SEO Link Building Outreach: How To Write Cold Emails That Convert

In this guide, you're going to discover how to write a high converting email for your link building outreach campaign. 

If you want more backlinks, keep reading or just watch the video below:

You'll also learn:

• How to write one single email that generates 200+ backlinks (and my results so far)
• The rookie mistakes most people make when it comes to cold email
• Why most emails land in the spam inbox
• And how to really optimize your copy to ensure you get as many links as possible from your link building outreach

Now let's be honest, 99% of outreach emails are poor:

• Most of them go to the spam inbox
• They’re ignored by webmasters
• And when you're doing link building outreach, you're actually competing with potentially 20 or 30 other people who've sent a similar email that particular day!

So if you don't have the right knowledge to optimize your email campaign, you’re going to struggle... 

And that's what we're going to cover in this guide!

Want More Traffic?

If you want to discover the secrets of building high quality links at scale then make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel, because I’ll be releasing new guides and videos every single week. 

And just a quick bit about me:

I’ve managed dozens of link building campaigns, as you can see from my UpWork.com profile’s latest reviews:

I’m a full time link builder and I’ve tried, tested and experimented with a lot of link building techniques — so you’re going to get the results of hundreds of hours I’ve spent testing my campaigns

Now let's get into how to write a high converting email for your link building outreach campaign... 

Cold Email Mistakes You Should NEVER Make!

There’s a ton of mistakes people make when they're doing link building outreach.

And email is one of the first hurdles that most people get totally wrong. 

So first of all, I'm gonna run you through a couple of bad examples - and what you can do to avoid these mistakes. 

Example 1

So here's the first example as you can see below. 

Mistake #1: Poorly Optimised Subject Line

Let’s start with the basics:

The subject line has some weird file name in it here, and it's named ‘content contribution request’.

When you're writing an email subject line, whether that's for link building outreach or sales, you want to peak a bit of curiosity. 

And this email just doesn't do that.

If you’re a webmaster scrolling through your inbox and you saw this subject line, most of the time you’d hit the delete button.

Mistake #2: Sending Cold Email With MailChimp 

Also, this email was sent with MailChimp, which you shouldn’t use for cold email outreach. 

If you're gonna use outreach software, try Lemilst, Mailshake, or even Pitchbox instead. 

MailChimp really isn’t designed for cold email! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ban for using it.

Mistake #3: Mail Merge Fail

They also got the mail merge wrong. So you can see it says “first name”. 

Instead, it should say my name or my co-founder's name on the website. 

So right off the bat it's failed. 

Mistake #4: Not Using Plain Text

Also, the design has custom formatting. 

But when you're doing cold email outreach, you actually want to keep your emails in plain text. 

Because if you use formatting and design, it's a signal that you may be sending a promotional campaign. 

And therefore it’s more likely to land in spam, or the promotions tab on Gmail. 

What you really want to do is to send a plain text email, no formatting required. 

Mistake #5: Exclamation Marks

You should also avoid using exclamation marks, because spam filters can pick up certain characters. 

And if they see exclamation marks or the word ‘free’, ‘buy’ etc. then their email service provider will usually mark it as spam. 

Example 2

Mistake #1: Grammatical Errors

So again here, the subject line is doesn’t grab your attention - plus it’s grammatically wrong. 

You can also see that my GSuite actually marked it as spam too. 

Mistake #2: You Will Eventually Get Blocked Using A Gmail Account

Also it's sent from a gmail.com account, which you really shouldn't do. 

If you're going do cold email outreach, use a GSuite account instead because your email deliverability will be much higher with G Suite versus gmail.com! 

Also if you do send cold email with gmail.com, there’s 2 major problems:

1. First of all, you're not gonna look very legit, because you're not sending from a company URL

2. And if you're sending a lot of emails from gmail.com, then you're probably going to get your account blocked because it's a free account - Gmail doesn't like it

...It's basically a very easy way to get your account blocked. 

