Seven ways to get cold email cut through.

A really minor point in the grand scheme of business development cropped up this week.

One of my coaching clients is working hard on his new year’s resolution to email 30 new business prospects per week.

His content is smart, human, well crafted. There is absolutely no alternative if you want a campaign that turns heads, and we've worked hard to create the text that works best for him.

But there are seven key hygiene factors that are often overlooked in cold email that we covered in this session, that really can make the difference between catching your dream client's eye, and ending up in Trash. Or worse, Spam.

But minor as it is, it does warrant a blog post, so you too can avoid the pain of unanswered emails.

Best of all, they're free to implement, so no excuse not to crack on!

Here are the SEVEN ways you can increase your cut through when sending out cold email to new business prospects:

#1 Associate your face with your email address.

Add an image to your email address, of yourself (not your logo) and close-range enough that you can be seen smiling. Aim for something approachable and personable, but not so casual that it's unprofessional.

#2 What’s in a name?

Set your email 'from' name to something descriptive so that it's immediately apparent who you are.
Ie. I use "Charlotte | Kaffeen Marketing for Agencies" as the name that shows in people’s inboxes.

#3 Keep your sign off simple.

Stick to text, not images, if you want to be seen.
I am so tired of my downloads folder filling up with people's logos, that have arrived as an attachment, rather than an embedded image. Worse still, I know of companies where all emails with images are blocked by the firewall.

#4 Beware dark mode!

Many people (myself included) have switched to 'dark mode' on their computers to avoid too much blue screen glare. But this impacts how your emails show.

Make sure that your email text colour is set to flex according to the recipient's settings, and if you must use images, make sure that they're visible in both light and dark mode.

#5 Skip to the chase.

Use a Ps. at the end of your email to summarise your request in a single sentence.

This will drive your point home to skim readers, who can't be bothered to read all the entire body copy.

#7 Tell them what to do.

Use the email sign off to push a call to action.
One of my favourites was from a mentor who used his signature to say 'should this email have been a phone call? book a consult here' with a link to his Calendly diary.

I currently use:

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Ps. Hello skimmer! If you want to see any of these in action, hit reply to this email to say hi. I'll email you back so you can see how I use them on everyday.

Pps. If you want more ways to sharpen your sales processes, the Agency New Business module of the Complete Kaffeen Toolkit is for you. You can grab it in the Kaffeen Shop.