Writing great cold emails with Kevin Ramani

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There are a lot of emails already, and nobody likes to read them. The quality of emails is going down, less than 1.5% of emails end up in opportunities. It is also ok to send on weekends as most execs have flooded box on Tue-Wed and they clean it on weekends.

Main parts of an email

Subject

The subject is the most important thing in the email as it affects the open rates (<30% is bad, 30-40% is ok, >40% is good). Personalization is great (e.g. name), but the format also matters: no caps, no marketing speak, the misspelling is good sometimes, and humor and jokes are good as well. Basically, try anything that might help standing out of a crowd of similar sales emails, try to intrigue and force them to open.

But don’t lie, don’t deceive, and don’t do obvious clickbait like:

• Subject: “Disappointed…”
• Body: “Disappointed that we couldn’t connect”

Some examples:

• “chat?”
• “Kevin suggested we connect” (if know some referral)
• “quick question”
• “quick question John”
• “askguru.ai” (just the company name, raises curiosity)
• “Let’s cut the BS” (refreshing)

For follow-ups:

• “Re:Something”
• “Did I lose you?”
  • “Did an alligator get you?” (w/ funny pic)
  • “Have you given up?”

Content

Don’t write more than 2 paragraphs, be personal and brief. Prospect will have those questions so use answers on them to structure your email:

• “Who is this?”
• “What is the value for me?”
• “Why should I trust them?”
  • e.g. backed by X / competitor Y is already using us with results Z
• “What do you want me to do?”

Call to action

CTA should be strong and personalized. Bad one: “Your team could benefit from it”. CTA should eliminate decisions and complexity, it should be something simple like clicking the link or clicking reply and answering a given question.

A good tactic is to lower the expectation bar by adding something like “Does this in general sound interesting to you?”

Follow up

A follow-up strategy should be developed before sending the first email. There should not be more than 3-4 follow-ups in total. Keep them short. The best time to follow up is Friday afternoon. Try different value propositions, like company updates. Stay persistent with your messages, it shows your personality as well.

The general strategy is if the prospect replied positively once, we should engage until we have a binary yes/no answer.

If still not responding to follow-ups, try these:

• 123 email

  “Hey, I haven’t heard back from you, wanted to follow up. You do not reply probably for 3 reasons:

  1. You are not interested in the product then just reply with 1 and I will not bother you (follow up asking why);
  2. I am reaching the right company but you are not the right person, please reply 2 and point me to the right person;
  3. You were/are busy and you want to be followed up later or you are ready to chat. Reply 3 if this is true”

• Breakup Email

• Simple messages with a joke/video or just with a subject like “Did I lose you?”

Never make the prospect feel guilty because of not replying to you. Always stay friendly and nice.

Example

too much data entry

Hey Gob,

My name is Kevin and I’m reaching out to see if the Bluth Company sales team is struggling with too much data entry. Close.io is a CRM that automatically logs all your calls and emails so your reps can spend more time selling.

We’ve recently helped the Sitwell Enterprises sales team increase sales productivity by 28% and I am hopeful we can do the same for you. Does this in general sound interesting to you?

If so, are you open to hopping on a quick call this Thursday or Friday afternoon?

Cheers,

Kevin Ramani