Have you ever written an outreach email and didn’t get a reply? Because everybody gets an email and nobody cares?
So, you did it wrong. But don’t worry, in this article, we will show you how to write an outreach email and do it right.
Email outreach is a message you send to someone who is not your customer yet, but you intended to change it. It is also known as “cold emailing”. Cold emails are usually sent to people who don’t know you and have not been introduced to you through someone else. Nevertheless, this is one of the most effective ways to get new clients.
In content marketing, the aim is typically to promote a piece of content, request a backlink, or attempt to form a partnership or collaboration.
Email outreach – what it means and how important it is for marketing and business
As we already mentioned, an outreach email is a practice of sending emails to people you don’t have a relationship. The purpose of email outreach is to get your potential customers to take positive action that will help you achieve new subscribers and build a new relationships. This can help you generate traffic, build a strong online reputation for your brand, create backlinks for your website, and lots more.
Cold email outreach is very different from newsletter-based email marketing, which is more about looking after relationships with new and existing customers.
Examples of the goals you can achieve with email outreach include:
- Pitching partners to collaborate with on campaigns
- Link building
- Lead generation
- Promoting a piece of content
- Reaching out to influencers and investors
- Guest blogging
Certain types of outreach get higher response rates than others. Outreach messages related to guest posting, roundups, and links have an especially high response rate.
Sooo… email outreach plays a tremendous role in the success of your business efforts, and SEO strategy, it’s crucial that you get it right.
Email Outreach Campaigns differ from Bulk Email Campaigns
Bulk email is the act of sending one email campaign to a large group at once. Marketing messages, newsletters, updates, coupons, and invitations usually include bulk emails. It is an extremely fast way to reach out to a wide audience.
Reaching out to multiple contacts can also lead to greater success. The response rate to messages sent to multiple contacts is 93% higher than messages sent to a single person, but only 8.5% of all outreach emails receive a response.
Nevertheless, the rules have changed, as did email marketing methods, but users’ approach to bulk campaigns is often still negative and considered spam. Yet it shouldn’t be.
Email outreach is not spam. The idea is to carefully look for people who may actually find your content useful and to who can share it, and ask to take action if they like what they see.
In the case of outreach emailing, the list of recipients is hand-picked and curated, while in the case of bulk emailing, the list of recipients is usually the list of subscribers already interested in the website/brand/business.
The level of personalization certainly lacks in the case of bulk email campaigns, however, outreach emails have personalization as an integral part of their body content. By enriching your email with snippets of personalization, you make each email unique. This, in turn, reduces the chance of your email ending up in the spam folder.
According to studies, emails with personalized subject lines have better response rates (21.8%) than those that don’t personalize their messages (16.8%).
As you can see, knowing how to write an outreach email is the key to gaining new audiences and building relationships more effectively.
10 Easy Steps to Follow on How to Write an Effective Outreach Email that Converts
You may have heard that it is a challenge to get people to respond to cold emails. Based on the data, low response rates appear to be the norm.
If you run successful cold outreach campaigns, you will need to master the art of writing highly targeted, personalized, and non-boring emails.
The fact that 91.5% of cold outreach emails are ignored may not come as a surprise. After all, such generic emails are extremely common:
Do your research before you reach out to prospects
Research helps you understand the common pain point of your potential new audience to help you hit the right note and start a conversation.
Exploring prospects gives you the opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level. You can find a better choice of words to keep your tone more non-promotional.
While reviewing a number of studies, I can confidently say that subject lines containing numbers achieve about 45% higher open rate than the average open rate.
The key is to be different and stand out.
Keep trying new subject lines with patterns and strategies that have proven to run time and time again.
Also, make sure to use a tool like Yesware, and Outreach.io, to track all your emails so you know what’s working and what’s not.
Use the power of personalization
Let’s start by clarifying the two types of outreach emails:
unique emails (emails written from scratch) and personalized emails.
You can write dozens of unique outreach emails, but without an added layer of personalization, you will still end up with generic pitches. So, writing every email from scratch does not magically make it personalized.
Please remember:
Unique emails ≠ personalized emails
When you extract contacts manually, you have the chance to collect additional data in addition to the person’s name and find any other parameters necessary for effective personalization.
Starting off, here’s a short list of some of the things you can do:
- refer to one of their blog posts or guest posts (and tell them what you liked/disliked/agree with/learned from it)
- ask them about something interesting you’ve noticed on their website or in their guest posting guidelines
- mention the editor by name in your email or subject line
- try to make a personal connection by doing a little bit of research and finding something you have in common
- adjust your writing style and the tone of the pitch
- mention why you think they specifically could be a great partner (if you are suggesting some kind of collaboration)
- adjust topic suggestions and examples of your previous work so that they are in line with the content on their blog (if you are sending guest post pitches)
Here is an example of email, in this case, reflecting on the research and personalization aspects and how to use them in email outreach:
“Hey Sujan,
I loved your recent piece on different types of content marketing; I’ve always struggled particularly with marketing for our B2B clients, so it was really useful to get such a clear breakdown of how B2B and B2C email marketing differ.
