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Cold mailings are emails for people with whom you have not yet established a personal relationship, and those who not agreed to receive mailings. Depending on what you say in the first email, you will either gain the client s trust or lose them as a subscriber.
Let s take a look at how to send a cold letter to subscribe a customer to a newsletter or even expand your contact base.
How is cold email different from spam?
- Contact source. In the letter, you explain where you got the client s email from. For example, he left mail when registering on the site, placing an order, or signing up for a webinar.
- Sender information. The newsletter must be on your behalf, for example, “Lisa from Mailigen”, “Alpina.Books”.
- Information in the topic. Should disclose why you sent the letter. For example, “Speaker from conference XXX”, “We discussed project N with you.”
Important: the sender s name and subject are the most important items. It depends on them whether the user will open your message.
- Body of the letter. Remind where you crossed paths: you were at a conference together, studied in the same course. The message should answer the question for what purpose you are writing to the user, how you will be useful to him.
- Targeted action. In cold mail it is impossible sell. But you can offer to call or meet. It is important to write the conditions yourself so that the recipient can choose what suits him. The initiative should come from you, because you started the dialogue ?
- Unsubscribe. User has always it should be possible to unsubscribe from mailings.
- Number of letters. You can limit yourself to one. Let those who did not respond to the newsletter. If you expect maximum response, prepare a chain of two messages. They should be unobtrusive and different so that the recipient does not think that he is dealing with a robot.
Who is considered cold contact?
- The person you are writing to for the first time and whom you do not personally know. You could have taken his contact on the website or from the business card you received at the conference.
- The person who agreed to the mailing list, but you did not communicate with him. He s probably already forgotten about you.
- A person who was or is your client, but did not agree to receive bulk emails.
What kind of letters to prepare for cold contacts?
You are writing to a person for the first time, do not know personally
- 1-5 contacts. Write the message yourself, establish contact and, as you communicate, offer to subscribe to newsletters.
- 6 or more. Use a service to send emails, for example, Reply.io… The program reads openings and clicks. You will know for sure who should no longer write and who is ready to communicate further.
Write to people with whom you have not had contact, but you have consent to mailing
Validate addresses, swipe resuscitation campaign… Remove those who did not respond to the newsletter from the contact database and send them for retargeting.
Write to current / former customers who did not subscribe to the newsletter
This happens in the B2B space: you have been communicating with a client for years, but you have never had an email campaign. It is logical that you did not ask for consent to receive letters – there was no need. In the end, your warm customer base is an ice block for email newsletters. What to do?
Decision – re-signature campaign… In the B2B space, most customers use corporate addresses, so you are less likely to get spam in Gmail, Mail.ru and Yandex. But this is not a reason to spam ?
For example, here Mail.ru requirements:
- One user is allowed to send an invitation letter no more than 1 time every 2 weeks. We recommend that you send an invitation letter to one user no more than 1-2 times.
- It is not allowed to send more than 500 invitation letters per week from one user.
Your task is not to violate the Federal Law “On Advertising” and to ensure that the user agrees to receive your mailings.
Existing clients can write on behalf of the manager who leads their project, or on behalf of the CEO. Justify the benefits of your mailings and put a noticeable unsubscribe link – an unsubscribe is better than a spam complaint.
Send mailing lists in parts – this way you will maintain a high reputation of the sending domain. Mailigen has slow send function… It helps regulate the number of emails sent in a given time. You just need to determine in what “portions” and how often to send messages (from 15 minutes to 24 hours).
By sending a cold email, you will receive four results, depending on the actions of users:
- Opened, followed the link – agreed to receive mailings.
- Opened.
- Didn t react.
- Unsubscribed.
The clients who took steps 1 and 4 are clear. They expressed their opinion clearly. But what about the rest? There are two options: delete from the database or try to involve in communication again. The first option is easier, the second – with a long-term perspective. After a while, you can again conduct a re-subscription campaign or offer to subscribe to mailings during the next working call.
What is the bottom line?
There are hundreds of tools in marketing that you can use to attract customers. But if bulk content emails are safe scissors that cut the distance between you and the customer, cold emails are a chainsaw that can be mishandled and left out of your hands. Respect other people s boundaries, be polite, write short, be useful – and then even the icy hearts of users will melt.