Why I Didn’t Reply to Your Cold Email

Since no one picks up the phone anymore, we email. Cold calling is now cold emailing, and I don’t know if the success rate is any better. I’m at the receiving end of plenty of outreach emails, and in this post, I will tell you why yours may have gone unanswered. Plot twist: it’s not because it wasn’t relevant.

False Sense of Urgency

If you didn’t know, ALL CAPS IS AGGRESSIVE AND UNPLEASANT TO READ. In a professional context, you should only use all caps if a brand spells its name in all caps or you need to draw attention to some-thing crucial. There’s rarely a place for that in a cold email.

Some try to create a sense of urgency to push a sale. “Only 24 hours left on this deal of a lifetime!” Others rely on the psychological phenomenon of missing out, explored for example by Daniel Kahneman in his seminal work Thinking Fast And Slow: people are more afraid of missing out than hopeful to luck out. “Can you afford to miss out on this offer?” While these two examples remind you more of B2C ads, B2B marketers employ the same tactics; the most ‘skilled’ ones tie their pitch to something current; I get many cold emails urging me to take on their AI-enhanced algorithm so that I “don’t get left behind in creating better email subject lines.” Others turn the urgency to a kind of a threat: “If you do not respond, we cannot guarantee that you get to impact how we write about your company in our report.” With that attitude, your report doesn’t sound all that confidence-inspiring anyway.

Never push your recipient with false claims. Your email is not a top priority for them; deal with it.

Getting Agitated

Building a business is not easy. Cold calling or emailing is part of doing it, and that’s not easy, either. I get your frustration. I’m the umptieth person you emailed who didn’t respond. Maybe I’m not fair. Maybe I should give you the courtesy of responding. But you should never get agitated. Never express your frustration to someone you’ve never even established a real connection with.

Never say: “Essi, could you kindly respond to my many emails?” or “I take it by your lack of response that my offering is not of interest to you.” They’re both – I say this acknowledging it’s a buzzword – PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE and that is never a good tactic for new customer acquisition.

Getting Too Chummy

I don’t lay claim to truth in this blog (unless specified; not that I don’t read my own word with great awe, but I leave it up to you to share that sense of halo), but this one really is a matter of opinion. I received my education in very formal and hierarchical cultures (UK, Japan, Singapore), and I’d rather err on the side of too much formality than too little.

Finding the right tone is worthy of a blog post on its own, so here’s a starter list of considerations for you to think:

• Age: The older your recipient, the more likely they prefer/expect/find it normal that you address them formally. It’s relational, too: if you’re a lot older than the recipient, you can relax it a bit.
• Culture: Recipients of certain cultures expect a more formal kind of an approach.
• Position: The more senior you are, the more decision-making (read: purchasing) power you can be expected to have. Are you trying to ease in through a junior-level employee, or headed straight for the CEO who’s used to people extending them a bit more formality?
• Topic: Are you selling AI tools for computer designers, or prestigious office spaces to COOs? How you speak about the topic and the opportunities your service/product can offer can influence the tone of your email. Selling an expensive product merits a more carefully crafted tone; sales pitches for easy-to-use digital products for a monthly subscription fee can be a bit more relaxed.

Terrible Subject Line

First impressions are first impressions, and they stick, even if you manage to change them for the better (or worse, depends which way you’re going). The very first thing a person sees when a new email lands in their inbox is the headline. Make it count!

Don’t use these (actual headlines I’ve received):

• “Hi, Essi” – What even is this? What is this about?
• “Essi, follow-up on a previous email” – Which one? I have a thousand ongoing email conversations and then some. This does not ring a single bell. Also, why did you not follow-up on that previous email to jog my memory?
• “Hi Essi – regarding Relex” – Regarding what about RELEX? And sidenote: my current employer RELEX actually happens to be one brand that capitalizes its name. Always a good idea to check a company’s website to get details like this right. You might be contacting someone who’s a stickler for branding!

Incidentally, I find all of these too chummy! I find it a sign of mass-emailing if you include my name in the subject line – a way to tell apart the hundreds of emails you’ve sent.

Not Telling Me How and Why Me

If you’ve purchased a bunch of email addresses from a more or less legal data bank, it might be im-possible to honestly tell me how you’ve got my address (“I bought it” just isn’t a great start). I think it’s a good practice to let the person know straight off how you got their contact info and why you’re pitching this specific thing to them. For example:

Shooting Just Slightly Wide

I’ve gotten many cold emails that have been very good: great greetings, good length, sensible content. I’ve left many of these unanswered for a variation of the plot twist I mentioned right at the beginning: they’re not relevant for me. Most companies do not encourage their employees to forward cold emails to one another for security purposes, and most people probably don’t care much about them. The one or two times I’ve done so when I considered the email actually very relevant, my colleagues told me they’d gotten the same email (bonus tip: maybe don’t blast the whole company with the same email).

A whole lot of companies and organizations nowadays have active LinkedIn pages, and many employees are searchable through the company pages. I know responsibilities vary considerably from one place to the next, so a Communications Manager (like me at the time of writing) might be in charge of marketing in one place. But I’d still suggest you invest a bit of effort into looking up your contact list: if you’re selling SEO services, check if your prospect has both communication and digital professionals listed. I’d opt for the latter in this case.

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Do you answer cold emails? Why, why not? Do you write them? Do you have a winning strategy for turning cold leads to hot ones?