I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself and asking a quick question…”
This is a decent email opener, although one that’s best suited to the “less busy” type of people.
Let’s see if we can make it better.
“Hey Sujan,
How did you manage to get Ross Simmonds to write a guest post for you? I’m a big admirer of the work you and Ross do (I even saw Ross speak recently – awesome stuff) so it was great to see you guys collaborate.
I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself and asking a quick question …”
Good personalization influences email deliverability. Trust me. Don’t forget about it.
Optimize Subject and Preview text
If you want to convince people to read your emails, the subject line is your first chance to do so. Subject lines can either convince people to click on your message straight away or convince them to delete it without even giving it a second thought.
A general rule is to aim for a clear and straight-to-the-point subject line that is also involving all at once. Make sure you offer details of what you can provide, rather than being vague and leaving cliffhangers.
Here are a few tips to help you to create eye-catching subject lines:
- The ideal outreach email subject line length is 36-50 characters
- Stimulate curiosity by asking personalized questions about the brand
- Use humor, but don’t cross the lines
- Include statistics and infographics
- Use genuine language rather than sales or marketing speak
Examples:
Example 1:
SUBJECT: Hey Dave, it’s time we add more value to your website.
Preview Text: I’ve noticed that your blog has some amazing informational content on {blog niche/sub niche} but some of the content is outdated. I’ve some interesting offer…..
Example 2:
SUBJECT: Sharing my best strategy on {topic for guest post}.
Preview Text: I am sure you will ❤️ this content as a part of your website. It’s a complete checklist of best strategies for {niche topic}
With more than 50% of global website traffic coming from mobile accounts, not optimizing subject lines for mobile is a pretty bad move.
Make your theme based on these factors:
- Desktop inbox shows around 60 characters
- iPhone inbox (in portrait mode) shows 41 characters
- Android inbox (in portrait mode) shows 30 characters
Keep It Short and Precise
You should also consider the nature of your target audience.
Think about your recipients.
Are they people who value taking their time and reading things? Or are they under constant time pressure and interested in working as quickly as possible?
Depending on which study you examine, the lower threshold for responses tends to be around 25 to 50 words. If your email is only one or two sentences long, it probably won’t attract many responses. However, there are situations where shorter emails may work (such as follow-ups or reminders).
The successful outreach emails seem to peak at an upper threshold of 125-200 words. There are some situations where a longer email can be effective, but they are rare. If you find yourself writing more than a few hundred words, you need to make your message more concise.
Keep your intent mutually beneficial as much as possible
No doubt, when you send any cold email, you have a clear goal in mind.
It could be to get a backlink to your recent article, or it could be as simple as getting a positive response from a potentially useful business contact.
Your potential recipient has their own goals.
When they decide to open an email, it’s because they want to find something of value in it – something that will help them solve a specific problem or answer a frequently asked question.
As such, you need to explain what this brings to them.
So, try to keep a mutually beneficial consent with the prospect. This is not something that will happen every time as it may not always be a give-and-take offer – use the advantages of research to find the best intents of making it a win-win for both parties involved as much as possible and highlight it in the outreach email.
End with a CTA
CTA’s or Call to Action are a great way of compelling your reader to intentionally respond to your cold outreaches and are great conversation starters.
A well-written CTA creates a better user experience because it guides your recipient to reply to your cold emails, start a conversation, and build stronger relationships.
Every sales or marketing email should have some kind of “ask,” whether it’s attracting a response or motivating a click through. This needs to be your highest priority, and should never be neglected in favor of a variable like an email length.
CTA’s in outreach emails are often added at the closure sentences of the email; they are compelling in nature and their sole intent is to start a conversation; they are there to grab your recipients’ attention.
Sometimes, the goal of your cold email is to create strong marketing partnerships to boost your brand’s awareness. In these situations, a collaboration-oriented CTA can get your recipient to collaborate on a project such as guest posting, webinars, or podcasts.
Have a look at some examples of CTA that actually can do a really good job:
- Shall we schedule a call?
- Let’s see what we can do for you in X minutes of your time. Select any date and time at your convenience on the calendar link.
- Are you available for a 10-minute call on Monday/ tomorrow/next week?
- Are you the best person to talk to about this? If not, let me know who I should get in touch with.
Make a habit of adding just one CTA, so your message is short. Too many CTAs confuse your clients. To make it stand out, you can put it a bit above your email signature. I guarantee your reply rate will increase.
Use a “P.S.”
Outreach emails do not carry too much bandwidth to include complete details of your pitch; P.S. becomes a useful tool in such cases and often goes underutilized.
P.S. should be strategically used in emails;
You can use P.S.
- to personalize the email and build a relationship:
- to give a link to a webinar/invite
- to promote an event / something you care about:
Hot Tip: If you want to use a second P.S., remember – it’s P.P.S., not P.S.S.
It can really work well as a part of the P.S. strategy, so try it out!
Following up is as important as the outreach
Email sequences with multiple attempts and multiple contacts boost response rates by 160%.
Follow-ups are there to remind any potential audience that you’ve tried to reach out to them before, but they may have been too busy to respond to you the first time. In today’s world, they are a must.
