No doubt email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies, but you are not the only one sending emails. According to Harvard Business Review, professionals, on average, have more than 200 emails in their inbox and receive 120 new ones each day, but only answer to 25% of them. So the room is noisy and your voice needs to be heard!
To make your cold emails effective, you need to make them interesting enough and, at the same time, customized for the prospects you are sending it to. Also, you must keep in mind the best time to send cold email. On the course of reaching the goal with your cold email marketing, one of the most important aspects is to avoid certain mistakes that if made, will have a detrimental impact on your CTR, and consequently on your whole campaign. In this blog post, we are going to highlight 7 such mistakes.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Cold Email Marketing
1. Objectivity (Im-Personalization)
Your email needs to be influenced depending upon your audience, their preferences, their business, etc. Not knowing about your prospects and sending random emails is an unpardonable sin. The result is failure of your current campaign and not-to-be-taken-seriously in the subsequent ones, which means a long-term failure.
Elimination Strategy:
Identify your target audience, prepare a list, segment the users, and send the right email to the right prospect.
2. Monotony
Especially, in the Subject Line of your emails. Since the subject line is the first thing that your audience are going to notice, you must strive to make it as captivating as possible. Same goes for the content in the body. A tedious subject line and body is a crime for which there is no reckoning.
Elimination Strategy:
The cure for monotony is creativity. So, try to make the content of your emails interestingly creative, and personalize your subject line.
3. Verbosity
The last thing that your audience want is a lengthy email with a too long subject line, asking to be dumped into the trash! This is another unforgivable crime, which some of the naïve marketers think is alright, or even better as it is informative to a great extent. It may or may not be informative, that’s secondary. The primary fact is it is painful and unlikely to even be opened.
Source: Klenty
Elimination Strategy:
Keep the subject line and the content in the body short and concise.
4. Narcissism
If your email sounds like you are seated on the throne of conceit harping on the tune of your grandeur, then your campaign is going to fall flat-faced. Not talking about your prospects and their needs, and bragging only about your own achievements is not a folly that will be overlooked, but a deadly sin. Your prospects may simply think, “One who is least interested in addressing our problems now might show even lesser interest in the future.”
Elimination Strategy:
Address their problems and recommend a solution. If you cannot do that, then sound like a conversationalist, instead of a salesman.
5. Unreliability
It is important to establish your credibility both within and outside your email. If you claim to make a highly interactive web application for your prospect and your own website is a vanilla ice cream, you are bound to be not taken seriously.
Elimination Strategy:
Have a strong online presence with diversified quality content on your website. In the email, have links to a few resources that captivates the interest of your prospects.
6. Untimeliness
Sending a message too early or too late can spoil your game. After all, your prospect must be active and ready to engage when you send the email. Just hitting the inbox at any time will not be fruitful.
Elimination Strategy:
Sending cold emails on Mondays and Wednesdays, and between 10 AM to 3 PM has been considered best. Also keep in mind the time-zone of your audience.
7. Inactiveness
Not including a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of a cold email, and not performing cold email follow up with your prospects is as deadly a sin as sloth is. CTA shows that you solemnly want the recipient to take some action. Do not, however, look spammy by adding too many CTAs. And follow up emails increase the reply rate by three times.
Source: Woodpecker
Elimination Strategy:
Using a single eye-catching CTA. And follow up with the prospect because some of them might have forgotten you while some of them may have to be persuaded further.
An Analogy
Imagine you are in a large crowded, noisy room trying to communicate one-on-one with people who know nothing about you. Your aim is to introduce yourself to as many people as you can, and then set up a business ties with them.
This task is much more difficult than it actually sounds. First of all, no one would like talking to a total stranger. Second, there are the few like you already present, some of whom have irritated a part your audience. Among them there are a few vultures as well that your audience are wary of. Your aim is to stand out from these lot and establish the connection with your audience, despite knowing for sure that a major chunk of them will not be converted. But a few that will, are worth the effort.
The above-mentioned scenario is analogous to Cold Email sequence. You, as a marketer, are trying to connect one-to-one with prospects, who are unaware of your existence, amid relentless competition.
The Bottom Line
To make your cold emailing effective, personalize your emails, eliminate the monotony and verbosity by being creative, and concise in subject line and body. Do not only talk about yourself, address the pain points of the prospects. Have quality content on the website, and send timely emails, follow-ups with properly placed CTAs in the mail. Happy marketing!