Ever wondered why some people succeed with cold email outreach while other struggle to get their messages across? Are there any secrets aka cold email best practices that successful marketers are following and you need to follow too?

Let's agree that acquiring high-quality prospects for a business can be challenging because cold emailing campaigns can be hit or miss. However, it's important to note that cold email marketing techniques can indeed deliver excellent ROIs when done correctly.

Cold emailing is the practice of sending unsolicited emails to potential customers, clients, or leads who have not previously interacted with you or your business. The goal is to introduce your product, service, or offer to a new audience, build relationships, or generate sales leads.

Cold emailing is one of the most effective ways to generate many business leads and drives almost 20-30% more conversion rate if done right.

But how do you do that? By following the best cold email practices.

In this article, let's talk about some cold email best practices that can help you close more leads and grow revenue.

Cold Email Best Practices to Nail Your Marketing Strategy‍

Effective marketing is an essential part of every organization.

Considering a well-designed email marketing structure helps boost the business's sales, and to follow this, you need to go through the below cold email best practices that make it easier to achieve success.

Let's dive in:

1. An Optimized and Relevant Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing a recipient sees in their inbox. It plays a significant role in whether or not the email will be opened.

It is said that almost 47% of the recipients open emails with interesting subject lines.

A strong subject line needs to capture the recipient's attention while giving them a reason to open your email.

To optimize your subject line and make it awesome, you need to follow the below two steps:

• First, ensure the word count of your subject line is between 6 - 10. 
• Secondly, you can personalize your subject line, as that also helps in increasing the open email rate by 23.6%.
• Spark curiosity while keeping it relevant to the email’s content.
• A/B test different subject lines to determine what works best for your audience.

2. Understand Your Prospects

Knowing your target audience is essential for crafting effective cold emails. You need to do some research on the individual or company you’re reaching out to. Understand their pain points, industry, and challenges to create an email that speaks directly to their needs. The more relevant your message is to them, the more likely they will engage and respond.

• Identify their pain points and tailor your email accordingly.
• Research their industry to align your message with relevant trends.
• Reference recent events or achievements to make your email more personal.

3. Keep Your Email Content Short

Sending lengthy cold emails to clients is worthless, so keeping an eye on the word count is essential. Long messages make the customer click on the "delete" icon. Research proves that drafting short emails between 50 and 125 words is enough to engage clients. 

Shorter emails immediately get to the context of the message and allow the recipient to make their relevant decision regarding your product or service. It is rightly said that the golden rule of cold emailing is "deliver value to your prospects"; that's why to add your information in bullet points in the message.

4. Use Conversational Tone

A cold email should feel like a conversation, not a formal letter. While maintaining professionalism is important, overly stiff or robotic language can make your message feel impersonal. Instead, aim for a tone that’s friendly, approachable, and easy to understand. A conversational tone helps build rapport and creates a sense of familiarity.

• Use simple and clear language that is easy to understand.
• Avoid excessive formality or corporate jargon.
• Maintain a balance between professionalism and friendliness.
  

5. Address Pain Points

To get a response from a cold email, you must demonstrate how your product or service can solve a problem the recipient is facing. Focus on their pain points and present your solution as a way to address those challenges. Doing this shows that you understand their needs and are not just trying to sell to them, which increases the chances of a response.

• Identify common pain points within their industry.
• Clearly state how your product or service resolves these issues.
• Offer a unique value proposition that differentiates you from competitors. 

6. Proofread Your Emails

Before hitting the "send" button, always proofread your email to avoid mistakes. Small errors, such as typos or grammatical mistakes, can damage your credibility and make your email appear unprofessional. A well-written email will reflect positively on you and your company, making the recipient more likely to engage with your message.

• Double-check for spelling and grammar mistakes.
• Ensure your message flows logically and is easy to understand.
• Keep the formatting clean and structured for better readability. 

7. Use Visuals Strategically

While text-based cold emails are effective, incorporating visuals like images, emojis, or videos can make your email stand out. However, it's important to use them sparingly. Too many visuals can overwhelm the reader and appear unprofessional. Instead, use high-quality images or videos that enhance the message and create a visual impact.

• Use high-quality visuals that align with your message.
• Avoid excessive emojis to maintain professionalism.
• Ensure that embedded visuals do not affect email deliverability.