It was confirmed that the response rate for campaigns with 1-3 emails in a sequence is 9%, and for campaigns with 4-7 emails in a sequence it is three times higher – 27%. So, according to the results, it is better to send more often follow-up emails.
Try to talk to and build relationships with industry bloggers and editors. Once they start answering questions, you will know they are interested. Then all you had to do is wrap it up with quick answers and helpful responses. However, make sure to add some context to your initial email to increase the interest of prospects which can lead you to grab some valuable insights and build a better connection with your business partner.
Use Tools to make the process more effective and efficient
To run an outreach email marketing campaign at scale, you must have an effective yet easy-to-use outreach email automation software in your toolbox.
Pitchbox is an email outreach tool, link building platform designed for marketing teams, brands, and SEO agencies. It allows you to bring your own link-building program and scale it up faster than working with an external agency. The built-in tracking and reporting features enable us to maintain and deliver weekly performance reports more efficiently.
Lemlist helps you start conversations that get more replies from your prospective customers. Startups, lead agencies, and aspiring entrepreneurs use lemlist to grow profitable businesses and build profitable customer relationships. It can also send follow-up emails running on your own terms at the right time and the right place.
Avoid Errors
Avoid embarrassing situations like contacting the wrong personal details, or using the wrong pronouns. It shows that you didn’t do your research or that you don’t know who you’re talking to.
Please find here the outreach tips:
Things you should never do in your outreach emails:
- Never say the wrong name
- Never include attachments*
- Never make it all about you
- Never send poorly formatted emails
- Never include multiple calls to actions
*attachments make the email much larger, which can lead to your message ending up in spam
Add more value by using gender-neutral words in your subject line and your email body, you can prevent touching on sensitive topics like gender identity.
Once you write an outreach email, double-check your subject line (and your body email) for grammar errors, avoid messy emails, make it clean, minimalist, and simple. It attracts more positive responses and new subscribers. Your subject line shouldn’t have:
- Incorrect verb tenses or forms
- Misspelled words
- Omitted commas
- Missing prepositions
- Subject-verb disagreements
Do not make grammatical mistakes. This can be perceived as if your message was written in a rush, which can lead to a decrease in your subscribers’ email engagement.
There are a lot of mistakes you should keep your eye on but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We will help you in writing successful outreach emails.
Best Outreach Email Examples for SaaS
Applying the above principles, and personalizing the e-mail content and personal data, we can create several outreach templates in a few minutes.
Example 1
SUBJECT: What Would You Do With Extra 10 Hours Each Week?
PREVIEW: Hi [{first name}], I often ask this question since most of my clients have seen such savings. Our SaaS tool has been delivering amazing outcomes to our clients ever since its inception.
BODY: Hi [{first name}],
What does saving 12 hours a week from your work sound like? Especially because Time Is Money!
I often ask this because clients like yourself have observed savings like these after including our software services as a part of their workforce.
Experts have said the same, like Bryan Dean, Dave Ramsey, and Brian Tracy, who have been a part of our list of satisfied and happy customers.
I’d love to set up a time to walk you through a personalized demo. Our tool is easy to use and will take up to 10 minutes. Do you have some free time next week to connect?
[{Your Name}], Designation
P.S.: We are running a festival offer and are offering 20% off on first-time purchases!
EXAMPLE 2
SUBJECT: Exploring Collaboration opportunities with [{Company Name}]: Can we open a line of communication?
PREVIEW: Hi [{First name}], I have a quick collaboration proposal for you! I have a great win-win offer for you!
BODY:
Hi [{first name}],
I’m John Doe, and I write for examplewebsite.com. I’ve also been a regular contributor at blogsite1.com, blogsite2.com, and blogsite3.com.
Link to contributed article – link 1
Link to contributed article – link 2
Link to contributed article – link 3
Anyway, I’m writing to you because I have some really interesting content ideas related to SaaS and technology that will be a perfect fit for your website’s audience.
I have been following your blog for quite some time now and have also mentioned your articles on technology in my article (URL to the blog post where the contribution is made) that I published sometime back.
I can send you the list of topics I have in mind if you are still open to guest author collaboration.
I appreciate your time and am looking forward to working together.
Cheers!
John Doe, [{Designation}]
After all, the effort you put into your outreach campaigns will be rewarded with the right results.
Remember – if you don’t have enough time to do it yourself, you may prefer to assign link building to someone who specializes in it, has access to various tools like Pitchbox, and has the necessary experience to generate positive results.
Conclusion
Outreach campaigns are adjustable and technically flexible in comparison to bulk email campaigns. Of course, bulk campaigns are fast and easy to launch. But higher risks and worse results are what ruin many chances of efficiency.
Use bulk campaigns for your warm and existing users and subscribers only – for when you need to send a holiday offer, mass notification, or an update. For cold contacts, it’s time to switch to smart outreach campaigns. You’ll get better results, save your reputation, and actually reach out to the people you need.
A successful outreach email makes it easier to make a decision and gets potential customers excited or curious about your product or service. As long as your subject line is short and catchy and your body is fully personalized to your audience’s needs, you are sure to increase click-through rates in your very first campaign and gain new subscribers and more sales of your products.
