For many of you, the most important aspect of email is quite simple. It’s the ask (aka the pitch).

That’s everything from cold asking potential clients for consulting jobs, to cold asking websites for writing gigs, to cold asking a prominent blogger for a guest post.

Over the course of your entrepreneurial life, there’s a chance you’re going to send hundreds, if not thousands, of these types of emails, so the sooner you can get comfortable with them, the better.

Have you ever had something similar to the following happen?

You’ve decided you want to expand your SEO business and start targeting some more local businesses like dentists and doctors. You know, potential clients who have the money to spend, and would see an increase in business from improving their local SEO.

You get a list of doctors and dentists in your local area from your VA and get ready to start sending out some cold emails.

You craft an email that will cover the needs of most of the clients that you can use as a template. You don’t spend time searching the sites to see what could be improved. Instead, you just plow through, sending the same email to everyone on that list.

Now, it’s just sitting back and wait for the new clients to roll in.

Right? Wrong.

What happens instead?

Crickets. You can see that people opened the emails, but you didn’t get any responses.

What gives?

In this chapter, we’re going cover issues just like this one and what went wrong.

How to Approach a Cold Email

A cold pitch is a term for reaching out to someone (it could be in person, via phone, or over email) to pitch them when you don’t know them or have any connection at all.

Think about how you might get one of those telemarketers calling your cell phone at dinner time offering some vacation deal.

That’s a cold pitch (and yes, also annoying).

We’re going to show you how to be just a little bit better, ok a lot better, than a telemarketer. The truth is, even if you feel like cold emailing is hard, it’s easier than you might think it is.

One of the biggest things to remember about a cold email is you have to approach it a bit differently than normal. The main reason is obvious: you don’t know the person, and they don’t know you.

So, yes that can put you at a disadvantage at first, as it means they are more likely to simply delete any emails they get from people they don’t recognize.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible because most people don’t have the secret weapon that we have, preparation.

With the new ‘freelancing economy,” more and more people are trying to land that first gig, get a bigger client, or develop new relationships with influential people.

And, most of them are looking to do it by figuring out “email hacks,” the quick and easy ways to send out tons of emails and hope for a 2% response rate.

One of the biggest keys to success in cold emailing isn’t a secret at all; it’s good old-fashioned hard work.

Sexy? No. But the results speak for themselves.

6 Things Every Cold Email Must Have

First, we’ll look at what you need to include in your cold emails.

1. Keep Them Short

You have to respect the time of the people you are contacting. These people are super busy, both influencers and businesses have limited time each day. When you send a short email, you’re letting them know that you value their time.

Our best tip:

Keep your email between 5-10 sentences when you can. Aim to have your email be no more than about 200 words long. While that seems pretty short, remember emails are not nearly as wide as a Word document, so 200 words seem much longer.

2. Make it Easy to Say Yes

One of the best ways to get a positive response back quickly is by making it easy for the people you’re reaching out to respond to. So if you want to book a call, tell them a time and date you’ll call, or if you’re pitching your service, make it very appealing to work together.

Our best tip:

End your email with a question. Use phrases like “So what do you think?” or “Are you interested?” to make it about as easy as possible for the person you are pitching to simply click reply and say yes.

3. Do Your Research

We love the idea of researching the people you’re cold-emailing. If you don’t do this step, then honestly, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for disaster. Without any research, you cannot set yourself apart or make a connection with the people you are pitching.

Our best tip:

Use that research as a way to build rapport. There are few things people love more than having other people tell them they’re awesome. The more research you do, the better arsenal you have to remind them of all the things you love about them.

4. Be Specific

Wonder why you never seem to get a response to your cold emails? It could be because your emails are too vague. When you send an email that’s all over the place, you’re not going to get much of a response. This goes for any examples, achievements, and social proof you use.

Our best tip:

Whenever you get ready to send an email that’s a cold email, know the one point you want to get across in that email. If a sentence doesn’t relate to or highlight that one point, then you need to remove it.

5. Have a Call to Action

Remember, even though you are just sending an email, you are still selling yourself. Just like you would have a call to action on a sales page, you want to include the same in your email, make it clear the action you want your reader to take.

Our best tip:

Include specific next steps, either the steps you are going to take, or you want the person you’re emailing to take. So that could be telling them you’ll follow up in two days, or asking them to reply with their biggest problem so you can get back to them with a solution.

6. Give an Escape

Sometimes when you email someone, it just isn’t a fit. It could be they aren’t able to do want you want, or just don’t want to. Because of that, you want to give them an easy way to get out of the situation without making it uncomfortable for you or them.

Our best tip:

As you close out your emails, give them an easy way to escape. Saying something like “And if this isn’t for you, I totally understand as well” can go a long way towards making the recipient feel like they have a choice.

 Next, we’ll check some out-of-the-box tactics for cold contacting.