By Alex Schachne in Cold Email —

25 Strategic Cold Email Best Practices in 2024

Discover the top 25 strategic cold email best practices for 2024 in this guide. Start optimizing your outreach efforts today!

25 Strategic Cold Email Best Practices

Mastering cold email best practices can mean the difference between landing the deal or being sent to the spam folder. These strategies can assist in a sales pitch, product introduction, or even a follow-up email. Cold email best practices can enhance your email writing and help you create high-converting email templates. Techniques, such as A/B testing, personalizing the content, and optimizing the subject lines, can significantly increase your email success rate. Best practices can help you understand the best ways to structure your emails to get more responses and improve email deliverability. The effectiveness of cold email best practices is the key to building a successful sales pipeline.

What is Cold Email and Why Send One?

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Cold emailing is a highly effective sales tactic that involves sending out unsolicited emails to potential prospects. Believe it or not, cold emails are still a viable method to reach new clients. In fact, 8 out of 10 buyers prefer to be contacted by email. 

When done correctly, crafting the perfect cold email can significantly increase open and response rates. By adhering to cold email best practices such as personalization, segmentation, and providing value in the message, you can build credibility and make your outreach more effective.

The Key to Success: Crafting the Perfect Cold Email

The secret to a successful cold email lies in understanding your audience and tailoring your message to their specific needs and interests. Research your prospects thoroughly and personalize your email by mentioning their pain points, challenges, or goals. 

Keep your message concise, clear, and impactful. Focus on how your offering can solve their problems or bring value to their business.

Building Credibility: The Importance of Cold Email Best Practices

When sending out cold emails, it's crucial to follow best practices to boost your credibility and increase the chances of getting a positive response. Be respectful of your prospect's time and avoid spammy tactics like using misleading subject lines or sending irrelevant content. Proofread your emails for errors and ensure your message is well-crafted and professional.

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25 Cold Email Best Practices to Improve Response Rates

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1. Personalization Boosts Open Rates

Personalizing your cold email will set you apart from the generic, impersonal emails flooding inboxes. It shows that you’ve done your homework and care about establishing a connection. 

2. Inject Personality to Humanize Your Message:

Be yourself in your cold email and let your personality shine through the words. Write in a conversational tone as if you’re talking to a friend. This will help build trust and establish rapport with the recipient.

3. Find the Right Contact for Better Results

Aim to identify a specific individual rather than a generic email address. Use tools like LinkedIn to find the most relevant contact for higher chances of getting a response.

4. Authenticity Trumps Hyperbole

Steer clear of over-the-top claims and canned templates. Keep your language authentic, grounded, and focused on the value you can offer.

5. Slowly Build Connections

Instead of diving right into the ask, provide valuable content over time to build a relationship. Offer useful resources or insights before making your pitch.

6. Tailor Your Message

Avoid sending out generic messages. Tailor your email content to each recipient’s specific needs using mail merge fields for personalization.

7. Make Your Pitch Relevant

Connect your pitch to the recipient’s current priorities or pain points to make it more compelling. Show how your offering can address their needs effectively.

8. Provide Value First

Before making an ask, offer something of value first. This could be a free consultation, a useful resource, or an opportunity for the recipient to learn more.

9. Stand Out with Creativity

Differentiate yourself from the crowded inbox by taking an unconventional approach. Use a captivating subject line or opening that piques curiosity.

10. Avoid Aggressive Tones

Maintain a friendly and humble tone in your cold email. Avoid being aggressive, rude, or demanding to create a positive first impression.

11. Craft a Strong Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing recipients see, so make it enticing. Include the recipient’s name, spark curiosity, or highlight a key benefit to drive open rates.

12. Be Direct and Concise

Get straight to the point without fluff or filler in your cold email. Lead with a clear value proposition or the problem you can solve for the recipient.

13. Write as if You're Making a Personal Connection

Imagine introducing yourself at a party and write accordingly. Use warmth, context, and relevant details to establish a personal connection.

14. Provide Significant Value

Make it a value-added exchange. Offer something meaningful upfront like research, tips, or a free resource to showcase your expertise.

15. Send Emails from Real Individuals

Increase authenticity by sending a personalized email from an individual within your company. Choose a relevant level for the sender’s role.

16. Avoid 'Canned' Templates

Customize each email with unique details specific to the recipient. Avoid copy-and-paste messages that feel mass-produced.

17. Deep Dive in Research

Go beyond basic job title and company details when researching your recipient. Look for shared interests, connections, or recent news to reference in your email.

18. Keep Promises Realistic

Avoid overselling or making unrealistic promises. Be transparent about what you can deliver to build trust with the recipient.

19. Offer Value Upfront

Demonstrate your expertise by providing useful information for free. Offer a case study, report, tips, or other high-value content to showcase your knowledge.

20. Get to the Point Quickly

State your reason for reaching out clearly and concisely. Respect the recipient’s time by getting straight to the point in the first few lines.

