GrammarPhile Blog

We’ve all had to write, or at the very least read, a cold email before. Whether you’re trying to reach out to a potential customer or client, make contact with a prospective employer or employee, or connect with someone to extend your professional or personal network, you’re familiar with sending cold emails.

When sending a cold email, you’re reaching out to a stranger, asking for their attention and a response. Writing cold emails isn’t easy to do and can be very time consuming. But there are a few best practices to keep in mind.

1. Do Your Research

First, research the individuals you’re reaching out to, to make sure they’re likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Essentially, make sure you have targeted leads, or you’ll end up wasting a lot of your time (and others’ time) and potentially giving the wrong people the wrong impression of your brand.

Once you know your prospects and what they care about, discover what specific information you can include in your email that’s tailored to them, their experiences, and what they care about. This will allow you to personalize your message. This also shows that you genuinely care about reaching them specifically and that you’re not sending out impersonal emails to a large group of prospects. Prospects will be much more likely to respond to a message that resonates with them on a personal level.

Organizations of every type rely on email more than any other communication channel because it’s cost effective, (generally) private, personal, easy, quick, and versatile.

Remember when all formal correspondence started with To Whom It May Concern? These days, if you receive an email with that as the opener, you’re more likely to send it straight to the trash. The days of proper letters have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean you should use loose, casual language and expect to get what you want. A formal email is not the same as an effective email, but combining the power of the two gives you a better chance of getting the reply you desire.

If you use email as part of your job, you know what a pain it can be to sort through the daily onslaught. Endless “Re: re: re: re:” chains are just the tip of the iceberg – it just gets worse from there.

But here’s the important point: Everyone you email is in the same situation, and some of the messages they deem unimportant might be the ones you send. How do you get around that? How can you ensure that your message gets seen and understood by the intended recipients?

These days, businesses can flourish or fail based on websites alone.

Your website encapsulates your world. If a potential customer wants to understand who you are and what you offer, he or she will likely visit your website to find out.

For that reason, glaring errors on your website are not peripheral issues—they are right hooks to the body of your brand. If the first impression you give is “weclome” on your home screen, you’re not exactly proving how precise and trustworthy your work is.