If you test enough targeting/messaging combos, you'll find 100% a combo that works or you'll find out there's no product-market fit. If you don't have product-market-fit and are testing out a new offer it's especially important to test out tons of angles.

Instead of giving you 1 strategy, we're going to give you multiple different strategies so you will always have things to test.

For some offers, we found a working campaign after 3 tries, for others it took 3 months and 40 campaigns. You need to get into the habit of testing new things daily and weekly.

You may check this on our Youtube Channel.

You may check this copywriting framework document by clicking this link.

The simplest structure for a cold email consists of Personalization, Offer, and CTA. You may check this example.

This email is short and sweet with a unique offer. Complimenting something very specific and asking permission to send more info (more on this later).

Personalized lines could be created either manually or using an automated tool. We have found that manually created first lines work the best for improving reply rates and positive reply rates. However, it’s a matter of prioritizing time over quality and vice versa.

It has been shown in studies that 47% of people prefer to open emails based on attractive opening lines, which can be seen under the subject line without even opening the email. This has been proven time and time again by our own data - emails with personalized first lines see a 2x improvement in reply rates and a significant boost in open rates across all industries and offerings.

Instantly.ai makes it super easy to integrate first lines in your outreach campaigns.

Offer is the most underrated part of a high-converting cold email copy. If your offer is saturated or flat-out sucks - no copywriting tip will really help you.

Only work with clients with proven offers and if you’re creating your own offers make sure it resonates with your target audience and there is a big problem you’re solving for them.

Strong Call To Action will definitely improve your response rate. Obviously ideally you would want the prospect to book in a meeting straight from a Calendly link, but this is the lowest response rate strategy we’ve tested.

You may check this video on Cold Email Call to Actions.

I like to think of subject lines like the notifications you get on your phone from friends or apps. What kind of short message will get you to open your phone and check it out?

To write a really good email you need to do some research on the market you’re going after. Best cold emails make your prospects feel understood.

You want to resonate with your audience and make them go “damn this dude seems to know what they’re talking about”. You will make them feel understood by knowing industry-specific insights and then tying it together with your offer.

For example, if you’re contacting Ecom stores, most of them are focusing on increasing their Conversion Rate and AOV. If you mention this in your emails - it will resonate. If you’re contacting SaaS companies, their main KPIs are MRR and Churn. If you’re an agency - create an onboarding form that your clients will fill out based on the information they have about their targets. This will save you some time.

The goal is to find as many variables as possible that will resonate with the target audience. The more resonating variables we have - the higher the chance of getting a response. Your email will be more personal, segmented and will stand out from all that generic crap that 99% of people are sending. People just want to feel understood.

Here is a Copywriting Avatar Cheat Sheet, just click here.

Fill the sheet for your own agency as well and use it for your own outreach.

As an alternative to writing fully personalized lines about a specific person you can also use more general but still personalized first lines. These can be about their location, weather, fun facts or just general pattern interrupt openers that will make you stand out from people that don’t use them. You can send the same line to 1000s of people while it still seems personalized to them.

The more specific you can get - the more personalized your approach will look. Instead of targeting the entire US or California - target Los Angeles. See all examples below.

To find out more ideas, you may check the following link.

If you’re tired of not getting any responses to your emails LISTEN UP. The secret to the universe (and cold emailing) is simple - you get what you put in. So the more effort you put into researching your niche, their business, their personal life and childhood achievements, the more responses you’re going to get. See Nardwuar shocking rappers or Sean Evans surprising his quest with their deepest darkest secrets.

If you create 100% customized emails then you could possibly get close to 100% reply rate, but in terms of creating cold email campaigns at scale here’s exactly what you got to do. I’m going to give you our formula first, then an example outreach email and then we’re going to dissect every line.

You want to go through your prospects website or LinkedIn and pick out something unique about them and write a quick and sweet compliment for that. This is the only manual part of the email and will take 30-60 seconds, the rest of the email is targeted but not customized. My favorite and usually the fastest way is to find their success stories and pick out something you like.

Here’s where you can brag about what you do best. Don’t hold back and put your best foot forward. Make it as specific to your target audience as possible.

You want to be as specific as possible. Instead of Ecom stores you want to call them out as much as you can - Luxury watch stores in NYC. The more specific you get the more it will resonate with the audience. We want to make them think “damn, that’s me!” and “if they did it for this very similar company, they probably can do the same for me.”