8. Leverage Cold Email Templates

Using templates can save time and ensure consistency across your team. However, don’t rely on them too heavily. A cold email template should serve as a base, not a one-size-fits-all solution. Personalize each email to fit the recipient’s needs, so it doesn’t sound like a mass message. This will help improve the chances of getting a response.

• Use templates as a base but personalize them for each recipient.
• Modify the wording to fit the recipient’s industry and specific challenges.
• Avoid making your email sound like a mass message.  
  

9. Send Your Emails at the Correct Time

Timing plays a critical role in the success of cold email campaigns. Sending an email at the right time can significantly improve your open and response rates. Studies show that emails sent early in the morning on Mondays see the highest engagement rates. Make sure you test different times to find when your audience is most likely to open and respond to your emails.

• Avoid sending emails late at night or on weekends.
• Track open rates to determine the best timing for your audience.
• Test different days and times to optimize engagement.

10. Personalize Your Emails

A generic email is much less likely to get a response. Personalization makes your email feel tailored specifically for the recipient, and it increases the chances of them engaging with your message. Use the recipient's name, reference their company or industry, and speak directly to their challenges. Personalized emails are far more effective than those that seem like mass mailings.

• Use their first name in the greeting to create a personal touch.
• Mention their company, industry, or a specific challenge they face.
• Reference recent news or events relevant to their business.

11. Follow Up Strategically

It’s rare for a cold email to get a response after the first try. Following up on your initial email is crucial for maintaining momentum. However, follow-ups should offer value rather than just ask if they’ve seen the first email. Being persistent is important, but don’t bombard your prospect with endless emails—space them out over a few days to maintain interest.

• Send at least 3-4 follow-ups spaced a few days apart.
• Add value in each follow-up rather than just asking if they saw your last email.
• Keep follow-ups short and to the point to respect the recipient’s time.

12. Track and Optimize Email Performance

Measuring the performance of your cold email campaigns allows you to improve your approach over time. By analyzing key metrics like open rates, response rates, and click-through rates, you can see what’s working and where you need to adjust. Regular testing and optimization are key to refining your email strategy and increasing success.

• Open rates – Measure the effectiveness of your subject lines.
• Response rates – Assess engagement and interest levels.
• Click-through rates – Track interaction with links or CTAs.
• Use A/B testing to optimize subject lines, content, and timing for better performance.
  

13. Focus on One Clear Message

Each cold email should have one clear objective. If you try to address too many points or topics in one email, you may lose the recipient’s focus. Stick to one main message or call-to-action (CTA) and structure your email in a way that guides the recipient’s attention directly to that goal. A clear, concise message increases the chances of engagement.

• Stick to one primary message or call-to-action.
• Avoid unnecessary details that might dilute your main goal.
• Structure your email logically for easy readability.

14. Make Emails About the Recipient, Not You

Remember, the recipient cares about how your product or service will benefit them, not about how great your company is. Shift the focus of your email to address their specific needs and challenges. By positioning yourself as a solution to their problems, you make your offer more relevant and appealing.

• Speak directly to their pain points and goals.
• Avoid excessive self-promotion.
• Position your offer as a solution rather than a sales pitch.
  

15. Include Your Signature in the Email Body

An email signature adds credibility and provides recipients with the information they need to reach out to you. It reassures the recipient that your email is legitimate and not spam. Your signature should be professional, concise, and provide clear contact details.

• Include your full name, job title, and company name.
• Provide your contact information and company website.
• Optionally add a small company logo for branding.

16. Include a Call-to-Action button

A strong call-to-action (CTA) is crucial for guiding the recipient on what to do next. A CTA should be clear, actionable, and easy to follow. Whether it's scheduling a call, downloading a resource, or trying out a product, make sure it’s obvious and easy for the recipient to take action.

• Use action-oriented language such as "Schedule a call" or "Get a free trial."
• Keep it simple and easy to follow.
• Place the CTA prominently at the end of the email. 

17. Avoid attachments‍

Including attachments in your cold emails is not recommended. They can trigger spam filters and often lead to lower email deliverability. Instead, provide links to relevant resources or content that recipients can access without downloading files. This keeps your emails lighter and more likely to be opened.

• Use hyperlinks to direct recipients to important content.
• Avoid large file attachments that could slow down email loading.
• Ensure all links are working and relevant to the email’s purpose. 

