Matthew's 7 Steps for B2B Cold Email Outreach

Cold email outreach is a crucial strategy for B2B businesses, but it often presents significant challenges.

Many companies struggle to capture their audience's attention amidst a sea of generic messages that fill inboxes daily. Crafting the perfect subject line, striking the right tone, and delivering a clear value proposition can feel like navigating a minefield.

It's no wonder that only 24% of sales emails actually get opened.

In this article, I'll share 7 essential steps to help you overcome these challenges and create cold emails that stand out and convert.

These steps have helped me to surpass open rate goals and identify sales prospects with a monthly contract value in the tens of thousands of dollars.

1) Identify your key performance indicators (KPIs).

? Make sure that your KPIs follow the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely).??

? Create KPIs related to metrics such as open rates, clickthrough rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversion rates.

2) Research your target companies and contacts.

? To research target companies, read through the About Us and News sections on your companies’ websites. Also look through all the companies’ LinkedIn posts from the past 30 days.

? To research target contacts, read through the LinkedIn profiles of the key decision makers at your target companies. Consider factors such as job title, industry, and work history.?

? Conduct interviews and surveys with existing customers who have similar needs to your prospects.

3) Identify segments.

? Create segments based on factors that impact on client needs and preferences. These factors might include company size, industry, and purchase history.?

? You can also create segments based on elements of the email itself, such as subject line, body copy, and CTA.

? Only test one variable per campaign. Otherwise, you will not be able to make meaningful conclusions.

4) Create personas.????

? Based on the research that you did in step #2, create a detailed persona for each segment.?

? Your personas should include the following details:

a) Basic demographic information (age, gender, location, etc.)

b) The size and industry of the company that the persona works for?

c) Job title and level of decision-making authority

d) Personality

e) Pain points

f) Goals

5) Write your subject line and body copy.?

? The subject line should be 30 to 50 characters long. It should seek to spark curiosity.?

? Common techniques for sparking curiosity include:??

a) Personalizing the subject line with the recipient’s first name

b) Using all lowercase letters

c) Asking questions

d) Adding emojis

? The body copy should be written in the second person, and it should aggravate the recipient’s pain points.?

? The body copy should conclude with a CTA that presents your product or service as the solution.

6) Craft a visually appealing email template.?

? Include your company logo at the top of the email.

? To make your text easy to read, write your body copy in short paragraphs of 1-3 lines.

? Create a CTA at the end of your body copy.?

? Beneath the CTA, include your physical mailing address, social media links, and an unsubscribe button.

? See how the template looks on both desktop and mobile. Also see how the template looks in dark mode.?

? When you’re all done, add your email copy to the template.

7) Analyze your performance.?

? Monitor your campaign’s performance against the KPIs.?

? Analyze which emails performed the best and which ones performed the worst.?

? Seek to explain why underperforming emails did poorly. Use your insights as the basis for future email campaigns.

Conclusion

B2B clients have highly specific needs that require detailed research to uncover. A generic email blast won't work.

At the same time, you must balance personalization with scalability. Even if your email copy is superbly written, it won't have much sales impact if it takes too long to develop and gets sent to too few people.

By following the 7 steps in this article, you can craft B2B emails that are both well-researched and deployable at scale.

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