21. Leverage Social Proof

Highlight your authority and accomplishments to build credibility. Name-drop impressive clients, stats, awards, or third-party endorsements to increase trust.

22. Proofread Thoroughly

Ensure a polished, professional, and error-free email before hitting send. Check spelling, grammar, formatting, and test how it looks on various devices.

23. Provide a Clear Call-to-Action

Make it easy for the recipient to take the desired action. Include a specific call-to-action like booking a meeting or next steps to guide the recipient.

24. Follow Up and Refine

Promptly follow up on responses or lack thereof to refine your approach. Analyze reply patterns to improve open rates, clicks, and overall engagement.

25. Embrace Continuous Optimization

Iterate and enhance your emails over time by continuously testing and refining. Conduct A/B tests on different elements and use data to guide your optimizations. 

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Supercharge your existing tools with seamless AI integrations to OpenAI, Microsoft, and more. From summarizing documents, to voice translation, to AI call transcription, to AI avatar and asset generation, to SEO automation, to even automating the cold email creation and sending process, automate anything with Leap Workflows. The opportunities for automation are endless with Leap workflows.

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13 Cold Email Best Practices for Optimizing Mobile Experience

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In today's digital age, it is crucial to ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly. This is because nearly 1.7 billion users check emails on their mobile phones, which significantly outnumbers desktop users, who amount to around 0.9 billion. Over 61.9% of emails are opened on mobile devices by subscribers to check their inboxes. 

If an email displays poorly on a mobile device, regardless of the content quality, it is likely to be deleted in under three seconds in more than 70% of cases. In addition, as many as 15% of users will even unsubscribe instead of deleting the email, resulting in an 85% drop in potential customers on mobile. 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company due to a bad mobile experience.

Responsive Design Best Practices

To ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly, you can follow the below responsive design best practices:

1. Use responsive email design that automatically adjusts the layout for different screen sizes

2. Keep the overall structure simple with a single-column layout

3. Ensure that the text is large enough to read without zooming on small screens

4. Allow plenty of white space to prevent content from looking cramped

5. Use sticky headers/menus to make the navigation accessible without scrolling

6. Optimize images to load quickly on mobile connections

Tips for Creating Mobile-Optimized Content

For creating mobile-optimized content, follow the below tips:

7. Implement a single-column layout for easy vertical scrolling

8. Utilize larger font sizes (16px+) and straightforward typography

9. Make calls-to-action big and finger-friendly (45-57px height)

10. Place the most important information at the top "above the fold

11. Break text into shorter, skimmable paragraphs or bullet points

12. Design for touch by spacing out links/CTAs and avoiding hover effects

13. Prioritize loading speed by compressing images/videos

Cold Email Best Practices for Timing and Frequency

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Frequency

Weekdays are generally the best days to send cold emails, with varying optimal days based on different studies. 

Brevo

Brevo found that Tuesday and Thursday had the highest share of opens, while Wednesday had the most click-throughs. 

GetResponse

GetResponse's research showed that any weekday is suitable for open rates, with a slight edge for Tuesdays. 

Omnichannel

Omnichannel marketing automation platform Omnisend reported the highest open rates on Tuesdays but found the best click-through and open rates on Fridays. 

Hubspot

HubSpot's survey of US marketers found that Tuesday, Monday, and Wednesday were the top days for email engagement. 

Timing

Brevo

In terms of timing, Brevo highlighted that open and click volumes peak at 10 a.m., with afternoon peaks at 3 p.m. for opens and 4 p.m. for click-throughs. 

GetResponse

On the other hand, GetResponse found that campaigns with the highest open rates were sent in the early morning at 4-6 a.m. or later in the afternoon at 5-7 p.m., suggesting less competition for attention at these times.

Create Game Changing Automations Today With Leap’s AI Workflows

Cold email marketing can be a powerful tool when done right. By sending personalized, well-crafted emails to your target audience, you can generate valuable leads and grow your business. 

Crafting cold emails manually can be time-consuming and tedious. That's where AI comes in. With Leap's AI Workflows tool, you can automate the cold email creation and sending process, saving you time and effort.

Streamlining Cold Email Marketing

Leap's AI Workflows tool enables you to create sophisticated AI automations with no-code. You can connect the tools you love with best-in-class AI text models to streamline your cold email marketing efforts. 

By leveraging AI, you can generate personalized cold emails at scale, ensuring that your messages resonate with your recipients. Plus, with seamless AI integrations to OpenAI and Microsoft, you can access cutting-edge AI technology to supercharge your cold email campaigns.

Elevating Cold Email Strategies

Automating your cold email creation and sending process with Leap's AI Workflows tool opens up a world of possibilities. From crafting compelling email copy to optimizing your subject lines for better open rates, AI can help you take your cold email game to the next level. 

By incorporating AI into your cold email marketing strategy, you can save time, improve your email performance, and drive better results for your business.

Try Leap's AI Workflows tool for free today and see the power of AI in action for your cold email campaigns.

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