Here’s the brutal truth about cold email: your prospects aren’t even reading them.
They’re just scanning for red flags. And the moment they spot one? Straight to trash.
I know because we just A/B tested 12 different email variations across 2,400 prospects. The winner shocked us.
Why Your Emails Are Getting Ignored
Ready for this? The emails that performed best were the ones that looked least like cold emails.
Mind-blowing, right?
The Cold Email Graveyard: What’s Not Working
Let me show you what bombed:
- “Quick question about [company]”
- “Following up on [topic]”
- “{First_name}, thought you might be interested”
- Those AI-generated compliments everyone’s using
Yikes.
Your Email Defense System at Work
Here’s what’s happening: We’ve all developed this super-sensitive “junk email radar” in our brains.
The second we spot anything that looks like a sales pitch? Delete.
Breaking the Cold Email Rules (And Getting 38% Reply Rates)
Our winning email broke every “best practice” in the book:
- Ditched the formal greeting
- Killed the obvious mail merge
- Dropped the generic opener
- Said goodbye to corporate robot-speak
The result?
A mind-bending 38% positive reply rate. (For context, most people are happy with 1-6%.)
The Secret Sauce to Success
Stop trying to write “good cold emails.”
Seriously, just stop.
Instead, write like you’re messaging a colleague you kind of know but haven’t talked to in a while.
Real Talk: It’s About Being Human
Think about it – when was the last time you started an email to a friend with “Quick question about your personal life situation”?
Never, right?
Because that’s weird. And your prospects can smell weird from a mile away.
The Bottom Line
Your prospects have PhDs in spotting cold emails. But guess what?
They’re still totally open to actual human conversation.
Time to Level Up Your Game
Next time you’re staring at that blank email, forget everything you know about cold email “best practices.”
Just write like a normal person.
Because at the end of the day, you’re not writing to a “prospect”, you’re writing to another human who’s just as tired of robotic sales pitches as you are.
Keep it real, keep it human, and watch those reply rates soar.
Remember: The best cold email is the one that doesn’t look like a cold email at all.
And honestly? That’s the whole game in 2024.
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