Sample Cold Email Template

A simple cold email should cover the following sections:

• Introduction about you or your company
• Reason for emailing
• What will you offer the client, and how is it essential for them to?
• Proof that your products or services work
• Call to action button
• What do you expect them to do next?
  

Below is an example of the template.

Does Cold Emailing Work?

Cold emailing can indeed be an effective outreach strategy when done correctly. It allows you to connect with potential customers who might not be aware of your brand or offerings.

However, the effectiveness of cold emailing hinges on several factors, like the quality and personalization of your emails, and the relevance of your message to the recipient.

What is an Average Cold Email Response Rate?

Before understanding the average cold email response rate, let us first understand the basics of cold email response rate.

Cold email response rate is a metric that is considered to decide the success of the email outreach of any business. This response rate means the number of potential clients who responded to your emails.

It typically indicates whether the respective client is interested in your products or services. An excellent cold email response rate varies between 1% to 10%, but this can vary depending on the kind of business you are in. Below is a simple formula for calculating the average cold email response rate to understand it clearly:

How Long Should a Cold Email Be?

In terms of cold email best practices, brevity is key. A concise and straight-to-the-point email around 100-200 words long is likely to have the most impact. Start with an engaging subject line, a personalized introduction, and then get right to the point. The aim is to pique the recipient's interest and encourage them to respond, rather than overwhelming them with information.

Should Cold Emails be Considered Spam?

No, cold emails are not Spam, only if done right. Cold emails are targeted emails with relevant and personal content related to the target audience. The businesses sending cold emails have a legitimate purpose behind sending these. So to ensure that your cold emails do not land in the spam folder, they should include the following:

• The sender's full name
• The relevant information about your brand, like your website links, social media profile links, physical address, email address, and phone number. 
• The content of the email should be personalized for the recipient
• The content of the email should be written in plain English
• There should be no clickbait in the subject line of the emails.
  

For example, the below email is a cold email that has landed in the spam folder because of the highlighted reasons in the image. So make sure you avoid such mistakes. Also, if required, you can take tips to avoid landing in spam folders from Smartlead AI, the best cold email marketing software in the market.

Industry Insights: Secret Cold Email Practices to Achieve 40% Positive Reply Rates

Everybody knows the basic cold email guidelines but are these enough for a successful campaign? I asked Vaibhav—Smartlead founder—and the answer was NO.

Here are some of the cold email best practices that nobody tells you, but you must know. At Smartlead, our customers have seen as high as 40% positive reply rate following the below practices.

#1 Five Mins Minimum Email Time Gap

Sending bulk emails is always risky. For instance, sending 100 emails from one email address looks spammy.

Many marketers use multiple email addresses to avoid that, but only a handful of them know about the email time gap.

“Keep a minimum of 5 mins email time gap between sending emails”~ Vaibhav

If you are sending a large number (volume) of emails from one email address (within the sending limit), you can continue doing so.

However, you must maintain a minimum of 5 mins time gap between sending emails.  

#2 Maintain a DNC Checklist

DNC or the Do Not Contact (DNC) list is something that nobody tells a beginner.

A DNC list is a list of leads or domains that you shouldn’t send your messages to. They have either unsubscribed or blocked you, or asked you to stop sending emails.

“Maintain a DNC list for better email sender reputation”~ Vaibhav

In case you aren’t aware, sending messages to leads that unsubscribed or blocked you is violating the CAN-SPAM Act.

Cold email automation tools like Smartlead allow users to create a DNC list on the software itself. So that you can exclude specific leads from receiving any further emails from a campaign, even if they are part of an ongoing campaign.

#3 Run Campaigns with Less than a 2% Bounce Rate  

While response rate, delivery rate, and clickthrough rate are crucial, marketers mustn’t ignore the bounce rate of email campaigns.

If you have launched an email campaign and you are seeing more than 2% bounce rate, then the best initiative is to stop.

Stop the campaign, check what went wrong, and fix it before resuming it.

#4 Stop Low Performing Campaigns

“Review the lead quality, copy, and email reputation before resuming a low-performing campaign”~ Vaibhav

Cold email automation tools come with an analytics dashboard where you can see the overall performance of email campaigns.

The dashboard mainly shows

• Number of sent emails
• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Reply rate
• Bounce rate, etc.

The industry standard for the above email marketing metrics is below:

• Open rate: >20%
• Click-through rate: 2-5%
• Reply rate: >10%
• Bounce rate: <2%

Campaigns that don’t meet the above metrics should be paused immediately. Review the copy, and assess the quality of the lead list and the email reputation before resuming the campaign.

