How to Write Cold Emails to Potential Clients and Get Results
Have you encountered statements like “cold email is dead” and “cold email doesn’t work anymore”?
Ignore them.
Cold email still ranks as one of the most cost-effective and scalable ways of reaching your potential clients.
A well-executed campaign can generate a response rate of over 5%. Yet, many outbound sales teams struggle to achieve this benchmark, with typical rates falling closer to the 0.5% mark (if they even manage to achieve that).
If you’ve failed to generate consistent results with your cold emails, don’t worry. This article shows you exactly what you need to do to take your campaigns from average to excellent.
Why Use Cold Emailing to Reach Potential Clients?
Cold email stands out as a cost-effective and scalable strategy for reaching potential clients. With the emergence of AI in recent years, it’s now also possible to use cold email software to automate large portions of the process.
Marketers and salespeople often look down on cold email. They argue that it’s ineffective and spammy. But the likelihood is that they’re not A/B testing and optimizing their outbound campaigns in the right way.
Cold email is an excellent lead-generation method for the following reasons:
Cost-effective outreach: Cold email is one of the most inexpensive B2B marketing and lead generation methods. It doesn’t involve hefty ad fees or referral commissions. Copywriters usually constitute the largest expense, but with the advent of AI, personalization can now be automated.
Scalability and reach: Once you’ve found a winning sequence and refined your targeting criteria, it’s possible to scale cold email pretty much indefinitely, with the size of your addressable market the only real constraint.
Direct communication with decision makers: Cold email outreach gives you a direct line of contact with key decision-makers. This means you don’t have to go through intermediaries to close deals, which can shorten the process substantially.
Personalized engagement opportunities: Cold email is the only channel, barring in-person introductions and cold calling, where you can lead with a highly personalized offer.
While cold email is an incredibly effective long-term marketing strategy, running a large campaign is complex. And that’s why a well-designed tech stack for outreach is so important.
AI cold email platforms like Artisan automate significant sections of the outbound sales cycle, with results matching (and even surpassing) human quality. Get in touch to arrange a demo to see how Artisan can boost your cold email conversion rates.
Essential Steps Before Cold Emailing Potential Clients
Before launching your campaign, focus on these four essential preliminary steps:
Understand your ideal client profile (ICP).
Research potential clients.
Segment your potential client list.
Warm up your email account.
Let’s look at each of these in depth.
1. Understand Your Ideal Client Profile
Your ICP acts as the foundation of your cold email campaigns. If incorrectly defined, there’s a good chance everything else—from your prospecting to your follow-up—will be off.
Your ICP gives you the information you need to do the following:
Go after the best potential customers
Segment and qualify your leads
Personalize your cold outreach
Tailor your offer to the most pressing pain points
Use the most persuasive evidence and social proof
Handle objections and concerns
Here’s an ICP template with examples for defining your target audience:
Basic Information
Industry: SaaS
Location: North America
Timezone: Eastern Standard Time
Company size: 250 employees
Job title: VP of Sales
Challenges
Long sales cycles
Low win rates
Inefficient tech stack
Goals
Boost pipeline velocity
Speed up sales workflows
Generate actionable sales data
Readiness-to-Buy Indicators
Purchased a sales CRM
Rapid growth (startup phase)
Quarterly sales targets
Important Features
Definite 6-month ROI
Integration with existing tech stack
Customer support in the same timezone
Preferred Sales Content
Case studies
Video demos
Data-backed white papers
2. Research Potential Clients
Do you know your potential clients at a gut level? We’re talking about more than reeling off a handful of generic demographic data points. Do you really know what they’re struggling with and how far they’re willing to go to address their pain points?
The research phase gives you much-needed information about what’s going on in your ideal client’s mind beneath the surface.
Here are the main areas to cover:
Core pain points
Primary goals
Job title
Decision-making role
Budget constraints
Top industry-specific needs
Buying process preferences
Competitor relationships (and past relationships)
Sales trigger events
Favorite communication channels
Cultural and values
3. Segment Your Potential Client List
Markets are rarely homogeneous entities. Even a small niche will contain nuanced differences in shared pain points and buying preferences. Identifying these subtleties gives you the information you need to create highly targeted messages and offers.
Here are some hyper-specific ways to segment your prospect list:
Number of employees
Annual revenue
Tech stack
Ecommerce platform
Website traffic
Top-priority pain point
Marketing spend
Growth stage
Customer base demographics
Segmentation is one area where it’s important for marketers and BDRs to talk to account executives (AEs). AEs often have very in-depth knowledge about the pain points that different sections of a market are experiencing.
4. Warm Up Your Email Account
Domain warm-up increases the likelihood that your emails will land in your recipients’ inboxes. It involves sending emails to pre-vetted inboxes where they’re opened.
This positively impacts your domain’s spam score. It’s an automated process, best handled by a third party, that can greatly affect your deliverability rate, which measures how many of your emails, on average, land in recipients’ inboxes and don’t go straight to spam.
Manually warming up an email account isn’t feasible as it requires hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of emails to be sent.
