This cold sales email copywriting is red hot

I’ve rustled up from the SoPro vaults a couple of cold sales emails that contain truly ass-kicking and lead generating copywriting.

Each has a lead gen rate in double figures
The last I looked at had a hit rate of one in five – and you can see for yourself just how it hoofed buttocks here
And here’s another example killer copy in a cold sales mail

Thanks to my sales mail sponsor…

SoPro is the award-winning B2B lead gen prospecting service that uses cold sales emails, a sprinkling of social magic and a splash of copywriting genius to deliver results time and time again, regardless of your location, market or sector.

In fact, they are so confident they’ll deliver that they publish live, unfiltered sales email campaign performance for all to see.

What’s more, they’ve been sweet enough to let me share with you a few sterling copywriting examples of the B2B prospecting emails that I’ve written on their behalf.

And there’s a lot you can learn from a proven sales email prospecting template.

Let’s bring on the main act before the crowd gets too restless.

Cold sales email #2

(Lead rate: 15.14%)

If you’ll just take your seats, I’d like to introduce…

For your pleasure and instruction, and for one night only, fresh from the SoPro stables:

Our second big-hitting, prospect-engaging, cold sales email.

Hi [FIRSTNAME],

I’m looking to make a super quick introduction to you as I think I can help you find lucrative roles working on [SCIENTIFIC] projects for large, resourceful clients.

I’m the MD at [PROSPECTOR], an Uber-style platform that brings together highly sought-after experts – like yourself – with venture capitalists and large corporations seeking relevant industry insights through hourly consultancy calls.

It’s simple to use and you are 100% in control of setting your hourly rate and choosing your projects.

Our sole focus is on [SPECIFIC SCIENTIFIC FIELD] experts due to the sheer scale of demand. If you’d like to find out more you can do so at [URL].

Best regards,

Note:

Text in [BLUE] is variable according to the recipient.

Text in [RED] replaces copy that has been removed to preserve anonymity.

With a lead rate of 15.14% this email certainly worked its magic.

Yet it looks so simple.

And in its unassuming simplicity lies much of its power.

Struggling to straddle the 100-word mark, this email is succinct as well as simple.
It keeps everything very much at the top level.

It repeats the last email’s confident assumption that what is on offer is perfect for the prospect.

As a result, it doesn’t really try and sell it too hard.

Best practice informs us to steer well clear of attachments or web links. They tend to distract – but here the goal is not to arrange a call but to get the prospect signed up on a web platform.
This link does not try to supplement the mail’s message: it is the desired action.

Let’s dissect this tasty morsel a little further so we can digest it easier.

I’m looking to make a super quick introduction to you as I think I can help you find lucrative roles working on [SCIENTIFIC] projects for large, resourceful clients.

The barriers are lowered immediately (‘a super quick introduction’). This promises to be – and is – a short and to the point blast.

And here, it’s important to note that nothing is actually being ‘offered’ – this is cast, as the mail before was, as an opportunity.

Of course, it helps that there is no price to pay in this example, but it is still possible to use this tactic that concentrates solely on the benefits rather than the cost to position any proposition.

There is no attempt to tell you or to show you.

Instead, the email purports to simply introduce you and help you. Any sense of a ‘pitch’ is ditched – and the tone is that of a benevolent matchmaker who has suddenly seen that X (the prospect) and Y (the proposition) are perfect for each other.

All that’s needed is a candle-lit dinner and some soft, romantic music…

I’m the MD…

The sense that the prospect has been personally selected is further enhanced by the email coming from the MD, who is – surely- not someone with time on their hands to fire-off hundreds of cold emails.

…an Uber-style platform…

Actually, arranging a cheap taxi and landing a lucrative consultancy gig are streets apart.

Uber here acts as shorthand, suggesting as it does a new way of doing things that only the forward-thinking can appreciate.

Like Uber, this is the future way of working emerging in the present.

It’s simple to use and you are 100% in control of setting your hourly rate and choosing your projects.

Note: this prospecting mail devotes only 20 words to explain what the service is actually all about.

(Go on, add them up!)

And it describes rather than sells. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeve. A nonchalant drop of the barrier here (‘easy to use’) and there (‘100% in control’).

Our sole focus is on [SPECIFIC SCIENTIFIC FIELD] experts due to the sheer scale of demand.

And following this is another carefully concealed sleight of hand. An invisible line is drawn between the prospecting company and the prospect, who are both experts in the same field (‘our sole focus is’).

And then – in an almost Freudian act of disavowal – it suggests that its expertise has been foisted upon it by ‘the sheer scale of demand’.

To summarise: this simple statement achieves a complex effect. It says: ‘we’re so good at what we do because of people like you’ and ‘because we’re so good at what we do we help people like you’.

If you’d like to find out more you can do so at…

The final call to action flies in the face of established prospecting logic which demands nothing less than the strongest of assumptive closes.

Here the call to action is almost delivered with a carefree shrug (‘If’, ‘you would like’. ‘you can’).

Which only reinforces what went before: with so much success (‘sheer scale of demand’) already notched up, it’s a favour (‘introduction’) being made here – not a desperate cry for attention.

The cold sales email closes as it began: ‘I am not asking for something – I am doing you a favour’.

The brevity of this email, the MD as the sender, the barriers lowered and the assumption that, actually, the mail is more a favour than a request, all bestow persuasive power on this cold sales intro.

And – with a lead rate of over 15% – it sure did pack a knock-out punch.

Once you’ve picked yourself up the floor I’ll share a few more copywriting gems for your cold sales emails.

Next up:

Things get tough.

I’m going to review how to prospect when the tide is pushing against you – covering things like avoiding wipe-outs when you are selling in a crowded market, pitching a complex proposition or prospecting when there is already a supplier already in place.

Hang in there – help is on the way.