Can ChatGPT help you write converting cold emails?

ChatGPT is an AI-powered writing assistant that is now used for all sorts of things, from helping you communicate and get ideas to using it as a consultant or just a chat friend.

As its popularity increased over the past half a year, we wanted to put it to the test and check if ChatGPT can help you write effective cold emails that convert.

In theory, with its advanced language processing capabilities, ChatGPT can analyze your target audience and help you craft personalized messages that resonate with them. It can suggest powerful subject lines, compelling opening paragraphs, and persuasive calls to action that can capture the attention of your recipients and prompt them to take action.

So, as our main expertise as a leading sales data and outreach tool, we wanted to check what comes out of some queries related to cold email outreach and put the results under the microscope.

The method we used to ask ChatGPT for cold email templates

The usage of ChatGPT is very simple and straightforward for any purpose, you just need to open chat.openai.com and insert a prompt regarding your needed information.

A prompt is a set of instructions that an AI-based software requires in order to initiate a conversation. In ChatGPT, this is especially important as the AI software has no prior knowledge or context with which to work on its own, the prompt should be as detailed as possible so that ChatGPT can craft a meaningful response based on the information you provide.

A simple and straightforward prompt we used to get the first email template was “Write a converting email template for B2B”.

Of course, from a human side, the generated template can be processed and analyzed and you can also regenerate the response if you think you are missing some details, or the first response does not fit your query as much as it could.

Judging by the first attempts, ChatGPT could really help you in getting a rough idea and crafting the corpus of your cold email template by including all the necessary information you shouldn't forget in your first cold email outreach.

ChatGPT also considers that you'll be using personalization with custom tags or placeholders and inserts them within the template.

Another benefit of using ChatGPT when crafting cold emails is the built-in conversational tool. This allows users to build up complex topics and draw out extra details as they go along, for example, you can communicate with ChatGPT to create sequential cold emails for the entire cold email sequence.

In our next prompt, we asked for a follow-up email template for cold outreach.

A direct follow-up email template, including a related subject line, was produced also including some call-to-action elements.

Finally, we wanted to see if we can end up our quest for cold email templates with a break-up email template.?

ChatGPT recognized it as a final follow-up email for ending a cold email outreach sequence adding closing words in a direction a cold email communication should be finished.?

So far so good, but, we can't stop the analysis here, can we? So we took our next step in analyzing the content of the cold email, generated by ChatGPT according to the prompt we gave it. Are these templates really converting and can increase open, reply, and conversion rates for your business?

Content analysis of the AI-generated cold email templates by ChatGPT

To have one comprehensive cold email sequence to analyze based on content, we asked ChatGPT if it can help us generate a full cold email sequence.

Let's start with the generated subject line:?

Cold email outreach is a well-known and exploited method of sales, especially for B2B, and our experience shows that including personalization tags in the subject lines is the best approach for a high open rate, however, the part where you directly introduce your company in the subject, might trigger a sales pitch alert from the recipient.?

We also do recommend using your company name in the sender name, to be recognized immediately, however, a more creative approach is needed for grabbing the recipient's attention with the subject line.?

Let's follow up with the body of the email:?

The introduction is basic and usual for 90% of the cold email outreach templates, which suggests you've done your research about the company and you give a brief introduction of who you are, which is a proven approach for starting your email conversation with a potential client.?

However, the next sentence directly focuses on your company and what you do, which in most cases is perceived as selling your product in your first cold email, does not justify your legitimate interest assessment, and might trigger a negative reaction to your cold outreach.

Ending with the CTA:?

Immediate call-to-action to book a meeting by asking them for available slots on a specific date/time/period is the most convenient approach we've experienced so far. So a point to ChatGPT for this one.

Now let's examine the rest of the sequence.

Our first conclusion is that ChatGPT did a good estimation of generating 4 email templates for the full sequence in total. Email sequences with more than 5 email actions are in most cases received as aggressive and spamming, so keeping it on a 4 emails sequence is a point plus.

The sequence follows a natural flow of examining interest with a potential client, however, the sentences and wording might be perceived as too generic and our advice here is to do some tweaks and a bit of re-writing to give the template a human touch.?

The main goal of doing your sales automation is to not be detected as automated, but to look human-like as much as possible.

Main remarks and optimizations from a sales perspective

Email 1: Introduction

As analyzed above, the introduction email has a good base but doesn't tackle the pain point of the target audience directly. We would include a certain industry or more specific pain point that our solution could potentially solve for that client and by doing this explore legitimate interest based on common ground.

Email 2: Value proposition?

The best way to follow up on your legitimate interest is to present into more detail your value proposition. The only thing we could add to GhatGPT's template is an exact result of the proven track record of success, a number, or even a hyper-personalized image to show the potential client what's in it for them.?

Email 3: Social Proof

There is no better way to "convince" a potential than by giving them a reference of proven success. CTA could be played with, but the rest is A+

Email 4: Final Follow-up?

It has a standardized structure that can be used as a base, however, we've tested out different approaches, and the most converting one was when we included some humorous visual or statement, related to the target audience. Of course, this can’t be used for any audience, so if you want to be on the safe side, you can use the ChatGPTs template here.

The final verdict

Yes, ChatGPT can certainly help you write cold email templates, and give you a solid structure for an entire cold outreach sequence, even get great insights and direction on how to approach and what you include for a certain ICP.

In other words, you can get feedback from your mailing list in real-time and create emails specifically tailored to their preferences.

However, with the given analysis, we still have doubts that ChatGPT can outstand human creativity and will generate the most converting email templates that will help you convert leads into paying clients.?

But, with some tweaks here and there, we are most certain that ChatGPT will gain even more popularity with sales reps, copywriters, and entire sales teams for executing cold outreach smarter and faster.