A platform like Artisan will automatically run warm-up on your domains prior to launching a campaign. This is just one of many features that can boost your open rates and number of meetings booked. Get in touch to see Artisan’s AI BDR Ava in action.
How to Write Cold Email for Potential Clients That Work
Why do so many companies fail to make cold email work?
Even if BDRs manage to address poor deliverability and open rates, they struggle to turn responses into meetings booked and sales.
Most often, it’s not because there’s an issue with the market’s responsiveness to cold email. And it’s certainly not because cold email doesn’t work (we have mountains of data to disprove that idea).
“Failure” is almost always a result of poor implementation. So, let’s look at how you can implement and optimize iron-clad processes.
1. Create a Compelling Cold Email Subject Line
A strong subject line can make or break your response rates. If recipients aren’t opening your emails, the chances of a reply are nil.
Subject lines should be:
Concise
Intriguing
Relevant
Here are some examples of compelling subject lines:
Hi, [first name]
Quick idea for [company name]
Free to chat, [first name]?
[company name] + [your company name]
[first name], interested in connecting?
[shared connection] suggested I reach out
Are you looking for [your solution]?
2. Craft an Engaging Opening Line
Even if a prospect opens your email, engagement will typically be low. A strong hook builds interest enough to keep them reading.
Personalization is by far the best strategy for your opening line. But it’s important to avoid generic and overused examples like “Love what you’re doing at Big Happy SaaS Company.” Tailor personalization to the individual in a way that shows you’ve done your research.
Here are some examples of strong opening lines:
I was recently impressed with your blog post about [post topic]. I particularly enjoyed your insight that [unique insight].
Well done on the launch of [new product or product feature]. I’ve been endlessly impressed by [company name]’s ability to innovate.
Congratulations on the recent job change. I hope you’re settling in at [company name]. Judging by your recent social media posts, you seem to be bringing some innovative ideas.
3. Clearly Present Your Value Proposition
Your value proposition is more than your unique selling point. It’s the whole package of benefits you offer.
You shouldn’t pitch your entire value proposition in a single email—there isn’t enough space for that. However, knowing your value proposition in detail is still important. It allows you to pick the most relevant benefits for specific clients.
Focus on solutions instead of features. This approach is compelling to clients because it clearly demonstrates how you can solve their problems.
Here are some examples for your email copy:
We help clients increase their [relevant metric] by a minimum of [relevant metric]%.
We solve the common problem of [pain point] by [brief outline of process].
We provide [brief description of service] that eliminates [pain point].
4. Keep It Brief and Focused
Shorter emails usually perform better. Research shows that between 20 and 50 words tends to be the sweet spot, and this is a good starting point. As with most stats, however, there’s no substitute for your own testing.
Here’s how to include all the necessary elements in your cold email without sacrificing brevity:
Keep the personalized opening line to a maximum of two short sentences.
Add some context by referring to your business, but do it only once.
Focus on one solution or offer and one piece of supporting evidence.
Write a CTA that’s brief and clear.
Include a link to the company website in your signature for recipients who want to learn more.
5. Use a Friendly and Professional Tone
Overly formal business language is usually a big no-no for cold emails, except for certain professions like law. It’s important to come across as personable while maintaining professionalism. “Smart casual” is usually the ideal tone.
Here are some tips for maintaining a professional but friendly tone:
Avoid jargon unless you’re absolutely sure your recipient knows what it means.
Open with the recipient’s first name and introduce yourself using yours.
Express emotions where appropriate, such as in the opening line and when describing your offer. For example, “Loved your recent LinkedIn post,”
Avoid overly informal elements like emojis and slang.
Empathize, describing your own experiences where appropriate.
Want to see how Artisan’s AI BDR Ava can craft thousands of thoughtful, personalized responses in a fraction of the time it takes with traditional processes? Get in touch to book a demo.
6. Use Visual Elements Wisely
Visual elements are often avoided in cold emails, but they do have a place. Visuals can pique the interest of B2B leads if they didn’t reply to your first cold email. Because they risk triggering spam filters, they’re best limited to follow-up emails.
Infographics, charts, and even gifs (if the context is appropriate) can help prospects understand your services and the outcomes you can deliver.
Here are some examples of how to use images effectively:
An infographic that simplifies complex data.
A chart to visually display the results you’ve achieved.
A graph that demonstrates the negative impacts of the problem you solve.
A gif to comically highlight the recipient’s pain point.
A photograph of an event you and the recipient attend, like a snap of your booth.
7. Leverage Social Proof
Social proof is powerful. A study by Spiegel Research Center, for example, found that displaying customer reviews can increase purchases by up to 270%.
Here are the most common forms of social proof for cold email with examples:
Well-known clients: “Our past clients include Microsoft, NVIDIA, and IBM.”
Mini case studies: “We boosted Microsoft’s sales by 235% in 6 weeks.”
Testimonials: “Bill Gates called us the most outstanding agency he’s ever worked with.”
Awards: “We won the Nobel Prize for B2B innovation in March.”
Customer review scores: “We have a 5/5 score on G2 and Capterra.”
