Cold Email Copywriting - A Quick Guide

Chapter 1 - Cold Email Copywriting Basic Principles

Cold Email Copywriting, in essence, is a way of quickly, easily, and effectively conveying the value that your product or service has, as well as enticing the person reading it to want to a) learn more or b) purchase the product or service.

It’s key in cold email that not a word is wasted- every sentence should serve a strong purpose

A lot of companies get this wrong- they try to go on a long-winded spiel about their offering. They talk about their inception story, their founder’s background, the 10 different value propositions they have, etc. etc.

People reading emails don’t want this. They want something simple, to the point, and actionable.

You should approach copywriting from a psychology perspective. Here are a few psych components that I constantly keep in mind.

• People don’t care about your product. They just don’t. However much you care about your product, divide that by 100, and they probably still don’t even care about it that much.
• People respond to sales emails with emotion. There is of course a logical element to it, which is why desperate emails don’t work. However, the problem statement and your resolution to that problem statement should invoke an emotional response. Not a strong one, but emotional nonetheless. Here are some emotions they should feel:
• Slight worry or discomfort when the problem statement is read
• Slight hope or encouragement when your value prop is conveyed
• General trust in what you’re saying, which is due to the natural flow and cadence of the email. This last one is important, and also the most intangible. Look at the difference between these two sentences:

Patrick- I saw your company recently raised a round but have not improved sales function yet. We can fix that.        

Hey Patrick! Congrats on the round, super exciting. Noticed you haven’t been hiring sales executives since the raise- any reason why?        

I’m not even saying that either of these is better, but they convey different tones and it’s important to understand the tone of your email. Invoke emotion with tone

• People have short attention spans. Even if they cared a lot about your product, they might not read your 3-page email on it. Even if they do, they’ll forget most of it by the time you’re on the sales call.

Keep these in mind- copywriting is an art, one involving emotions and the ability to convey ideas clearly.

Chapter 2 - Brainstorming Your Copy

Before ever writing copy, you should think about it deeply. Otherwise, even if you have good first principles, you won’t apply those principles to the right value prop, offer, etc., and the whole thing isn’t worth it.

Some things to think about:

• Who are you targeting in this campaign?
• What is the main value add of your product or service to the people that you’re targeting?
• What are some residual or other value adds of your offering that are notable enough to be potentially mentioned in an email?
• What is your CTA?
• What sort of things can you offer in exchange for your CTA?
• What is the kind of tone that your target audience would be the most receptive to?

I recommend writing these things down and marinating on them for a while. Once you’ve done that, work on the following frameworks:

• If there was only one thing I could convey to the prospect in order to close them, what would it be?
• What is the second-best value prop I have if the prospect wasn’t interested in the first thing?
• What is the best possible offer I could make to the prospect to convert them to my product or service without losing money or considering the interaction a waste of time for me?
• What is the most relevant thing that I can say to them to get their attention in a first line?

Write these down- they will guide you through the copywriting process.

Chapter 3 - Writing Your First Sales Email

The following structure is the one I use for almost every “Email 1” I write:

Intro line

Ideally personalized

Should be relevant to the problem that you’re eventually pitching- for example, saw your post about AI and thought this might be of interest to you.

Problem Statement

This should be a solid guess as to the problem the company is facing, based on data that you’ve collected about them. For example, if a person is hiring an SDR, they likely need someone to help close more deals. This is a problem for them.

If someone recently got hired for a role, they likely are trying to make a splash at the company in the early days. This is a puzzle they must solve and could be assisted by your solution

Value Prop

The value prop should tie directly into the problem statement. For example, if the problem of a dentist’s office is that they are having negative yelp reviews about rodents in the office, as an exterminator you should be providing a direct solution to that.

A Nice to Have - Social Proof

If you have it, establishing trust with a case study can make your copy even better. Bonus points if they have a notable name and are in the same industry as the company that you’re reaching out to.

Offer

The offer is arguably the most important element of a cold email. A good offer can make the rest of the aforementioned elements less important.