Mistake #3: Poor Copywriting

Now let's move on to the actual copy of the email:

“Hi” is a little bit generic, there are far better ways to grab someone's attention than just saying hi.

(I'll come onto those techniques later.)

Mistake #4: Not Building Rapport

It’s also kind of rude:

• Instead of saying, "Let me know," it should say, "Please let me know." 
• And there’s “no thank you” or anything like that. 
• Plus also says, "I would need a courtesy back to my website in a form of a link”. 

There’s definitely ways to be much more charismatic and polite in your email copy...

How To Write Your Email

Now, by the way, I’m not saying I'm perfect at writing cold email...

In fact, there’s no such thing:

But I can definitely give you some pointers in the way of how to optimize your campaign because I’ve experimented with dozens of outreach campaigns.

And just so you can see some of the results I'm getting, here’s a campaign I’ve sent out recently.

• You can see a 69% open rate, which is pretty high - usually it's around or 40-50%
• And you can see a 33% reply rate to my cold email campaign. Usually that’s below 10% for a skyscraper campaign

Now if you want to truly optimise your campaign, I’m going to teach you how to start getting reactions like this:

And this:

You see, copywriting can make or break your link building campaign:

And even a tiny improvement in your copy will make a huge difference to your results. 

Examples

Now let's get into some of the examples of campaigns that actually work...

So this email campaign right here is promoting an SEO beginner's guide for a previous client of mine. 

The guide received 30+ high DR backlinks to this one single piece of content.

Tip #1: Keep The Subject Line Simple

The subject line is actually pretty conservative really:

There’s no secret ninja hacks here, but it does describe what the email's about. 

It's not spammy. It's not salesy. And if a webmaster sees it, they know what the email is about, so they won’t be misled when they read it. 

Sure, it’s simple. But with a 69% open rate, very effective.

Tip #2: Grab Attention Straight Away

So first of all, rather than the generic hi, hey, or how're you doing, the introduction is designed to grab the reader’s attention straight away.

You should get creative with your email’s ‘fallback’ text, because it gives your email a more personalised feel.

Tip #3: Use Humour

To get a reaction from webmasters, I usually include plenty of puns and jokes throughout the campaign. 

So as the article I’m promoting is a beginner's guide to SEO, I've included some SEO related puns throughout the copy. 

Tip #4: Make it Easy To Read

Also, every sentence is short - never longer than one line.

So it’s:

• Clean and easy to read
• You can scan through it very quickly
• It’s also straight to the point and direct

Tip #5: Offer Value

I've also made the email win-win. 

So you can see from the other two campaigns, they didn't offer anything in return. 

VS

If a webmaster is going to spend their precious time adding a link to my content, they need to have a good reason why. 

You could make your email win-win by offering:

• A social media share
• A promotion on your email newsletter
• A guest blog on your website

And then this becomes a fair trade-off, and right off the bat you're building a good relationship with the websites you're contacting. 

Tip #6: Keep It Informal & Light Hearted

I tend to keep my copy really informal and lighthearted. 

And this works because then you don't sound too robotic. 

You’ll actually sound like a human - rather than some sort of link building robot!

Tip #7: Get Creative With Your Follow-Ups

When you're creating an email campaign, line up some follow up emails too.

Throw in some humour and - don’t use the generic “Hey, did you see my last email?”.

Email Copywriting Is Easy...But Easy To Get Wrong Too

So that’s basically it…

Simply follow these tips and you will see much better results:

• Keep your copy straight to the point
• Make it win win
• Use plenty of humour
• Don't waste anyone's time
• Be informal
• Engage the webmaster

And whatever you do, make sure it's interesting and fun to read. 

If you have any questions about link building, just post your comments below or drop me an email via [email protected]!

WEBSITE: https://juliangoldie.com/

LINKEDIN: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/juliangoldiemarketing/

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGpsgNbzdF7BECCVbB1COHw