So, let’s check out the most effective cold email templates and outreach strategies, and see how to use them properly.
When sending a cold email to your prospects, try to find a proper occasion for it. For example, show that this is not a mass email campaign by mentioning an event they recently participated in. Thus, your prospects see that you are interested in contacting them personally, and, at least, have done some research before sending a message. That’s a great point to start a conversation.
That’s the name of a famous marketing formula which stands for Attention –– Interest –– Desire –– Action. It outlines the steps you’ll need to take:
AIDA cold email template:
The AIDA approach follows a logical pattern –– that’s the secret of why it almost always works. It’s impossible to make someone take action until they understand why they should be interested. And you can’t have their interest without grabbing attention. So, the successful AIDA cold email needs to contain all those components.
This template fits most when you are not sure if you have the right point of contact. Like, you’ve found a company that may be interested in your product, but you can’t identify the right person to outreach. So, keep your message as short as possible –– literally no more than three sentences, and quickly get to the point.
The more-is-less approach delivers excellent results in other cases, too. The 3-sentence model is great when you are outreaching to senior-level professionals, who are always busy and don’t have time to closely read every email.
As it is quite obvious from the name, using this template we offer the prospects to imagine their lives after using your product or service. That’s a simple, but very effective formula.
To do that, paint a picture of them without your solution, then show the life after it and how they differ from each other. Your product becomes a kind of a bridge between these two worlds, alleviating the prospect’s problems.
BAB technique is great for cold email outreach because rather than blindly praising a product, such a message stays focused on the prospect’s needs.
This template is relevant for cases when you address someone who already uses a product similar to yours. Then, highlight your product’s USP in a few sentences, and show why it’s better than the one your prospects are currently using.
That’s the pessimistic opposite to the BAB model. You throw a spotlight on your prospect’s pain points and highlight existing problems. Then you emphasize the pain, and only after that offer a solution to eliminate or reduce the prospect’s issue.
Using this technique, you don’t give your prospects relief from resolved problems. Instead, you make them face the pain, allowing for a brief glimpse of optimism at the thought that you might be able to take it away.
Three components of PPP:
This formula is rooted in human psychology, that’s why it almost always works.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to grab your readers’ attention is to share some valuable and relevant information with them, like articles, videos, scientific researches, statistics, etc.
Use this cold email template when you need to reach out to the customer that visited your website a few weeks or months ago.
That’s a kind of “sharing a valuable resource” technique. As it is clear from its name, you announce an upcoming event to the potential customer and offer an attractive discount to make them interested.
The best way to make your potential customers interested in your products or services is to offer to try them for free. Or, it is possible to give some premium content or service for free.
After the prospect tries your free services, it is appropriate to send a follow-up for feedback.
“Offering a free trial” cold email template:
Follow-up template:
In our recent blog post on how to write a cold email, we’ve highlighted the basics of cold emailing and the key principles of an effective message. We’ve also mentioned that it is not recommended to use templates when creating emails, and one should try to make every message personalized. And now we’re writing an article about cold email templates –– quite illogical, huh? Let us explain ourselves.
Templates can become a great starting point for your cold email. But sending 100% templated messages is never a good idea: they look like impersonal mass-mailings and are likely to end up in spam. On the other hand, sending 100% personalized emails can be inefficient and time-prohibitive.
To reach the best results, never copy a template and send it as is. Use a cold email template as a skeleton for a future message. Adapt the message to fit the tone and style of the sender: it will save you from the embarrassing mistake of sending the same email as a competitor. Take the template and flesh it out to create a unique offer for your prospect –– that will help you to stand out from the dozens of other cold emails they receive daily.
There are several rules to follow when using cold email templates –– we observed them in our previous article, so let’s just go through them briefly.
What works for other businesses may not work for yours. If you read an article like “This Cold Email Template Has Brought Me $10M Client in Two Days”, you might be tempted to copy this template and start sending it to your prospects. But the results may disappoint you. Sure, the template played a role in this deal, but so did the industry, the product, the price point, the location, and dozens of other factors.
Here comes the most crucial point: templates should become your inspiration, not a rigid rule to follow. Get inspired by a nice template, but don’t forget to adapt it to your needs.
Before sending a cold email template, do some research. Spend several hours reading about your prospects, to make the email relevant and personalized. Using facts about your receivers, you can make dozens of different offers from a single template.
The message above is a great example of a cold email for a job search. We see that the sender has studied the information about the company he’s trying to apply to. He doesn’t praise himself –– he just shows the way he can contribute to the company’s development.
Here we come to one of the most common mistakes. Lots of those who write cold emails think that they should tell a recipient more about them, their skills, and their talents. In their opinion, it attracts the prospect’s attention and shows that collaboration with them will be the best choice. Very often it looks just like nothing more than bragging.
So, how to persuade another person to accept your conditions? The only way to do that is to show what’s good about your proposition for the recipient. Highlight its most prominent features and gently connect them with possible benefits for the prospect’s business.
As we already know from the previous article about cold emails, signature matters a lot, despite the fact that many people ignore it. Just a gentle reminder about the contents of it:
That’s it. No quotes of the day and favorite colors.
If there is no answer within several weeks, it is appropriate to send a follow-up email. The person may be busy and lose your message in the flow of others. Briefly remind them about the previous email and ask whether it was relevant. Be short and sweet.
Let’s sum up all the techniques from the article in the small table:
| Cold email formulas | When to use it |
| The AIDA way | Universal formula for any case, especially when trying to sell your product |
| The 3-sentence format | Fits most when you are not sure if you have the right point of contact/when you are trying to pitch senior-level employees |
| The before-after-bridge or BAB | A great formula to sell your products/services. |
| Mentioning the competitor | Use it, when you address someone who already uses a product similar to yours. |
| Problem-agitate-solve (PAS) | Another sales formula –– you throw a spotlight on your prospect’s pain points and highlight existing problems |
| Praise-picture-push (PPP) | Paint an attractive picture of what people could achieve with your product/service, and ask readers to commit. |
| Sharing a valuable resource | One of the quickest and easiest ways to grab your readers’ attention. |
| The “two things you should fix” email | Use it when you need to reach out to the customer that visited your website a few weeks or months ago. |
| The upcoming event + the discount | That’s a kind of “sharing a valuable resource” technique. Another way to make the reader interested. |
| Offering a free trial/free premium content or service | The best way to make your potential customers interested in your products or services is to offer to try them for free. |
Learn patience even with emails and you’ll do great. Practice more than one template, personalize and make them relevant, and, when the response comes back, enjoy the new connection.