When writing an offer, think to yourself, how much can I profitably and reasonably give a prospect in exchange for a meeting or purchase? How can I make this deal for them as sweet as possible?

The offer should also be relevant to your value prop. Back to the dentist example, doing a free in-person audit of the problem would be valuable to the person. Even better, make the offer that they don’t even pay until all of the rodents are exterminated. Make it so enticing that unless you’re a scam, it would be foolish for the person facing the problem to say no.

Some other points:

• Keep it under 100 words, the shorter the better
• Keep the text simple- ideally, a 5th grader can understand it

Chapter 4 - Writing Your Follow Ups

The following follow-up structure is what I use for almost all of my campaigns:

• Second Email - Value prop at a different angle

The second email is the second attempt at getting their attention. The first one obviously wasn’t good enough, but if you used your best intro line, value prop, and offer, then there’s not much you can do other than attack the problem from a different angle. This is that attempt.

Think about that second-best value prop that you wrote down- this will be the backbone for this email. Use the same principles applied to the first email, but for the new value prop, almost as if you didn’t even email them the first time.

• Third Email - Make the offer better

I know that in theory, you already used your best offer, but it’s time to grit your teeth and offer even more value.

I do this because in your first go at developing your “best offer”, almost everyone goes short and tells themselves “I don’t need to offer all of that- they’ll love my product even without it!”

Well, they didn’t. We sent them two emails and they still ignored you. Guess it’s time to finally do what you should’ve done in the first email.

For general structure, I usually re-word the middle half of the email. For the intro line, I come up with something less personalized and more generic. No need to waste the data enrichment credits on a third email’s intro line. For the last sentence, I replace it with my better one.

• Fourth Email - Ask if there’s someone better at the company to reach out to about your solution

Self-explanatory. If there's a chance you didn't reach the right decision maker the first time, then make sure you find them on the fourth email.

Chapter 5 - Personalization

Personalization is a key function to your outbound. It provides that touch of emotion that cannot be invoked by a pre-written email, as well as provides significantly more relevance to the prospect. If you do personalization right, it can even add value. Here are some personalizations you should always use:

• {{firstName}} - if you don’t have their name in the email, just give up before you get started.
• {{companyName}} - make sure to mention their company at some point- also, make sure it sounds like you’re actually writing it. Here’s a bad example of {{companyName}} personalization:“I saw that you recently hired new sales executives at The Kiln, LLC, a Blueberry Company.”Here’s a better example:“I saw that you recently hired sales executives at The Kiln”

Those small details matter.

Honestly, those are the only two you always need. That might be surprising because you’ve likely heard from everyone else you need way more. This might be especially surprising coming from the founder of a sales automation agency. However, if your offer is good enough, that’s all you need.

For example, if your offer is- “I just PayPal’ed you $1,000,000, all you have to do to keep me from filing a claim and getting it back is hopping on a 10 min call with me,” then you don’t need a lick of personalization.

Of course, though, most offers aren’t good enough for no personalization. 90% of the time, your offer will require personalization. Here’s how to make sure it’s good:

• Make it relevant to the problem you solve.It shouldn’t just be relevant to the company’s mission, or the person you’re reaching out to. It should be directly addressing some aspect of their problem or your value prop.Unless your entire goal is to build a relationship with the person and not sell them anything, saying “Saw you went to Penn State - go lions!” will seem disingenuous and it’s better to just get to the point without trying to get buddy-buddy with them. Be relevant to their problemA better personalization (for the example of a Clay agency) - “Saw that you have 24 SDRs at {{companyName}} with 30 more job openings. Figured you might be interested in a way to make your SDRs more effective without hiring any more”

You don’t have to just use it in an intro line, either. One of my favorite go-to’s, credit to Eric Nowoslawski , is to have AI generate a bulleted list of ideas on how your product can improve theirs, based on their company description or website info. That’s a literal value add, for free.

