How to write a powerful prospecting email?

What is a prospecting email?

A prospecting email, also called a “cold email”, is a message sent to a person or company with whom you do not yet have an established relationship. The aim of this one is to present your solution, generate interest and ideally, initiate a commercial dialogue. This type of communication is essential for businesses looking to build their customer base as well as those looking to reach a new target audience.

Of course, in order to have a prospecting email that converts, there are several factors to take into account when writing your message. We are going to go through them below. As a bonus, I'm going to give you our last reminder email which allows us to get feedback on the campaign.

The best practices of a prospecting email

Personalization

This personalization work is very important. The reader should feel that you know their business, their expertise and that you are genuinely interested in them. Before doing your email, it is important to do your targeting work to have businesses that are as similar as possible. This will allow you to personalize your message. In addition, it is important to have different information about your recipient. Name, first name, title, age of the company, sector of activity... the more information you have the more you can write an email that gives the impression that you wrote this email only for your prospect.

The subject of the email

The subject of the email is a very important point that should not be overlooked. It will represent the first hook that your reader will have with you. It is therefore important that your email subject is clear and concise; long and vague objects should be avoided. In some cases, you can also personalize your email subject with the name of your recipient. However, at Prospilot, we don't recommend customizing your items every time. Since it must be short, it is better to make objects of 2 or 3 words maximum that will intrigue your reader and make them want to open. He must not necessarily know that your email is a prospecting email and let doubts arise.

Be careful, however, it is important not to put an email subject which means that when opening the email he will be disappointed. It's also important to pay attention to spam words. These are words to avoid in email subjects if you don't want to end up in your recipient's spam. I made a complete article about it hither.

Short and relevant content

Too often, we have seen prospecting emails that are too long and poorly written. You have to stop with prospecting emails in which you want to tell everything, 3 sentences are enough:

• Focus on the problem: All you have to do is find out why your target audience would need your service or product and highlight the problem they are facing.
• Show an authoritative draft solution to the problem.
• The call to action: It is important to add a link Calendly for an exchange, a redirection to your product... The aim is to allow him to find more information about you or your company if the email intrigued him.

The follow-up

Finally, when you are going to do prospecting by email, you are not going to be satisfied with a single email. You will carry out a campaign of several emails and you will try to vary the problem to which your product or service responds. Be careful, do not send your various emails in too close a period of time. We recommend that you leave at least one week apart. In addition, at Prospilot, we always end our campaign with an email allowing us to get a lot of feedback. It's at the bottom of this post 😉

Bad prospecting practices

Generic prospecting email

It is important to personalize emails. If your message is too generic or a simple copy and paste, recipients can easily identify it. An email that gives the impression that the same one is sent to several people will not provide an exclusive effect on your recipient and therefore no response.

Content too long

It's important to show that you respect your reader's time. We all know that by sending prospecting emails, you are not expected. In addition, the people you contact are going to be interrupted at work with potentially a lot of tasks to do. Finally, the longer the message, the less likely your the reader will read it out of laziness. Your email will therefore only be hovered over or even deleted directly.

The “I” and “we” that are all too present

It is important to show that you are sending a message to explain the problem that the reader is probably facing. You are going to show that you know him and that you can take action. That is why the message should be focused on your prospect and not on the success or success of your business. Focus on their needs and how you can help them!

Omit CTAs

The purpose of your prospecting email is to trigger a reaction or an interaction. That's why it's important to put these calls to action that will tell your reader what guidelines to follow in a subtle way. Let me give you a more concrete example:

If your goal is to communicate in person with a prospect following your prospecting email, it is important to put a CTA. You will put a Calendly link for example so that the recipient can make an appointment on your calendar.

If your goal is to discover a product, you can put a button that redirects to your website. The product you are talking about in the message will then be more detailed. He can then continue his journey thanks to the other CTAs that will be present on your site and that will continue to guide him.

Example of the last prospecting email for our campaigns

In most of our email campaigns, we add an email that generates a lot of return. And today I am giving it to you!

Purpose: Connecting

{{title}} {{lastName}},

I couldn't reach you and don't want to spam you.

Is {{your solution}} a topic for you?
1. Yes
2. Instead, talk to...
3. No thanks

Regards,

{{signature}}

This email works very well for getting feedback. First of all, the email subject is intriguing because we don't know exactly what the email means. In addition, we explain not wanting to be pushy. Finally, we offer three choices and many prospects thus respond directly with the numbers. We regularly change the 2 by putting “Yes, but it's not the right time”.

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