#5 Remove Low Performing Email Accounts

A cold email campaign includes several email accounts. While some of those might perform well, some might not.

At Smartlead, we try to filter out the low-performing email accounts after launching a campaign via the analytics dashboard.

This is a great way to boost deliverability. It has proven to be highly impactful for us.

#6 Check Common Spam Blacklists for Your Domain

“Look for your domain on Common Spam Blacklist”~ Vaibhav

Are your campaigns underperforming recently? Have the open rates dropped down to 5%, and the spam rate gone up?

If yes, there’s a chance that your domain is blacklisted (blocklisted).

ESPs (Email Service Providers) blacklist a domain or an IP address under suspicion of sending out spam emails. Sometimes, it is also because you are failing the SPF or DMARC authentication or there’s a mistake in the copy that alerted the spam filters.

Regardless of the reason, it’s important to learn why your campaigns are not performing like before and landing in the spam folder. Is your domain blacklisted?

To know that, you can check out free blacklist checker tools like mxtoolbox.

#7 Send 50 Emails/Addresses per day

Popular ESPs—Google, Yahoo, HotMail, and Outlook—provide a daily sending limit of 500 emails per day.

But, for a successful outreach campaign, the best practice is to set a sending limit of 50 emails per address per day.  

This has been a highly beneficial practice for us at Smartlead. The above sending limit includes the warm-up emails too.  

#8 Gradually Increase Email Sent Volume

If you are using certain mailboxes to send 10 emails per day, don’t increase the volume suddenly.

Take a week or two to gradually increase the email volume to 50 or 60 emails per day.

A sudden increase in the number of messages sent will alert the spam filters, eventually affecting the sender reputation score.

#9 Use Spintax To Randomise Email Messages

“Spintax improves deliverability by increasing randomization of messages”~ Vaibhav

Spintax or Spin Syntax is a bulk emailing hack that creates variations of sentences or words by using multiple words or phrases in the template.

You can add similar words such as {Hey} and {Hi}, separated by a vertical line |

For example:

{Hi|Hello|Hey}

This tactic will help you generate a more personalized set of cold emails. Sending email messages with a little variation from one another increases the chances of landing in leads’ inboxes.

#10 Inbox Rotation

“Select multiple mailboxes per campaign to send the load horizontally”~ Vaibhav

Inbox rotation means sending emails from various mailboxes instead of sending from one mailbox only.

Here, inbox means one mailbox/email address.

So, the inbox rotation practice means rotating the sender’s account or using various sender addresses to send bulk emails.

This is a great tactic to divide the email volume into small chunks for several mailboxes. This will help to stick to the “50 emails per day per address” limit.

What Metrics Should I Track to Measure the Success of My Cold Email Campaigns?

In line with cold email best practices, there are several key metrics you should track to gauge the success of your cold email campaigns:

1. Open Rate: This shows how many recipients are opening your emails. If it's low, you may need to improve your subject lines.
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2. Response Rate: This indicates how many recipients are responding to your emails. A low response rate might mean you need to enhance your email content or targeting strategy.
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3. Conversion Rate: This measures how many recipients perform the desired action after reading your email, such as scheduling a call or signing up for a demo.
   ‍
4. Bounce Rate: This shows how many of your emails aren't being delivered. A high bounce rate could imply issues with your email list.
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5. Unsubscribe Rate: This measures how many recipients are opting out of your emails. A high unsubscribe rate could suggest that your emails aren't resonating with recipients.

Final thoughts

People say that cold emailing can either do your business or ruin it.

So getting a few techniques wrong can reduce the trustworthiness of your brand in your prospect's eyes.

So you can easily use the above-mentioned cold email best practices to create a powerful marketing campaign with cold emailing and get more leads with it.

The internet is full of cold email tips & tricks. These tips & tricks mainly include

• Write text-based emails
• Don’t use multiple links
• Do A/B testing
• No spam words
• Personalization, etc.

While I totally agree with the effectiveness of the above emailing hacks, as a marketer, you need MORE.

You need the secret emailing practice from an experienced email marketer who has already brought the results (multiple times).

If you are reading this, get set, GO.

Use the above game-changing tips from Vaibhav and the cold email best practices we discussed in this article and let us know the results. If you are looking for cold email automation, check out Smartlead.