Cold email is not dead
Don’t believe the headlines. The cold email is not dead. Not only is it not dead, but I would be willing to bet that a well-written cold email today is more impactful than it was 5 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong. Email is abused. Over the past 2 years, I have helped Carta change it’s email strategies so that the organization acted more civil than the spam engine reputation that the organization built over the year. We decreased unsubscribe rates by 300%+ and increased engagement rates by well over 200%.
I am more pro cold emails than ever before because of how abused email is as a communication channel. That makes it easier to stand out from the crowd than ever before.
Am I annoying this person?
Most salespeople don't worry too much about annoying a prospect that they have to cold email. After all, they need to get ahold of someone on the other side in order to drive a sale and hit quota. I, however, have talked to a number of folks who want to send cold emails to build their personal network or get a new job and are concerned about sending an email to someone they don't know.
Not if it's thoughtful! A good email can come across as a gift. Seeing that someone has done a lot of work to reach out to you can make the recipient feel special. "Wow, this person holds me in high regard. Out of all the people they could send an email to, they chose me to come to for advice, support, etc. Not only did they reach out to me, but they tried so hard to communicate to me as a unique individual.”
Think of it that way. A good email is like a little gift of acknowledgment for the recipient's accolades.
The approach
A good cold email relies on 3 things:
- Finding the correct target
- Crafting a thoughtful message
- Accepting a high likelihood of rejection
Cold emails can and should be sent for a variety of uses cases. However, for simplicity sake, I am only going to focus on one for the remainder of this post. Let's say you found an open role at a company and find the role compelling. You could apply to their job board. However, the better route would be to bypass the job board and go directly to someone in the company to "establish a face with a resume." I'm going to focus in on that use case.
Finding a target
First thing is first. You need to figure out who to contact. First, check out all of the people in the company.
- Did you go to the same school as anyone else?
- Are you from the same city, or town?
- Do you share and obvious interests outside of work?
Ideally, you can find one point of connection. That adds a bit of a personal element to the email. When you reach out, they will see a bit of themselves in you and be more willing to answer your request.
Sometimes you won't be able to find a connection with anyone in the company, and that's ok. Your backup should go directly to whoever the lead, or in this case, hiring manager.
Once you identify who you want to target, find their email! I use Apollo and RocketReach when I am doing personal work as both of these tools have free tiers.
Building the body of the email
There are a few core points to keep in mind when building the body of the email.
- Be succinct - • This is a cold email. You are an unknown person and should ensure that your writing respects someone else's time. Write in a way that information can be consumed quickly and effectively.
- Be direct - If you’re asking for something, make sure you get the point across. Don’t write something that doesn’t have a clear ask. You want this person to think as little as possible. Only have 1 ask in the email. Do not ask for time to meet and time to review your resume. That is well above and beyond what anyone would offer to someone they don’t know.
- Be thoughtful - You need to stand out from the crowd and show how they are the one person you are talking to. Effective cold emails should always be written as one off emails to specific people.
Generally speaking, it’s important to be as flashy as possible. In our use case, I would suggest putting 3 big resume points in the email. Here’s an example that I’ve used to generate a response.
HixxxxI was listening to you on an old episode of
xxxx, found you have an open VP of Marketing role, and wanted to reach out about the opportunityHere are a few quick highlights from my career:
- Built a team of ~20 marketers at
xxxx, where I am accountable for $40M in annual revenue- Co-founded an economic development nonprofit from scratch to $60M in impact
- Collected, reviewed, tested and dialed in 200+ different coffees (see image!)
I love the products your company creates and would like to learn what you're up to with the business to see if I can help.
PS - In the podcast you're discussing the idea of automated coffee machines and mention that you think "the element of craft will continue to play a role in specialty coffee". I'm prone to agree. It reminds me of the story of premix cakes from Betty Crocker. There seems to be an element of "home made" that's important in the food & beverage industry. There might be an element of ownership that is important to represent in the brand.
