Expert’s Take: How to Write Cold Emails That Actually Convert
David Miedzianowski
Cold outreach is often dismissed as an outdated tactic to attract new leads, but the data tells a different story. A recent study shows that more than 80% of buyers eventually accept a sales meeting after first being contacted by a cold email. That’s not just by luck: if you know how to write cold emails, your email marketing platforms can deliver one of the highest returns on any marketing channel.
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through crafting compelling emails and share the best practices of our marketing automation specialists for maximizing your cold outreach.
| Writing a Cold Call Email in 7 Steps | |
|---|---|
| Step | Goal |
| 1. Identify your audience | Understand who you are writing for to inform how you are writing your cold emails |
| 2. Understand your business goals | Define what you want your cold emails to achieve — whether it’s booking meetings, generating awareness, or nurturing prospects toward conversion |
| 3. Set your marketing automation platform for success | Warm up your IP to ensure a high email deliverability rate and set your cold email marketing campaigns for success |
| 4. Write a strong hook | Create an introduction that will resonate with your readers to boost credibility immediately |
| 5. Introduce your brand as a solution | Clearly connect your recipient’s pain points to your offering to position your brand as the answer to their challenges |
| 6. Keep next-steps non-commital | Offer easy next steps to keep barriers low and engagement high |
| 7. Experiment with email subject lines | Ensure your emails are enticing your users by performing an A/B test |
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How to craft cold cold emails
The success of your outreach hinges on the quality and strategy of your email deployment. When done right, you can even see a high email marketing ROI (up to 4200%!).
As with all other sales and marketing campaigns, let’s start by understanding who your target audience is.
1. Identify your audience
Just because you’re writing a cold email doesn’t mean you should write broadly. That means you have to establish your ideal customer profiles (ICP) before you begin writing.
By identifying your audience, you can determine not only what to write but also how to compel users to take the next step in their buyer’s journey.
EBQ Tip
Look at your past data to inform your future marketing campaigns! The first step in developing your buyer personas and ICPs is spotting patterns among your top buyers.
2. Understand your business goals
Sure, your goal could be to “grow revenue,” but you have to go beyond the surface to make a real impact within your marketing campaigns.
We find that a shared vision leads to stronger alignment between sales and marketing, helping you achieve a win rate increase of more than 30%.
Because cold emails are all about driving awareness, it’s best to align your goals at that same level. Focus on boosting brand awareness and engagement that move prospects further down the funnel, while keeping the broader business objectives in mind.
A few business goals that can translate to cold email goals are:
- Increase newsletter subscribers
- Increase sales meeting requests
- Increase webinar attendance
- Expanding reach within new market segments
3. Set your marketing automation platform for success
Contrary to many people’s belief, you can’t just send emails immediately after getting the tool integrated into your CRM platforms. You have to ensure email deliverability by warming up your IP and sending a small number of emails at a time. Ideally, you’ll need to build up at least 30 days of send history before your IP is considered warmed up and ready to send mass emails.
Email deliverability is more than just a metric. It ensures that your emails reach your target audience’s inboxes. Otherwise, your emails will land in the dreaded spam folder, or worse, get bounced back altogether.
EBQ Tip
Standing up a marketing automation platform requires an expert’s guidance. Our marketing automation experts are more than just tool implementers; they take the time to understand your unique CRM and marketing automation setup and workflows to architect a custom solution for you.
Learn more about our Marketing Automation Consulting Services →
4. Write a strong hook
Now’s the time to write your email content. Keep in mind that you only have seconds to keep a reader engaged, so you need to make sure you start your emails strong.
We recommend starting your cold emails by stating a problem that relates to your audience. What keeps them up at night? By addressing these anxieties, you’ll be able to foster a deeper connection with the audience built on understanding.
Here are a few examples of topics you can start your emails with:
- A recent cybersecurity data leak that is affecting your vertical
- How AI is reshaping your industry’s landscape
- The challenge of long B2B sales cycles and how teams are struggling to book meetings
- New regulations or compliance changes impacting your audience’s operations
- A recent merger or acquisition in your prospect’s industry and what it means for competitors
- Success stories or benchmarks from companies similar to your recipient’s
5. Introduce your brand as a solution
As a general email marketing best practice, you should keep your emails between 50-200 words long.
With this limited copy availability, it forces your copywriters to write more succinctly; therefore, you should immediately position your product or services as a solution immediately after stating the problem.
EBQ Tip
For more expert tips on how to write compelling email copy, check out “10 Email Content Best Practices to Boost Click-Through Rates”.
6. Keep next-steps non-commital
As we mentioned before, the people who are receiving your cold emails are just discovering you. If you push for a sale now, you risk turning off your reader — thus losing them altogether.
Remember: The goal of your cold emails is to get your readers to know you and maybe even become interested in your brand.
Asking your readers to subscribe to your newsletter or schedule a five-minute chat lowers your barriers, which reduces your chances of getting an unsubscribe request.
7. Experiment with email subject lines
Your subject line acts as the gatekeeper of your email. While open rates are no longer considered a reliable KPI, you still want to write persuasive email subject lines to entice users to open your emails. Make sure you A/B test multiple variations over time to find what resonates best with your target audience.
That said, take the time to understand spam filters and how they can affect your email deliverability rate. In short, emails often go to your recipients’ spam folder because your emails have triggered their spam detection — whether it’s from your current email or your past email history. By learning what triggers email spam filters, you’ll be able to make sure your emails are actually landing in your audience’s inbox.
Download the Ultimate B2B Appointment Setting Guide
Use our guide to increase your company’s revenue with appointment-setting strategies you can use to close more deals.
Elevate your cold email marketing today.
Cold outreach isn’t dead; it’s evolved. With the right strategy, your messages can open doors to valuable business conversations.
Take the time to refine your email copy, respect your audience’s inbox, and continuously test your approach. When you focus on relevance and timing, you’ll find that even a “cold” email can spark a warm opportunity.
If you’re ready to turn your cold email strategy into a consistent pipeline driver, EBQ’s Email Marketing team can help. Our specialists handle every part of your outreach — from data sourcing and campaign setup to copywriting, automation, and performance tracking.
About the Author:
David is a Revenue Cycle Consultant at EBQ who leverages his experience as a former VP of Sales to align sales and marketing teams for measurable results. With expertise in B2B digital marketing and demand generation, he helps businesses optimize strategies for long-term success.