Cold calling strikes fear in the hearts of us all. But when used wisely, cold emails can be one of the most effective and powerful ways to acquire new clients for digital marketing agencies.
Cold emailing is the process of sending highly personalised and targeted emails to potential clients, often those your agency doesn’t have a prior connection with. The aim is to strike a connection and entice them to take some kind of action, such as a subscription or purchase.
However, getting it right can be a challenge. A successful cold emailing strategy requires a profound understanding of your target audience and what they are most likely to respond to.
Take a look at some best practices and strategies for implementing a shrewdly targeted and success-driven cold emailing campaign that helps your agency grow.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Before you can start developing a cold emailing strategy for your agency, you need to perform deep market research. Conducting market research is crucial for identifying the ideal clients for your digital marketing agency, thus boosting your conversion rates.
One of the ways in which you can develop a better understanding of your target audience is to create buyer personas.
Buyer personas are made-up client characters based on target audience data. These fictional yet realistic personas can help teams visualise the people they are targeting on a more human level, thus facilitating a better understanding of their needs.
Buyer personas are a great method for tailoring cold emails to resonate with the recipients. Rather than thinking about your target audience as a nameless, faceless conglomerate of consumers, encourage your team to imagine them as real people.
Crafting Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines
When you’re cold emailing, grabbing people’s attention from the get-go is essential. Here are some best practices for creating compelling subject lines that are concise, personalised, and evoke curiosity:
Use emojis – Emoji use in professional business emails can be a slippery slope, but used in the right way, they can add colour and intrigue to your cold mails.
Utilise urgent language – Email subject lines with words like “alert”, “urgent”, “important”, or “breaking” tend to have much higher click rates.
Use short lines – Don’t make the mistake of making your recipients read through a long, needlessly wordy sentence. Keep it short, sweet, and punchy.
Be conversational – Talking to your recipients in a friendly, conversational tone can help build a connection with them at a faster pace. Rather than going in with a formal stance, approach subject lines with comfortable, familiar dialogue.
The right subject line is fundamental to a successful cold emailing campaign. Without them, your recipients will have no problem moving on to the next mail on their list.
Personalisation and Customisation
Personalising your cold emails is a great way to bridge the gap between your agency and new clients. It accelerates the sense of connection and makes it easier for recipients to trust the contents of the email itself.
You can personalise your cold emails by using the recipient’s name and company information or referencing recent accomplishments. These kinds of customisations can be implemented via mailing software programs.
Crafting Compelling Email Content
Just like any client-reaching strategy, cold emailing requires certain key elements. The main components of an effective cold email are as follows:
Introduction – addressing the recipient with a personalized name or company title.
Value proposition – incentivise them to open your mail and take the appropriate action.
Social proof – what makes your agency credible enough for them to trust it?
Call to action – close with a compelling CTA.
There are a few techniques your agency can use for writing engaging and persuasive email content, such as:
Focus on benefits and outcomes rather than features – People are more likely to take action if they know what’s in it for them.
Embrace storytelling to create an emotional connection – Storytelling is one of the best ways to strike an emotional connection with clients. Utilise this in your cold emails.
Building Credibility and Social Proof
Establishing credibility and trust in cold emails plays a major role in differentiating your agency from competitors. People simply don’t like opening emails from senders they don’t know or trust. There are several strategies you can use for showcasing social proof, such as:
Client testimonials – Studies show that consumers trust other consumers a lot more than they trust businesses. You can build credibility by using real client testimonials and case studies.
Awards – Any awards your digital marketing agency has received can be used as examples of your success and credibility.
Unique selling points – The unique selling points of your business set it apart from competitors. Use them to generate hype and social proof with your audience.
Follow-up Strategies
Following up on promising leads is one of the most important ways to nurture relationships with potential clients.
There are a few ways to improve your follow-up strategy and streamline the long-term conversion process. Some best practices for crafting effective follow-up emails include:
Timing and frequency – Don’t bombard your clients with emails but do be consistent. Most businesses send out cold emails every 2-3 weeks.
Personalisation – Never forget to make that initial connection by using recipient’s or company names, and approaching them in a friendly, conversational tone.
Automation tools – Use the best automation tools you can find to facilitate better email tracking and the performance of your cold emailing strategy.
Tracking and Optimising Performance
And finally, don’t forget to use tools and techniques to measure open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Provide guidance on analysing data to identify areas for improvement and optimise future cold email campaigns.
You won’t know how effective your cold email campaign is without a solid system for measuring its performance – plus, you receive insights on how to improve it along the way.
Make Cold Emailing A Hot Lead
When implemented in the right way, cold calling can be a highly effective way to connect with new and loyal clients and boost both profits and conversion rates. However, in order to produce the best results, digital marketing agencies need to experiment, test, and iterate their cold email approach based on data and feedback.
By understanding your target audience and crafting compelling, connection-driven content, your agency can benefit from cold emailing.