This is an email that is being used to reach out a company about a job. It clearly hits a few points that connect myself to the role, and it has some additional detail that highlights why I am reaching out to them. Generally, I do not include a big PS section, however, in this case I wanted to include a bit of extra thoughtfulness since I do not have a personal connection to them
Here’s another:
Hixxxx, I ran acrossxxxxtoday and thought I'd reach out about your open Head of Marketing role.Here are a few quick highlights from my career:
- I am responsible for $40M in net-new marketing attributed ARR in 2022 at Carta
- I built an economic development nonprofit from scratch to $60M in impact
- I previously was the Head of Marketing for an AI customer service startup that sold to Sutherland
I'd like to chat about the role if you think my experience is a good fit.
Cheers, Nathan PS - I messaged you on LI as well to make sure this gets in front of you!
Note that some of this email is the same. While each cold email should be written independently, it’s ok to work from a template!
How for the differences. This email is directly to the CEO of the company, so I decided to be as direct as I could. No fluff. Directly to the point. I’m interested in this open role, and I have previously added impact in similar roles. Note that bullets are extremely effective to help get core points across as quickly as possible. Also, because this is the CEO I wanted to make sure my message was scene and I sent an almost identical message through that platform.
Building the subject
If you’ve noticed, we’re working backwards here.
- Call to action — Decide what you want, ie a meeting
- Body of email — Decide what you’re going to say to that person
- Subject of email — Decide on how your going to abbreviate that ask
There is a reason to work in this direction. The point for each step is just to get to the next step. So, said differently, the point of the subject of the email is not to get a meeting, even if that is your call to action. The point of the subject of the email is to get them to open the email. The point of the body of the email is to get them to have a meeting with you.
Breaking down the task at hand in this structure is important. If you put “meeting request” in the subject, I can guarantee you that 99.9% of folks will not respond. But if you think of the subject line as just a way to get the person to read an email, then it’ll make you think of more playful, intriguing options.
My favorite format for this is a few words, separated by commas. The subjects for the two emails above were:
- Marketing Lead & Home Made
- Marketing Lead w/ AI, founding & scaling experience
Here are a few other ones:
- Illuminate, CMU and Remote Work
- Columbus, Barbarians and Emergence
- Montana, High Growth & Mashape
Those three words probably mean very little to you. But to the targets, they were specifically chosen because those were topics they recently discussed (like Remote Work) a connection point we have (like CMU / Carnegie Mellon University) or something I included in the email (like Barbarians, a book I thought the target would like because they surf). For the target, these were intriguing enough reasons to open my email, and thus the job of the subject was successful.
Followup
I will always followup 3 days later. The followup message should be very brief. It’s a reply to your original message. Something like.
Hi! I realize you may be busy. I’m really interested in this opportunity and would love to connect!
Just realize that people are busy. Even if they wanted to respond to you they may have forgotten. Sending 1 followup is 100% acceptable. Sending 2 followups to a person that you have a number of connections with is also acceptable. I would not send any more than 2 followups to anyone, however.
Accepting Rejection
The very, very best cold emailers should expect no more than a 25% positive reply rate. If you’re hitting 25% you’re doing it well. That means most of the time, you will not get a reply. That can be disheartening. That can also make you think… “Hmm, what if I just sent more, automated cold emails…?”
First off. Don’t be discouraged. Just keep going for it.
Secondly, if you take one thing away from this, do not spam people.
There are many tools today that can help you scale cold outreach (thanks, AI!). However, the care in each note to build a personal connection will pay off. Use these tools to help accelerate your email development, but review and rewrite each email to address an individual. That individual care will increase your response rates dramatically.
Keep in mind that you never know what's going on with that person, the company, or anything else. At an old company I worked at we had roles open to just look like we were growing. They were essentially fake roles. At another company we had roles open, and valid, but we were going through a re-org and weren't looking at resumes for another few months. The point is, for either of those companies, I personally may not have responded to even the most well-written email because the timing was off.
Just try and try again!