Remember, the goal with personalization is to get the prospect closer to wanting to act upon your CTA. All personalization should go through this filter.

Chapter 6: Example Copy

The following is some example copy that I wrote for Horti, a plant delivery service that was trying to get more prospects for their corporate gifting offering.

Targeting:

• Companies in the United States, 50+ employees, in Tech (go to industries, look for software and hardware companies)
• Have raised a round (series A to series F) recently, are hiring, OR have headcount growth
• Export 500 companies for each trigger, create a separate Apollo list for each trigger
• Job Titles: CHRO, Head of HR, HR Manager, Head of Brand, Head of Operations, Head of Recruiting, Head of Marketing, CMO

Personalizations:

• {{personalizationLine}} - dependent on the trigger
• {{mission}} - what the company is good at doing or is trying to achieve
• {{plant}} - custom plant recommended by AI based on the mission of the company
• {{reason}} - artistic reason as to why that flower is a reflection of the company’s mission
• {{plant suggestions}} - plants that are naturally found in the location that the company resides- they must be plants that can fit in a small office comfortably

Copy:

Email 1:

Hey {{firstName}},

{{personalizationLine}}

Horti provides employee plant gifts that elevate the vibe of a workspace and are even proven to improve concentration.

Because {{companyName}} is focused on {{mission}}, maybe you could gift employees a {{plant}}, {{reason}}

Any interest in a free plant consultation for {{companyName}}?

Email 2:

{{firstName}},

Was checking out {{companyName}}’s LinkedIn and noticed that you’re located in {{location}}.

Thought that your team might want some beautiful plants in the office to match the style of {{location}}’s nature, such as {{plant suggestions}}.

Horti provides plants to companies like {{companyName}}, so you can gift employees with a companion to grow with them while in their role.

Google and Verizon are customers- any interest in joining them to make your employees’ workspaces more beautiful?

Email 3:

{{firstName}} — figured that while the {{companyName}} team is locked in on {{mission}}, you’d want to be surrounded by more greenery to keep you refreshed.

Plants can keep the air in your workspace cleaner while also improving concentration by more than 19% simply from their presence.

Any interest in a free plant consultation, as well as an office visit to help with plant design and ideation for {{companyName}}?

Email 4:

Is there anyone else that would be better to talk to about a plant gifting program at {{companyName}}?

As you can see, it’s pretty simple. Just follows first principles, but has a creative twist to it and has gotten really solid reception so far.

Chapter 7 - Writing Subsequences

Subsequences are emails that auto-send based on a certain situation. For example, if you get back an OOO email, you can have a subsequence that sends them a follow-up a week later. It’s super useful for managing large volumes of email, as well as showing care to your prospects in times where other people sending emails don’t.

Subsequences are going to be a short chapter for me because I’m very stingy about when I write them.

In essence, you should only have subsequences ready in cases where your auto-generated answer will absolutely be the right one. Like, if someone requests information, you shouldn’t have a subsequence ready for that situation because you have no idea what they actually requested. If they ask for your pricing and you send them one of your case studies, that’s a big fumble.

I don’t even write subsequences for if someone wants a meeting. It’s better to match their tone in the follow-up message and send one that directly responds to what they said.

Honestly, the only situation where you should for sure write them is for OOO. Otherwise, you need to vibe check before sending anything back. Automation doesn’t vibe check that well.

Chapter 8 - Wrapping Things Up

Cold email copywriting is very vibe-heavy. Don’t discount this fact. All of the principles outlined in this article are important, and without them, you will likely fail. However, vibes serve a powerful role. They’re important too. Sound open, excited, and most importantly trustworthy in your emails. Use your creativity to approach your prospect’s problem with finesse, use logic more to offer a unique and differentiated solution, and wrap the whole thing up with an offer that they can’t say no to. Those things combined, ideally, can help bring you and your business a little bit (or a lot) closer to success.

If you're ever interested in having us do cold email for you, I run an agency called The Kiln that leverages Clay to write super personalized cold email. Feel free to reach out!