In this week’s Tactic Tuesday, we are going to discuss six things we recommend you stop saying in your B2B cold email messages. These recommendations are very small changes that are easy to implement, and they could lead to an immediate improvement in how your prospects receive your cold emails (and DMs).
I Offer You a Different Perspective
I am a salesperson and I send cold emails every day. But because my title on LinkedIn and in contact databases is CEO, I am also a prospect for many salespeople, and I get between 50 and 100 cold emails and DMs per day. Because of this, I am able to understand what the prospects you are trying to sell to feel like and possibly think. And I can bring that to you as we work together to try to optimize your email messages.
One of the main observations I can share with you is that when you receive numerous cold emails, you first look for reasons to quickly delete them. One of the easiest things to look for is whether the email is from a salesperson who is trying to sell something. Once that is identified, you can quickly delete and move on to the next one.
Decrease Looking Like a Salesperson
If you agree with that and think it is safe to assume your prospects are doing the same thing, then we can slow down how quickly our emails get deleted by decreasing how much we look like a salesperson who is trying to sell something. And if we can just do that, we can slightly improve the cold emails we are sending.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that we mislead the prospects we are emailing or misrepresent who we are and why we are emailing them. But there are things most salespeople say in their cold emails that completely flag them as being a salesperson, and just about all of these are completely unnecessary and easy to avoid.
Don’t Say These Six Things
Here are six things I recommend you immediately stop saying and doing in your cold emails and DMs.
I hope you are doing well
The majority of cold emails I receive start with “I hope you are doing well.” Not all, but most. This is something nice to say when you are emailing someone you already know. However, if I read that at the beginning of an email from someone I don’t know, I usually don’t have to read much more to know I can delete the email.
Quick question
Many cold emails will either have “Quick Question” in the subject line or the first sentence. If the email is from someone I know, this gets my full attention. If I do not know the person who is saying “quick question”, I know it is a salesperson who is trying to sell something, and I can delete the email.
Name in subject line
A somewhat new trend in the past year or so is that a major portion of cold emails will have my first name in the subject line. This is probably a result of email automation software applications making it easy to personalize subject lines with fields from the CRM. This is a nice functionality, but since so many salespeople use this, when I see a subject line with ‘Michael’ in it, I know I can quickly delete the email.
Following back up / Checking back in / Circling Back / Bumping this up
One thing almost all salespeople do in the first sentence of their cold email is tell me what they are doing in terms of starting out by saying:
I am following back up with you.
I am checking back in.
I am circling back up with you.
I am bumping this up in your inbox.
Not only does this flag the sender as a salesperson because so many of them do this, but it also creates a frame where the sender is chasing the prospect by making it clear that there is some sort of pursuit going on, and that is definitely signaling “a salesperson who is trying to sell something.”
However, another interesting aspect of stating this at the beginning of the email is that it is completely unnecessary and does not add any value to what the salesperson is trying to achieve. Just send your second, third, or fourth email. You do not need to tell the prospect that you are following back up or checking back in.
Asking if the email has been seen or read
Another thing that many salespeople do that negatively impacts the cold email with no upside is that they will often ask if I have had a chance to read or see the previous email they sent. Not only does this create a more annoying and pesky vibe coming from the sender’s side, but it definitely makes clear the sender is a salesperson who is trying to sell something and is in pursuit mode.
Asking if you are interested
Some emails will have a closing question in them, either in the middle or toward the end, that looks something like:
Are you interested in that?
Is this something you would be interested in?
Would you be interested in that?
When I see that and I do not know who the sender is or what they are talking about, I know they are a salesperson who is trying to sell something, and I can quickly delete their email.
Implementing These Recommendations
All of these recommendations can be implemented without changing your cold email messages and strategy. And while there is always room for improvement with what we say in our messages, taking a first step of eliminating some of these more salesy and annoying things should get a small improvement in cold email performance by slowing down how quickly the emails get deleted.
