Reaching out to people you don’t know can feel daunting, but the potential benefit of meeting new clients, partners, or mentors can outweigh the risks.
For example, in a Shopify Masters podcast episode, entrepreneur Nadya Okamoto shares how she sent a cold email to a successful creative director and got valuable advice on brand design for her period care company, August.
Whether you’re looking for partners, employees, or clients for your new business (or simply need some advice from an experienced entrepreneur), a good cold email can lead to important new connections.
What is a cold email?
A cold email is an email communication sent to someone that you don’t already know. Cold emailing involves sending unsolicited emails to recipients in the hopes of inspiring a response or action, like a sale or click-through to your website. Cold email outreach is difficult since there is no previous relationship between the sender and the recipient, but with the right cold emailing techniques, it can lead to valuable new relationships.
You can use cold emails to pitch new clients on your product or service, find new team members, gain new readers for your newsletter, drive traffic to a blog post, or even to find a business mentor who can advise you on your growing company.
Benefits of cold emails
Cold email campaigns can help you get the word out about your brand and make important connections. Here are a few benefits:
New potential clients
Sales teams and merchants can use cold emailing as a lead generation strategy for reaching potential customers for a product or service. For example, an ecommerce entrepreneur selling furniture could send a cold email to a retail furniture store in hopes of collaborating with them and expanding their market reach. Or, they could send a cold email to individual qualified leads who have shown interest in their products online but haven’t yet made a purchase.
Possible partnerships
Cold emails can act as a jumping off point for valuable partnerships. For example, you could use a cold email campaign as a strategy for reaching out to potential business partners for your new business or even to initial investors. Whether you need a distribution partner to help with order fulfillment or an affiliate marketing partner to reach new customers, you can use cold emailing to expand your network and bring your business to the next level.
Learning opportunities
Cold emailing is also a useful tool for reaching potential mentors or advisers who can provide valuable insights about their experience and give you better information about a particular topic.
For example, you could launch a cold email campaign reaching out to a handful of successful dropshipping entrepreneurs in the hopes of setting up phone calls to ask specific questions about how you can start your own dropshipping business.
How to write an effective cold email
- Research your email recipient
- Write a compelling subject line
- Personalize your message
- Include a clear call to action
- Provide social proof
- Optimize your email deliverability
- Follow up thoughtfully
Here are some basic tips to consider when writing a professional cold email.
1. Research your email recipient
Before you send cold emails, spend some time researching your recipients. For example, if you sell bed linen and want to reach out to a new hotel that might need a regular linen supplier, find out as many relevant details as you can. This might include how many rooms they have, whether they’re a luxury or budget establishment, and what their needs are likely to be. Use this information to inform your correspondence.
In an interview with Shopify Masters, angel investor and content creator Maggie Sellers suggests setting goals for the conversation you’d like to have with the recipient. And more importantly, know the value you can provide in return for that person’s time and knowledge. That’s where good research comes in.
To stay organized, put together a spreadsheet with the names and emails of relevant people at each company. Make sure your email recipient is the right person to talk to in the company structure and that you’re not spamming all their staff.
2. Write a compelling subject line
Craft a cold email subject line that grabs attention without using any spam trigger words like “Act now!” or “Discount,” as those can send your email into a recipient’s spam folder. Keep your cold email subject lines short, descriptive, and personalized.
Use your subject lines to create a sense of curiosity; a catchy subject line should inspire the recipient to click-through to your email. For example, you could ask a thought-provoking question or reference a mutual connection in your subject line to inspire engagement.
🌟 Learn more about the key elements of email copywriting and tips for how you can improve your writing skills.
3. Personalize your message
Create personalized cold emails by crafting sentences that speak directly to your target audience (in this case, the specific recipient of your email). The best strategy for receiving positive responses from a cold email campaign is to write personalized emails that reference the recipient’s specific background, skills, or accomplishments. For example, you could write a personalized opening line in an email to a potential investor complimenting one of their previous startups and mentioning how their work has inspired you.
4. Include a clear call to action
Write cold emails that include a clear call to action (CTA) designed to inspire the email recipient to take a specific next step. For example, a sales team using a cold email marketing strategy could include a specific CTA directing recipients to a product page, whereas an entrepreneur reaching out to potential business partners could request a call back to discuss the opportunity further.
Provide all relevant details (such as links and phone numbers) so people can follow up easily. When crafting a CTA, use action verbs and focus on the benefits of what you’re offering and how it can solve a specific pain point for the recipient.
5. Provide social proof
Another strategy you can use to improve your cold email outreach efforts is leveraging social proof in the form of positive references, reviews, or testimonials. The term social proof refers to the psychological phenomenon describing people’s tendency to rely on the opinions and actions of others. You can leverage this phenomenon by using customer feedback, certificates, or personal recommendations to validate yourself and your business in your cold emails.
6. Optimize your email deliverability
Your cold emailing efforts will be wasted if your emails fail to actually reach your recipients’ inboxes. Improve your email deliverability (which measures whether an email reaches its destination) by maintaining a high-quality sender reputation.
You can increase your sender reputation by using a reliable IP address, authenticating your domain, and maintaining good email list hygiene by culling recipients whose emails consistently bounce back or who have marked your emails as spam. To avoid spam traps (email accounts set up to catch spammers), never buy a list of email addresses.
The higher your open rate, the better your email deliverability, and the less likely your emails will get stuck in spam filters. If you’re sending an email campaign to a list of recipients, make sure to include a clear unsubscribe link to give recipients the option to opt out of your emails. This will improve your email list hygiene and email deliverability by keeping only active readers on your list.
7. Follow up thoughtfully
Send follow-up emails carefully with a quick message sent a few days to a couple weeks after your initial message. Avoid sending follow-up emails to the same recipient more than two times, and never use pushy or presumptive language. Keep your follow-up emails short, personalized, and kind. If you don’t receive a response after a couple follow-up emails, move on without taking it personally.
Cold email FAQ
Is cold emailing effective?
Cold emailing can be an effective outreach tool, as long as your cold emails are personalized, thoughtful, and include a clear call to action (CTA).
How is cold emailing different from email marketing?
Cold emailing is different from email marketing in that cold emails are personalized messages sent to specific recipients, whereas marketing emails go to a list of subscribers or potential leads using an email marketing tool like Shopify Email.
What is a cold email example?
An example of a cold email would be an ecommerce stationery supplier reaching out to a boutique retail art store to see if they want to stock their cardstock and charcoal pencils.
What does it mean to send a cold email?
Sending a cold email means sending an unsolicited email to someone you don’t know with the hope that they respond and take an action, like give you advice, buy a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, or agree to speak further about a potential partnership.
