6-Step for SDR's to skyrocketing Cold Mail Conversion
In today’s fast-paced and competitive B2B sales terrain, it’s really hard to get a prospect interested in your solution. Building relationships and connections with prospects can feel like surviving to 5000 metres without an oxygen mask.
New age buyers are being bombarded by advertisements, tweets, posts and also cold emails about new products.
5X companies are going after the buyers in a hard way
Today they get at least 25 mails per week, 100 a month, 1,200 a year.
B2B buyer sees/ interacts with at least 10 digital ads each day
The fact is it’s too much noisy than ever before and they really don't need 99 % of the solutions which is kept in front of them
This is why they respond to <1% of the touchpoints kept in front of them. Naturally, this leads to frustrating and fruitless pursuits as you battle your way through overloaded lack of response, and general apathy about webinars, you might even find yourself wondering why your webinar has such low engagement.
Let’s put the negative cringe aside for a moment, let’s see some sunshine, by far email is the most effective working touch point in the multi channel multi touch point world for sales / SDRs. That’s because still buyers prefer to be contacted by email / message (80%) since it is not intrusive, provides clear context and it’s distraction free. Email open rates have hovered around 10-20% above the benchmark throughout Q2. Currently, marketing email open rates sit at 18% above pre-COVID levels.
But you have t o account that in the age of social media, a lot has changed since cold emails were first introduced. Now all the companies are aware of this powerful touchpoint, every company has email automation with 7 touch points (2 years ago is now 17 touch points post pandemic). The Hubspot report says SDR’s sent 21% more emails during Q2 than Q1, and email sends have recently peaked at 36% above the benchmark.
So you If you're sending cold emails, you have to make sure that the person receiving your email isn't going to feel like they're being spammed by a random stranger who somehow got their hands on their contact information.
But what makes a code email successful, we at oneshot.ai have worked with dozens of companies to increase their open and response rate with content personalisation and customisation, We have analysed 1000s of manual emails what we think can make a cold mail successful is the process and anatomy of the mail
Here the most important Steps to follow before your trigger send in your cold email Step 1: Research :
The first step to crafting a cold email is researching the prospect who is going to read it . How well do you know them?
About Prospect
Prospect’s motivation/ Pain / Activities
Prospect’s Company
Don't be surprised by the fact that research can take a long time gathering information from websites, Linkedin profiles, Crunchbase, twitter, reading their about Us, looking for their company size , competitors, 10K reports, and try to understand something about the whole company as well as the prospect Linkedin profile.
Make sure you Mail has 4 P's
Step 2: Create Personalised Subject Line
Subject lines are gonna give your buyers the context of the email so to get the mail opened make sure you keep it to the point and grab attention. Using just maximum of 6-8 words and personalising theme will increase the open rates by 50 %.
Some of the common examples in subjects
Recently published content title - Kevin / Pune
Company / Previous Company - Kevin - ZoomInfo / EDB
CEO Name - Ed Boyajian / Kevin - PostgreSQL
Competitor information - Steve - Oracle / MongoDB
Events - Postgres Vision - Speaker Name
Fundraise, customer names, mutual connections, location
Step 3: Create a striking intro
Once you have earned the open you have the next 30 words to convince them to read the rest of the mail. But how? One way you can do that is by creating a captivating email intro. The first 30 words of your email are the ones readers will first see, and that's why it's important to make sure they're enticing enough to hold your reader's attention.
The only way to personalise your intro is doing intro or using tools like oneshot which automates research and personalisation for you.
Step 4: Relate with pain of the Buyer or User Data proves that just by including pwersonalization in subject & intros doubles the amount of open rates. Now the challenge is how to keep the users engaged with raw email text, short relatable with more relevant context makes them take next steps & make sure you keep it short within 30 words. Here is some examples
Step 5: Pitch it Right The best pitches are simple & relate to the persona , some of the great one liners likely resonate with that persona 3-4 times in their mind even after they read it. Your pitch should either talk about cost savings or efficiency or reduced administration effort. Basically comes down to increase in revenue, saving their cost , saving time. Make sure it's just 10-20 words and include any stats if you have any.The pitch has to be linked back to the pain point we called out in the intro. Most importantly assume they know nothing about your company.
Step 6: Proof point & CTA You have multiple ways to close an email ,You don't always have to close!!
This is part of a multi-touch, multi channel approach , if you are in the first email you can start by asking a leading question , in the next mail you can end by a relevant case study link. Having a relevant case study link to your email can increase the conversion by 10 %. Another important thing to keep in consideration is not to have multiple CTAs. Also in multi-touchpoint asking for demo in all the sequences wont work. and most importantly Mix up your CTA’s in all your sequences
Summery Don't let a small list and beginner mindset give you an excuse that you are unable to make sales via email. With all of the available software and automation tools, every company has a talent for success with SDR's. In few points
Personalise your emails
Keep it simple at sub 150 words
4 P’s, Personalise, Pain, Pitch, Proof
Subject lines and Intros make a huge difference
Have your go to research sources
Make your pitch relevant to persona / company
Use multi-channel with LinkedIn
Mix up your CTA’s
Take this process and plug in your content that you have created. Can't think of something new? Look at places tools like Oneshot automate all the above points to your email. Then follow the process and watch your email open rates skyrocket!