Us marketers send and receive hundreds of emails on a weekly basis. According to this report, we receive an average of 95 emails a day, that’s expected to grow to almost 100 by next year.
That’s quite a lot of emails when you think about it.
Those emails are sometimes sent to people we don’t really know very well or haven’t even built a connection with.
Cold email outreach, whilst it may come across as annoying and receiving/sending potentially unwanted emails, it can be a success.
In this article, I’ll be sharing a few examples of email outreach and will include some key takeaways and explain how they were effective, and what key points you need to think about when drafting up your outreach emails.
I recently received an email from Sara Daugherty, a fellow marketer. She noticed I shared an article on my Twitter account and decided to send an outreach email mentioning the CEO of the company she works at publishing a similar article that expands on the points in the original article I shared.
This outreach email has been drafted together quite well, not only has she mentioned the original article and the fact that she thinks myself and my followers will enjoy it, but she’s also asked me to reply to her in order to receive the link to read more and share it – rather than just link dropping.
Key Takeaway: Think about how you can help provide value to the recipient and their audience. Ask the recipient if they’re interested to receive the link to the article or piece of content, don’t just send it.
Another good example of an outreach email is this one from Sofie Nelen, Digital Marketer at Survey Anyplace.
Sofie’s main reason for reaching out to me was due to this blog post I published. She’s emailed to see if I would be willing to include her survey tool in an upcoming blog post.
Usually, that kind of emails suck… They aren’t put together well, and I doubt they’d have much success. Sofie’s email, however, did grab my attention, and I did get in touch with her.
She’s covered why she’s emailing me in the first part of the email, then she continued giving me a compliment about the tools I included, and lastly asked if I’d be happy to include their tool in an upcoming blog post.
Sofie then began to list the reasons as to why this tool should be included – stating interesting quick points about the tool, not taking up too much of my time.
After all, time is very precious to us all, nobody wants to be wasting their time reading an outreach email that’s too long and won’t provide value.
Key Takeaway: Mention why you’re outreaching at the start of the email. Provide a compliment about the article/content.
4 Key Points for Outreach Emails
So as you have seen from the above examples, email outreach can be a success providing you have a clear strategy on how you go about it.
Businesses use email outreaches for various reasons, some of these include sales emails, guest blogging opportunities, backlinks for SEO, etc.
Below are 4 points you want to keep in mind for when sending outreach emails.
- Don’t use a template – always customize your outreach emails. Make them personalized. Talk about something they’ve recently shared or something of interest that shows you aren’t just selling to them.
- Stay on top of trends – like mentioned above, it’s important you make your emails personalized. You should stay on top of trends in your industry and mention about latest trends as long as it ties back to your product or service you provide. This will also portray you know what you’re doing and are very always up-to-date in the industry.
- Add some creativity – don’t just make them general emails. Make them a memorable email. Add some creativity to it, make it one to be remembered and make them feel like you’ve put time and effort into it not just sending out a bunch of emails with no personalisation or creativeness. Think about adding suitable images or a personalized video.
- Keep it short- while the above tips might bulk out your email a little more, try your hardest to keep them short and to the point. Especially the main reason as to why you’re emailing them. No one wants to receive a long cold email; I doubt they’ll even read past the first paragraph.
