise, you start dropping balls. Balls don’t like being dropped.
Tracking your work helps you determine patterns, in terms of what’s working and what’s not.

If you focus on quality, nurture your leads, follow-up diligently, and track your progress, you’ll see great results.

Cold emailing was initially how I grew my own business, and it worked like a charm. But over the years, I came up with a method that gives me even better results, by combining LinkedIn outreach plus warm emailing. Now, I teach other professionals this method.