Remember that space is limited, and client attention spans are short. Include a piece of social proof that most speaks to your recipient’s pain point, not the one you’re most proud of.
8. Include an Open Call to Action (CTA)
Research conducted by Gong shows that the “interest CTA” generates the most replies—double that of closed and open questions.
A closed question is hyper-specific: “Would you like to meet at 9 AM on Tuesday?” An open-ended question is similar but doesn’t specify a date: “Are you free to meet at some point?”
An interest CTA, on the other hand, simply asks, “Would you like to learn more?”
Here are some examples of interest CTAs:
Can I send some more information?
Interested in learning more?
Would you like to see a case study?
Just hit reply to this email with a “yes” if you’d like some more information.
Does that sound interesting to you?
9. Leverage AI Tools for Enhanced Cold Emails
Generative AI is changing the way sales teams run cold email campaigns. AI BDRs can handle large parts of the sales process, matching (and often surpassing) human results.
Let’s look at which tasks modern AI-based cold outreach platforms can handle, with examples from Artisan and our AI BDR Ava.
Prospecting and email list creation
Artisan provides ICP data fields that Ava uses to gather prospects from a database of over 300 million B2B leads.
Contact information verification
All lead information is verified and enriched by AI scraping tools, which draw data from a variety of sources across the web.
Email domain warm-up
Email warm-up and health checking are automated by Artisan, ensuring that your emails don’t end up in the spam folder or, even worse, don’t reach your recipient’s mail client at all.
Personalization of subject lines and email body at scale
Artisan draws from an array of sources (which you can turn on or off) to find personalization data for subject lines and email body copy.
Follow-up email
Artisan lets you create customized workflows for sending follow-up emails to recipients based on their behavior.
If you’d like to see how AI can streamline your cold email processes, get in touch with Artisan to book a demo. Artisan is at the forefront of the space, and its AI BDR, Ava, is unmatched by competitors.
Cold Email Templates for Engaging Potential Clients
Theory is one thing, but what does a well-crafted cold email actually look like?
There are four templates that every BDR should have in their arsenal:
Basic cold email template: This is your standard template, which can be modified for most clients and industries.
Follow-up template: This is a versatile template that is used for following up with clients when you haven’t received a response.
Value-driven email template: The value-driven template offers something of value, rather than asking for a meeting straight away. It’s an excellent option for prospects who require a longer period of nurturing.
Personalized case study template: For larger, high-value clients and buyer committees, personalized case studies can be very persuasive.
The best cold email marketers use templates liberally. A good template, refined through testing, can outperform an email written from scratch.
Basic Cold Email Template
Hi [first name],
I was very impressed by your recent LinkedIn post on [post topic], especially your insight about [specific insight].
My name’s [your name] of [your company]. I help companies like [company name] boost their [specific metric] by [description of your service]. We recently achieved [previous client outcome] for a client in the [prospect industry] space.
Would you be interested in learning more?
Regards,
[your name]
Follow-Up Email Template
Subject: Quick check-in
Hi [first name],
I wanted to check in to ask if you saw my last email about [email topic]. I know you’re super busy, and I appreciate your time.
If you didn’t see it, the short version is that we help companies like [company name] achieve [specific benefit]. One recent client called us “[client testimonial].”
Would you like to learn more?
Regards,
[your name]
Value-Driven Email Template
Hi [first name],
I was very impressed by your recent LinkedIn post on [post topic], especially your insight about [specific insight].
My name’s [your name] of [your company]. I help companies like [company name] boost their [specific metric] by [description of your service].
In fact, we recently published a [content asset] outlining a unique method businesses in the [recipient industry] space can use to achieve [specific result].
Would you like to have a look?
Regards,
[your name]
Personalized Case Study Email Template
Hi [first name],
I’m getting in touch after reading [company name]’s recent announcement about [company initiative]. Sounds like you’re doing exciting things!
My name’s [your name] of [your company]. We work with companies in the [recipient industry] to boost their [specific metric] by [description of your service]. One of our past clients, [client name], called us “[short testimonial]”.
I’ve put together a tailored case study for [company name]. Can I send it over?
Regards,
[your name]
Final Thoughts: Enhance Your Cold Email Strategy for Engaging Potential Clients with AI
Cold email campaigns are powerful drivers of leads and customers, but executing them well is costly. AI has been making significant strides in this area, automating large portions of the outbound sales cycle and increasing reply rates for businesses.
Artisan, along with its AI BDR Ava is one such example of a next-gen AI sales platform. It can automate prospecting, personalization, domain warm-up, product/service targeting, follow-up sequences, and more.
Ava can handle the following tasks:
Creation of personalized follow-up emails
Email domain warm-up and testing
Prospecting from a database of over 300 million B2B leads
Data scraping from across the web (including LinkedIn profiles) with built-in enrichment and hygiene checking
Personalization at scale using a proprietary waterfall technology
Tracking and analytics with insight generation
Automated LinkedIn outreach
A/B and testing (subject lines, openings, CTAS, etc.)
Integrations with most major third-party CRM and SaaS providers
If you’d like to see how Artisan can streamline your cold email campaigns, get in touch to arrange a demo.
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