Dear Sir/Madam – How to write a cold email?

Have you ever received an email that starts with Dear Sir/Madam?

I am sure you have. I have got a lot of “professional” emails like that and they seem to be the most unprofessional emails ever.
If you are going to send a cold email to a potential client requesting a meeting, I am sure that you will never address them like that. And you shouldn’t address them as Dear Sir either.

Becoming “too professional” also has its problems because when people get mails that are too formal, they usually ignore them and do not pay attention to them. When you are sending cold emails, the best way to get the attention of your prospect is to talk about something relevant to them connected to a recent event.

You can look at the tweets and LinkedIn updates that your prospect has posted. Let’s say you are trying to get connected to the CMO of a company. If you look at his Twitter feed, maybe you find something interesting. Let’s say they post about a recent video marketing campaign they did. You can talk about that.

Here’s how the cold email that you are sending to get them as a client would look like…

Subject: Your recent video ad is great

Body of the Email:

Hi Vivek,

Just stumbled upon your recent Twitter update linking to the video ad you made for your company.

It is very creative and I am sure the target audience will find it relevant.

However, I also noticed that the video doesn’t have enough views and I think it can get more easily.

Would you be interested in a free consultation call where I can show you some of the methods we have used recently to get millions of views on the videos of our other clients?

If interested, just reply to this email and we can take it forward. There are no charges for the consultation and I would like to see millions of views on your video ad.

Cheers,
Your Name
Your blog link
Your social media links.

You see, the above email is personal and not generic. It gets their attention because we are talking about something that might get their attention. It boosts their ego when we appreciate the work that they have done.

The mail doesn’t give out too much information about ourselves either. A lot of new freelancers write too much on the very first cold email. Since the prospective client doesn’t know you well, a long email usually gets ignored instantly.

Just write as if you would write to a friend and that’s all it takes to get their attention. And still, you will find out that most of the people who open the emails will not reply. If you are using a mail tracker plugin, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn or Twitter and try to get their attention. If not, you can send a follow-up email.

Based on my experience, in most of the cold email campaigns, you get a response only in the 2nd or 3rd follow-up. You can also try to follow up with them the 4th or 5th time but I would recommend a maximum of 3 follow-ups. If you do not get a response the 3rd time, you can move on to other leads that you have.

I hope this lesson helped you get a clear understanding of how to write cold emails in a way that gets the attention of your prospect.

Reply to this email and let me know if it was useful.

See you in the next lesson.

Cheers,
Deepak