Most cold emails just mention the target niche, but we’ll go a step further and show our prospects we actually know what their goal is. Instead of saying we just help you connect with Ecom stores, we can tell them we help low-ticket (best price for TikTok agencies) and are already making over $100K/mo (no new stores, stores that have the marketing budget).

Now let’s take another step deeper into showing how well we know our audience by calling out their value prop too. This is what they help their customers do.

Add a short and relevant case study to show you can actually do this and did it for a very similar company.

Now let’s get bold and put our money where our mouth is. Show your prospects that you are the man by having a plan or a presentation ready for them. Tell them you have a guarantee or performance based pricing model. Tell them you’ll send them a burger with UberEats if they don’t find a call with you valuable. Make it interesting and as much of a no-brainer as possible to get them on a call with you.

End your email with a clear Call To Action. Either ask them straight up for a call or if it’s okay for you to send them a personalized video or a proposal.

That’s it. It will take some research in the beginning, but reverse engineer your case studies, talk with your customers and honestly try to understand their business. That’s how you’ll get higher response rates too.

People’s attention span is short. Keep your email snappy and to the point with 1 sentence email. Good email copywriting practice to get into.

Instead of pitching your offer straight away, ask your prospects if they'd be willing to answer a few questions for a research you're doing.

Most people would love to answer relevant questions. And later once you've already talked with the prospect and it seems like a good fit you can pitch your offer.

Instead of pitching straight away, ask for the right person in the company to talk about your service.

If you have a podcast or are planning to do one, then this is one of the best ways to make connections with people and get them to respond to your emails.

When reaching out to countries where English isn't the main language, try translating your copy to the local language to increase response rates.

Use customized Images in your emails to increase your email curiosity. For example if you’re selling app development to Fitness Trainers you could have an app design mockup and then change the pictures for the influencers you’re reaching out to.

For example in the example above you could change out the name “Chuck Johnes” and the image for each new fitness trainer you’re reach out to.

Instead of pitching them with text, send them a Loom video or ask if it's okay to send them a Loom video showing how you can help them.

Instead of pushing your agenda and selling straight away, ask their permission first. Is it okay if I send more info? Is it okay if I send you a link?

The biggest objection to overcome with cold prospects is trust. Guarantees help people trust you more because you have some skin in the game. Figure out the best guarantee you can offer (it doesn't have to be a money-back guarantee).

If you’re struggling to close, make it a no-brainer offer for them (more skin in the game). If you already are closing nicely, you can focus more on making it a no-brainer for you. Don’t make your life miserable on purpose. Here are some examples you can use in your email copy:

If you follow all the steps in the action plan/course and you don’t see (result) in (timeframe) you get ...

If your offer is performance based, say it in your emails

Offer your prospects a free audit based on your offer in your initial email.

If you have a very specific offer and not many leads in your target group - then it makes sense to do more prep than you would usually do. You can do the following.

Lil sneaky method, but if you don't want to create a customized video for every prospect and only create videos for people who respond do this "I created a quick loom video here: loom.com/fdfsjfhjhejf(something random)"

When they click on the link - it doesn't work. So they will reach out and tell you the link is broken. Once they do that - record a video and send the correct link.
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It's counter-intuitive but sometimes being vague is better than being very specific. If your offer is something that people have heard 100 times, they might be allergic to it even when you can actually help them. People might also be biased because of bad experiences with other similar offers.

Most cold email copy sucks because you can understand straight away that it’s a template sent for 1000s of people. To get around this when you’re sitting down to write your first copy - imagine that you just found your prospects website, clicked “email us” and now are writing the email right then and there.

When testing new copies and running A/B tests always remember to change only 1 thing in your email. Otherwise you won’t know what made the difference.

We don’t really use long follow-up sequences and usually end at 4. Feel free to experiment and test out longer or shorter sequences. You never know what’s going to work in your niche.

If you did your homework for the initial email this is the place to use different angles and case studies, offer a free audit, or send a video.

At this point I’ll assume (your offer) isn’t a priority right now. Feel free to reach out when it changes.

Bonus 1: 600 Cold Email Templates

Whenever I run out of ideas I just Google “Cold Email Templates” or go into the spreadsheet below. I use CMD+F to find relevant templates or scroll until I find something I like and edit it to fit my current offer. You may click here to see of our Instantly.ai Template Hubs.

Bonus 2: Become a Cold Email Expert

Thanks for reading - hopefully you found a bunch of methods to inspire your cold email copywriting. Feel free to reach out on Twitter or via Instantly’s Live Chat if you have any suggestions.

If you want to take your cold email to the next level - here is more content we’ve created on Cold Emailing.